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

Chapter 8: Policies for improved land management in smallholder agriculture75the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya,Mozambique, Niger, Tanzania and Zambia.To see how this lack of clarity affects landmanagement, we can take the example ofagroforestry. Land and tree property rights,which affect agroforestry investment incentives,are influenced to some degree byministries of forestry, agriculture, lands,energy and water. In addition, in manycountries, there is insufficient distinctionbetween trees on farms and those in forests.Rules and laws are thus made to applyto all trees, and logging bans and protectedspecies regulations have unintended disincentivesfor farmers to plant and managethe trees on their farms. Agricultural extensionstaff are increasingly active in promotingagroforestry enterprises for farmers, buttree seed is still mainly in the domain offorest departments. At the same time, forestdepartments do not have enough staff to interactsufficiently with farmers. So developmentprogrammes continue to struggle tobuild sustainable agroforestry systems.Thus, the profile of land managementneeds to be raised, and new or existinginstitutions should become focal pointsor coordination units for land and soil.They would be responsible for assemblingdatabases on soils, monitoring changes inland resources and championing improvedland management practices to practitionersand policy units. There are many areas thatrequire attention; here we discuss in moredetail some policy reforms that could contributeto improved soil nutrient managementby smallholder farmers.Most countries’ policies on sources andmanagement of nutrients require attention.The starting point is generally fertilizer prices;in a country where markets and infrastructurefunction well, the ratio of input tooutput prices at the farm is sufficiently lowto attract high demand and use of fertilizer.However, in much of the developing worldthese conditions are not met. To encouragethe use of fertilizer, governments can try toalter the ratio (e.g. to entice farmers to cultivatehigher-value crops) or try to directlyinfluence prices (e.g. by subsidizing fertilizers).Fertilizer subsidization has been triedin the majority of countries, and remains inplace in a few. In countries such as Chinaand India fertilizer application rates arevery high – even greater than those in somedeveloped countries (FAO 2004), leadingto environmental and human healthconcerns. Several governments that discontinuedsubsidies are considering otheroptions to make fertilizers more attractiveto farmers. Some, such as the governmentsof Malawi and Zambia, have embarked onlimited subsidy programmes that are designedto be small starter kits or targeted tothe poor. In other countries, such as Kenya,fertilizer import taxes have been loweredand competition encouraged so that thereare now many large importers, which reducesprofit margins at the importer level(Jayne et al. 2003). None of these policiesby themselves will lead to desirable levelsof fertilizer use because there are still highpoverty rates coupled with poor rural creditavailability. Thus, the exploration of othernutrient sources becomes important.Organic sources of nutrients are gainingrecognition as not only feasible andappropriate, but necessary in certainsituations (Palm et al. 1997; Place et al.2003). Crop–livestock farms are commonthroughout the smallholder sectors ofdeveloping countries, but little of the manureproduced is used as an input to cropproduction because of lack of knowledge,lack of labour, use of manure for energy,and grazing systems that do not favour theconcentration of manure near the farms.More attention needs to be paid to manuremanagement and application as well asto the development of manure markets. Interms of plants, a number of herbaceousand woody legumes have been found toproduce large amounts of organic matterand certain elements such as nitrogen.Moreover, they are cheap to establish andtherefore attractive to the poor. However,policy makers continue to be unawareof these systems and thus have not madethem part of mainstream development programmes.In places, such as most of sub-Saharan Africa, where multiple constraintsto land investment exist at community andhousehold levels it is likely that over thenext 10–20 years the use of nutrients fromall sources – mineral fertilizers, animalmanure and green biomass – will becomeeven more important.Research and extension policySound agricultural and natural resourceresearch systems have emerged in Brazil,China, and India and in some of theother emerging nations of Asia and SouthAmerica, but remain weak elsewhere. Thereasons for weak systems are manifold andinclude under-appreciation and neglect bygovernment, insufficient external funding,poor and rigid management, and low staffmotivation. Another criticism of researchsystems, especially in Africa, is that theydo not integrate well with extension systems.But sometimes it is the extensionsystems themselves that come under intensivescrutiny (World Bank 2003). Disseminatingnew information or fosteringinnovative processes through technicalsupport are major challenges in rural areasof developing countries and are exacerbatedby poor communication infrastructure,multiplicity of languages and high levels ofilliteracy. The poorer countries have beenunable to sustain investment in extensionsystems leading to failures and calls forchange.