Consultative meeting on the implementation of "organic" push-pull based Conservation Agriculture technology in Zambia and Malawi in ICIPE Thomas Odhiambo Campus

Over 60% of Africans depend on some form of farming for their sustenance and livelihoods. Agriculture remains vital for the continent’s development and economic growth. So the recent stagnation or decline in farm productivity in in many parts of Africa is a major concern. For many communities and countries, this has translated into chronic food insecurity and growing poverty. Households and communities are increasingly becoming vulnerable, as their only resource – their land – can no longer sustain them. The major constraints that contribute to this situation include land degradation, pests’ infestations and notorious weeds invasion. These constraints are responsible for the Africa continent’s crop productivity being the lowest in the world (around 1t/ha compared with 2.4t/ha in South Asia, 3.2t/ha in Latin America and 4.5t/ha in East Asia and Pacific), and cause high levels of hunger, malnutrition and poverty as describe above.

In Sub Saharan Africa, Stem borers, parasitic Striga weeds and poor soil fertility are the three main dominant constraints to efficient production of cereals. The losses caused by stemborers can reach as high as 80% in some areas and an average of about 15-40% in others, and those attributed to striga weeds on the other hand range between 30 and 100% in most areas, and are often exacerbated by the low soil fertility prevalent in the region. The soils are highly degraded due to continuous cropping with limited or no external inputs to improve soil fertility. When the two pests occur together, farmers often lose their entire crop.

Notably, crop losses caused by stemborers and striga weeds amount to about US $ 7 billion annually, affecting mostly the resource poor subsistence farmers.

A conservation agricultural approach known as `Push-Pull' technology has been developed for integrated management of stemborers, striga weed and soil fertility. Push-Pull was developed by scientists at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), http://www.icipe.org/ , in Kenya and Rothamsted Research, in the United Kingdom, in collaboration with other national partners. The technology is appropriate and economical to the resource-poor smallholder farmers in the region as it is based on locally available plants, not expensive external inputs, and fits well with traditional mixed cropping systems in Africa. To date it has been adopted by over 122,650 smallholder farmers in East Africa where maize yields have increased from about 1 t/ha to 3.5 t/ha, achieved with minimal inputs.

The technology involves intercropping maize with a repellent plant, such as desmodium, and planting an attractive trap plant, such as Napier grass, as a border crop around this intercrop. Gravid stemborer females are repelled or deterred away from the target crop (push) by stimuli that mask host apparency while they are simultaneously attracted (pull) to the trap crop, leaving the target crop protected. Desmodium produces root exudates some of which stimulate the germination of striga seeds and others inhibit their growth after germination.

This combination provides a novel means of in situ reduction of the striga seed bank in the soil through efficient suicidal germination even in the presence of graminaceous host plants. Desmodium is a perennial cover crop (live mulch) which is able to exert its striga control effect even when the host crop is out of season, and together with Napier grass protect fragile soils from erosion. It also fixes nitrogen, conserves soil moisture, enhances arthropod abundance and diversity and improves soil organic matter, thereby enabling cereal cropping systems to be more resilient and adaptable to climate change while providing essential environmental services, and making farming systems more robust and sustainable (http://www.push-pull.net/3.shtml).

ICIPE and the African Conservation Tillage Network (ACT), both being recipients of European Union funding support for research and development of push-pull and CA respectively, are now desirous to upscale "organic" push-pull based CA with synergy of the ACT- CA network partners in Southern Africa.

Thus, this forms the basis of the consultative meeting held in ICIPE Thomas Odhiambo Campus on 30^th and 31^st March 2016 with an objective to deliberate on how to upscale this "organic" push-pull based CA and integrated it with livestock production. The focus was on the prospective partners’ mission and development focus, operational framework and scope in Zambia and Malawi and possible perspective on how push pull can be co-implemented. These prospective partners who participated in the meeting included representatives from Africa Conservation Tillage Network; Send a Cow; Lilongwe University of Agriculture & natural Resources (LUANAR), Bunda Campus; Total Landcare; Kasisi Agricultral Training Centre and University of Zambia.

The meeting deliberated and share more on implementation prospects, gaps, potential implementation models, processes and responsibility sharing in Malawi and Zambia. During the meeting participants were able to see on-station demonstrations fields and screening houses on the technology and later have on-farm demonstration of the technology at Mr. John Odiepo’s farm in Awendo Sub-County Migori County. The farmers is a host’s farm for ILPEP Shelf Help Group of farmers and farmer trainer. These were intended to exposure the participants on the practical application of the technology in farmers’ systems and interact with the experiences of the adopters and practicing farmers. According to the farmer, the technology has helped him a lot, he cited various progresses made due to the increased proceeds from the farm. He has managed to eliminate the striga and stemborer menace completely. This happened after the second season. His maize yield has tremendously increases from less than half tonne per hectare to 2.4 t/ha. The major challenge farmers are faced is the availability of seeds for desmodium and sometimes the effects of weather condition on silver leaf desmodium as well as availability of CA tools to enable them practice CA push-pull technology.

In concluding, the participants agreed to the formation of the partnership and appreciated the need to take up the technology in their projects or program implementation framework. ICIPE was tasks to continue seeking strategic partnerships with the partners presents through establishing memorandum of understanding and operational framework with the various partners. More importantly participants agreed that demonstrations trials to optimize the technology practices especially in integrating push-pull with CA and livestock production to adapt to the two countries is necessary before investing on scaling up. This could help in handling emerging challenges and develop country’s specific packages to avoid ‘swallow and don’t ask’ scenario that have led to poor adoption of different technologies by farmers. It was also agreed that a concrete and functional consortium to implement the project and develop new proposals for upscaling be established. ACT was requested to create space for the consortium in yet to be launch CA- E- Platform for members to share maximum information and experiences.

Read more on Push-pull technology on http://www.push-pull.net/ and on Conservation Agriculture on

Icipe http://www.icipe.org/ ; Africa Conservation Tillage Network ; Send a Cow https://www.sendacow.org/ ; Lilongwe University of Agriculture & natural Resources (LUANAR), Bunda Campus www.bunda.luanar.mw/ ; Total Landcare www.totallandcare.org/ ; Kasisi Agricultral Training Centre www.katczm.org/ and University of Zambia www.unza.zm