Empowering smallholders into successful natural resource management in the uplands

Soil erosion is a major threat to sustainable crop production in the uplands. Contour hedgerow systems have been viewed as important technology to sustain crop production by reducing soil erosion and provide organic fertilizer for crop production or additional income from cash perennial hedgerows. Collaborative assessment between the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF). Misamis Oriental State College of Agriculture and Technology (MOSCAT), and Claveria Land Care Association (CLCA) on the components of a low-labor hedgerow system as an approach to a technical solution, and addresses the issue of how to disseminate information about a conservation technology cost-effectively at a sustainable rate. We observed rapid adoption of low-labor, zero-cash-cost conservation practiced based on natural vegetative filter strips in Claveria, Misamis Oriental that led to examination of each component of the process of establishing and maintaining low-labor hedgerow practices that evolved to establishment of cash perennial hedgerows or other form of agroforestry systems. Evolution to different approaches of technology dissemination in response to farmers requests that led to the development of the land care movement, Peoples' conservation organization, and the involvement of the local government that took the main responsibility for technology dissemination have been assessed. We are currently employing the two-pronged approach composed of people's conservation organization (Land Care Association) and the local government (LGU-led process) as a model to scale up the effort to the watershed and regional levels and to evaluate whether it is practical in the context of agroecological domains and sustainability.

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