Evidence-based scaling-up of evergreen Agriculture for increasing crop productivity, fodder supply and resilience of the maize-mixed and agro pastoral farming systems in Tanzania and Malawi

Declining soil fertility, climatic extremes, high costs of inputs and poor extension services are critical problems in Sub-Saharan Africa and are strongly associated with declining agricultural productivity and increasing rural poverty. Increasing population has also led to conflicts between farmers and pastoralists as crop production continues to encroach on tradition grazing areas. Intensification of agriculture is one of the options to address these problems. Development of a sustainable agro-ecosystem requires an integration of productive (e.g. crop yield & fuelwood supply) and ecological functions of agro-ecosystems as well as enabling policies and markets. Trees/shrubs are an integral component of small-scale farming systems in the region, often retained or planted by farmers and thus contributing to increase production and resilience of farming systems. However, the contribution of tree/shrub-based technologies to sustainable agricultural intensification has not received due attention. To fill this gap, this project was conducted to evaluate Evergreen Agriculture as an agroforestry model for the integration of sustainable farming practice to increase and maintain food crop production under the Africa RISING research program in Eastern and Southern Africa. The goals of the project were to generate research-based information to demonstrate the role of trees/shrub in sustaining increasing food crop production, fodder and biomass energy supply, and for reduced land degradation, and to identify evidences for scaling up evergreen agriculture technologies to provide these benefits. Major findings of this work are summarized below using the format proposed by the Africa RISING Research Coordinator.

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