Landcare approach: enhancing community empowerment in conservation farming and agroforestry in the uplands

Sustainable land use is one of the focal in debate about rural development in the Philippines uplands ,where more than 18 million people live. this paper relates our experiences in participatory approach to develop technologies and institutions for agroforestry at research site of the international center for research in agroforestry (ICRAF) in Claveria, northern Mindanao, Philippines. Contour hedgerow farming with leguminous trees has come to be viewed as an important agroforestry technology to ensure food security, alleviate poverty, and protect the environment. For several years we focused our efforts in accessing the management strategies to address key technical constraints of this system . We observed that adoption by farmers was low . The reasons for this includes high labour requirements in establishing and maintaining the hedgerows, resource competition above and below ground between the hedgerow and the associated crop, limited value-added from the hedgerow prunning, and poor species adaption. We therefore refocused our efforts towards finding altenative systems that would address the technical and institutional issues of conservation farming. We found that natural vegetative filter strips provide a simple solution to the technical constraints of soil conservation on slopes. These are buffers strips that are laid out on the contour in which the natural vegetation is allowed to grow into thick, protective cover. the strips also provide a foundation for farmers to evolve into complex agroforestry systems with fruit and timber trees. We now see trumendous surge of adoption of this system.adoption has been enhanced by the landcare approach. Landcare is a movement of farmer-led organizations supported by legal government. The organization share knowledge about sustainable and profitable agriculture on sloping lands while conserving natural resources. There are now over 8000 farmers involved in this movement. As the landcare group begun to grow, the local government units provide enthusiastic support. This involved the contribution of funds, technical assistance and support to the movement. Today, the landcare movements has grown to over 300 groups in 10 municipalities in northern, central, eastern, and southern Mindanao and in the Visayan islands.

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