Registration
Please send an email to Petra van Boetzelaer
(petra.vanboetzelaer@wur.nl).
Note: Participation is free of charge but please register as soon as possible
Background
While human population in sub-Saharan Africa grows by 3% a year, yields of the major food crops only grow at only 1% a year. With decreasing areas of land available for cultivation and severe rates of soil fertility decline in cultivated lands, addressing the problem of poor soil fertility is imperative to achieve food security and improve rural livelihoods. During the Fertiliser Summit of 2006 in Abuja, Nigeria, African leaders agreed that “development will not be achieved without fertilisers” (Le Courrier International on April 14, 2006) and proposed that mineral fertilisers should be promoted to achieve average use intensities of 50 kg ha-1 (against the less than 7 kg ha-1 in use today). However, smallholder farms in sub-Saharan Africa are highly diverse and heterogeneous, and operate in complex and dynamic socio-ecological environments. Smallholder farmers face tradeoffs when making decisions on the allocation of their limited resources, constrained by their agroecological and market opportunities and in line with their longer-term livelihood goals. On top of this, climate change, priority for bio fuels, population growth and increasing prices on the world market for food commodities are currently hot issues and constitute stress factors for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa to which they have to adapt.
Through our model-aided farming systems analysis in AfricaNUANCES we are now better equipped to distinguish among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of their vulnerability and adaption capacity to these stress factors. Also, we are able to evaluate more tailor-made options and directions of change for farmers to improve their livelihoods taking into account the stress factors, and assess the potential of ‘green-revolution’ type of technologies, their accessibility and their adoption by farmers in this changing world. The main question remains as to how results of these model-based farming systems analyses can reach rural communities. And, how do we achieve a proper out-scaling of new results/ insights?
Programme
10.00 Reception and coffee
10.30 Opening Prof. Ken Giller
Plant Production Systems, Wageningen University
10.45 Targeting resources within diverse, heterogeneous and dynamic farming systems of East Africa - AfricaNUANCES in a nutshell Pablo Tittonell
Plant Production Systems, Wageningen University
11.00 Soil fertility research in the context of the African green revolution – potential role of model-aided systems analysis Dr. Bernard Vanlauwe
TSBF-CIAT, Nairobi, Kenya
11.30 Conservation agriculture: moving from plot-scale benefits to farm-scale constraints Dr. Marc Corbeels
CIRAD/ TSBF-CIAT Zimbabwe
12.00 Lunch break
13.00 Global change and impacts in Southern Africa Prof. Mary Scholes Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, South Africa
13.30 Vulnerability and poverty across farming systems in Africa – implementation in scenario analysis using models Dr. Phil Thornton
University of Edinburgh, UK
14.00 Coffee break
14.15 Adapting to change: Innovation and the role of learning centres in Southern Africa Dr. Paul Mapfumo
University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe
14.45 Next steps: Application of the NUANCES framework in the analysis of vulnerability/adaptation of farming systems and scaling-out Prof. Ken Giller
Plant Production Systems, Wageningen University
15.15 General discussion
16.00 Closure