Sodic Lands Reclamation Project: Lessons for Africa

Introduction

African agriculture is in decline and faces several challenges today. In this context, a team from East Africa visited the World Bank supported Sodic Lands Reclamation Project in India – a farmer driven project that used indigenous knowledge to increase agricultural production and incomes. The major constraints were sodic soils, a result of inappropriate irrigation management and brown plant hoppers which often destroyed up to 50% of  crop yields. By combining local and modern knowledge, farmers applied gypsum, build contour bunds, leached the soil, started multi-cropping and green manuring to reclaim the land. They controlled brown plant hoppers with neem extract, rice husk and green manure. After five years, yields and incomes had risen by 60 percent. The farmers created a farmers field school to incorporate these practices into agricultural extension delivery services and provide training to empower women through self help groups. In this debriefing, the East African delegation reflects on how IK not only contributed to technical and economic gains, but also helped create a farmer owned training institution with tremendous credibility and outreach. Can the lessons learnt be applied to Africa?

The video can be viewed in its entirety or via shorter clips sorted along the main themes (blue underlined) which emerged during the debriefing.  This debriefing was organized by the Knowledge and Learning Group as part of AFTQK’s knowledge sharing and learning services. Dr. Z.M.Nyiira, Director Uganda National Council for Science and Technology and the Bank team conducted the debriefing on October 1st, 2002.

Sodic Lands Debriefing (1:07:05 min)

1. Setting the agenda (1:16 min)

2. Kenyan Discussion (13:09 min)
   1. Documentation – this is a step further than what we have done (38 sec)
   2. Extent of womens empowerment – capacity building for women (34 sec)
   3. Dry land – more prevalent in Kenya; how can it be made productive (36 sec)
   4. Key lessons learned from farmers field school visit: (10:20 min)

                                                               i.      Micro planning – communities actively involved, gender balance (59 sec)

                                                             ii.      Joint land ownership – helped empower the women (16 sec)

                                                            iii.      Community participation – using IK for self development, blending traditional with scientific (1:43 min)

                                                            iv.      Grassroots participation – ‘when people own the project they are really committed’ (1:59 min)

                                                              v.      Strategies used to teach farmers – farmer to farmer training (48 sec)

                                                            vi.      Involvement of the community leaders – helped realize community needs and aspirations (49 sec)

                                                           vii.      Integration of activities – e.g. health with agriculture (37 sec)

                                                         viii.      Democratization of activities – at the community level (37 sec) 

                                                           ix.      Working relationships had transparency – all partners worked together (1:11 min)

                                                             x.      Motivation factors were built in – through right incentive mechanisms (36 sec)

3. Ethiopian Discussion  (28:01 min)
   1. Seen a number of options – ownerships, especially by women groups, agents of social change  (2:32 min)
   2. Sustainability – of land reclamation based on farmers indigenous efforts (31 sec)
   3. Integrated pest management – using IK that is environmentally friendly and cost effective (1:13 min)
   4. Land reclamation is expensive… – and is difficult to sustain; need to address the root causes and not just the symptoms (1:49 sec)
   5. Addressing the root causes – there should be some intervention upstream (41 sec)
   6. Need more information from projects  – on the cost effectiveness (2:13 min)
   7. Focus on IK aspects – sustainability based on application of IK (56 sec)
   8. Micro financing – will help in the sustainability of the project (34 sec)
   9. Revitalizing communities – by making resources productive again and ensuring food security (1:48 min)
   10. Need to learn the principle – and extrapolate to our countries (1:48 min)
   11. The IK component – can gypsum be replaced with other indigenous materials? Applying lessons from Ethiopia (2:10 min)

4. Ugandan Discussion (15:22 min)
   1. Participatory community planning – ‘seeing that a community can own something together; women speak out’ (1:37 min)
   2. Gains for the whole community – holistic and integrated model for development (50 sec)
   3. Transparency and accountability – entire community involved (39 sec)
   4. MIS system – important to document the process; not just quantitatively but also qualitatively (51 sec)
   5. ’…don’t know what other projects are doing…’ – in Uganda; we have never had an exchange within our own countries; learnt a lot from India (1:00 min)
   6. Validation of IK – through testing and application (38 sec)
   7. Empowering women – need to have them involved right from the outset (2:02 min)
   8. Food security – fix and maintain current wastelands using indigenous and scientific knowledge (1:11 min)
   9. Seeing results – a challenge for us in our own countries (48 sec)

5. Learning from each other and the role for the Bank (1:35 min)
6. Current projects in Ethiopia  (55 sec)
7. Summary / Closing Remarks (4:58 min)