[ 2012-06-24 ]

Dryland expert advocates EvenGreen Agriculture for smallholder farmers
Rio de Janeiro, June 22, GNA – Dr Dennis Garrity,
Dryland Ambassador of the United Nations
Convention to Combat Desertification has advocated
an EverGreen Agriculture for smallholder farmers
to safeguard land degradation, food security and
climate change.

EverGreen Agriculture is a form of more intensive
farming that integrates trees with annual crops to
sustain a green cover on the land throughout the
year.

Dr Garrity told the Ghana News Agency in Rio de
Janeiro at the weekend that: “it will also
increase family food production and cash income.

EverGreen Agriculture is an emerging affordable
and accessible science-based solution to
regenerate the land on small scale farms.

He said some of the benefits of the principle
included enhanced carbon storage both above-ground
and belowground, greater quantities of organic
matter in soil surface residues and greater direct
production of food, fodder, fuel, fiber.

“EvenGreen Agriculture allows us to glimpse a
future of more environmentally sound farming where
much of our annual food crop production occurs
under a full canopy of trees,” he said.

Dr Garrity noted that the principle have already
been widely applied in Africa, where complexity
was a common feature of the agricultural system.

“Millions of women and men farmers in Zambia,
Malawi, Niger and Burkina Faso are already
practicing the technology,” he added.

He explained that Africa was critically threatened
by food security, land degradation and climate
change and smallholder farmers needed
science-based solutions to increase the efficiency
of their crop production.

The Dryland Ambassador said the technology
broadens the principle of crop rotation to
encompass the role of fertilizer tress and other
cash crop tress to provide the needed biological
and income diversity in farming system.

He announced that an EvenGreen Agriculture network
was evolving to support farmers with information,
capacity building and knowledge they needed to
make effective implementation.

From Morkporkpor Anku, GNA Special Correspondent,
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Source - GNA

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