Tackling the future challenges of Organic Animal Husbandry - vTI

! Agriculture and Forestry Research, Special Issue No 362 (Braunschweig, 2012) ISSN 0376-0723
Download: www.vti.bund.de/en/startseite/vti-publications/landbauforschung-special-issues.html
Utilizes locally available resources, farmers and local professional and assists in resource protection,
while acknowledging the need for a people to change a whole or part of their traditions and
culture, which is a major challenger but must be fully encouraged
Best model to sustain life in dry lands that are most vulnerable to and allows for active participation
by communities in a global strategy to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
• Active participation of farmer families and women groups for increased public awareness
• Innovative approaches used to deliver programmes to communities
• Partnerships with stakeholders
• Continuous establishment of new areas of interventions like green energy
• Is a holistic approach to development which advances human wellbeing and ecosystems health
Methodology
This PeoPLE model is a low-cost community based approach to food and feed security and has the
potential to place inequality and those who are experiencing vulnerability including women, the
poor, and people living with HIV/AIDS, youths, displaced people, Orphans, Vulnerable Children-
OVCs and the elderly at the center of sustainable development.
SPAS trains small-scale farmer families and women groups on organic grain amaranth-which is
drought, diseases and pest resistant- husbandly, provides them with seeds for planting, and grow it
for food/nutrition and income and by products fed to livestock whose dung produce biogas converted
into electricity hence reducing the contribution of agriculture to greenhouse gas emissions.
Communities are also trained on ideal ratios for making organic grain amaranth-a nutritional powerhouse-
based-feed for livestock as an alternative to or to compliment grass cereals based feeds for
enhanced food/nutrition security in changing climate.
SPAS also trains communities on natural resource management, composting, silage making, zerograzing,
bio-gas production and conversion into electricity, trees nurseries establishment, organizing
field schools and demonstrations on grain amaranth-based crop boosters using organic grain
amaranth by-products and livestock waste, while involving the youth and nutrition vulnerable populations
including HIV/AIDS infected, and empowering communities to assess, identify and plan,
implement and monitor use of locally available resources.
Results
The PeoPLE model can help developing countries to sustainably adapt to the effects of climate
change that are now inevitable over the next few decades and reducing emissions at reasonable
costs. SPAS strategic intention is to use organic grain amaranth to demonstrate the viability of organic
agriculture and sets a pattern here for sustainable livelihoods with enormous contribution towards
low greenhouse gas emissions economies. Adaptation to climate change will inevitably mean
changing diets and lifestyles to suit new conditions.
By demonstrating ways of improved production, palatability and acceptance of grain amaranth
through innovative processing, consumption and marketing of that set of under-utilized food and
fodder crops, the PeoPLE model serves to provide one of the best nutrition per unit of land, water,
and labor inputs.
Crop types, farming practices and cultivation methods that conserve water could be important tools
for climate change mitigation and adaptation in dry lands ecosystems.
Supporting sustainable livelihoods in Kenya through integrating organic grain amaranth into the
interactions between people, plants, livestock and the environment to unlock mitigation and adaptation
potential of agriculture
412