The challenge of HIV/AIDS: Where does agroforestry fit in? - World ...

66World Agroforestry into the Futureproject is to loan seed to farmers in returnfor a promise to give back double theamount they took. The sustainability of thissystem is uncertain; no private seed dealershave yet emerged, despite the wide-scaleadoption of improved fallows.In the expansion of Landcare, hundredsof communal and private individual treenurseries have been established to provideseedlings for fruit and timber species. InLantapan, farmers organized themselvesto create the Agroforestry Tree Seed Associationof Lantapan (ATSAL), a farmeroperatedseed collection, production,processing and marketing association. Theorganization has trained more than a thousandfarmers in both exotic and indigenoustree species and has extended its operationsto other areas of the country.MarketingLinking farmers to markets and adding valueto raw products have great potential forimproving the incomes of smallholders andfacilitating the scaling up process (Deweesand Scherr 1996). All three of the mainpractices promoted in the case studiesproduce inputs: fodder for increased milkproduction, and soil erosion control andsoil fertility for crop production. However,only one of them, fodder, can be sold, explainingthe relatively low emphasis givento marketing and product transformation inthe case studies. Nevertheless, the uptakeof the new practices depends on the availabilityof markets for the final products.As mentioned above, efforts are needed inall three cases to promote the marketing ofseed and seedlings. Moreover, there are alsooptions for increasing the marketing of fodderfrom shrubs, which could be promotedas a cash crop for farmers who do not ownlivestock. In Kenya, there is also great potentialfor selling leaf meal as a protein sourceto millers producing dairy concentrates,who currently import protein in the form offish meal, soybeans and cottonseed cake.For thousands of low-income farmers in thePhilippines, the NVS system has evolvedas a means to graduate from subsistencemaize farming to cash cropping. Claveriais well connected by road to the large portcity of Cagayan de Oro, opening up potentialmarkets for a range of agroforestryproducts. NVS adopters in Claveria arenow observed to be growing a wide rangeof timber and fruit trees and are increasinglyexpressing interest in backyard livestockenterprises to diversify and stabilize theirincomes. Market access has been criticalfor the intensification and diversification ofthe NVS system.Policy optionsPolicy affects scaling up operations in severaldifferent ways: policy constraints maylimit adoption of new practices, policyincentives help promote adoption, andpolicy makers themselves may be engagedto promote or even finance scaling upactivities – a relatively untapped resource(Raussen et al. 2001).In Zambia, local leaders played importantroles in promoting improved fallows intwo ways. Firstly they helped sensitize andmobilize their constituents to plant improvedfallows. Secondly, they passed, andin some cases, promoted the enforcementof bylaws to remove two of the main constraintsto agroforestry adoption: the settingof uncontrolled fires and free grazing oflivestock (Ajayi et al. 2002).The Landcare movement has benefitedfrom and, in turn, reinforced the Philippinegovernment policy of decentralizationand devolution of responsibilities to localgovernment. The local government units(LGUs) are now seen as important partnersin local natural resource managementinitiatives, providing policy support forinstitutionalizing Landcare and conservationfarming practices, training staff, andfinancing Landcare activities (Catacutanand Duque 2002; Catacutan et al. 2001).Knowledge, information sharing andlearning from successes and failuresThe dissemination of knowledge andinformation about scaling up among stakeholdersis necessary for making effectivedecisions. Monitoring and evaluation systems,both formal and informal, ensure thegeneration of such information at a rangeof different scales and from the perspectivesof different stakeholders (Cooper andDenning 2000).In Kenya and Zambia, monitoring andevaluation have been conducted in severaldifferent ways. Village workshops enabledresearchers to gain an up-front understandingof farmers’ assessments and expectationsof the technologies they are using. Inboth Zambia and Kenya, Centre staff andpartners engage in collaborative monitoringand evaluation. These studies includeeconomic analyses, impact assessmentsand assessing factors affecting adoption.The system in both countries is not withoutproblems, not all organizations involved inscaling up participate and some are unableto collect even the minimum data required.But the collaborative mechanism givespartners a greater sense of ownership andbuy-in as well as access to more informationand feedback (Nanok 2003).Knowledge sharing and learning are prioritiesat all three sites. As highlightedearlier, Landcare groups have proved to bean effective vehicle for knowledge sharingin areas of conservation farming andlivelihood improvement. This institutional