AGRA commits to improve agriculture

… as it launches book on investing in soil

As part of its efforts to contribute to a vibrant agricultural system in Africa, the Soil Health Programme of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has launched a book titled Investing in Soil. The book demonstrates AGRA's commitment to improving soil health by moving beyond demonstrations to offering practical solutions and successes that can be scaled up.

Dr Bashir Jama, Director of AGRA's Soil Health Programme, in a press release, stated that the book documents lessons generated by AGRA and its grantees in implementing innovative projects over the last five years as well as offering many other lessons for development agencies, governments, policymakers, researchers and specialists working to improve agriculture in Africa.

Dr Jama noted that low and declining soil fertility in Africa accounted for the continent's low agricultural productivity, hunger and poverty among millions of rural poor populations, particularly smallholder farmers.

Despite the fact that numerous efforts and resources have been committed to address soil infertility, lack of integrated and innovative approaches makes interventions bear very little fruits. Thus, the need to consider other options becomes imperative in order to promote profitable and sustainable agriculture.

AGRA's Soil Health Programme was launched in 2008 to create physical and financial access to soil nutrients and fertilizers for about 4.1 million household farmers by 2014 in an efficient, equitable and sustainable manner. The programme also aims to improve these farmers' access to appropriate knowledge, agronomical practices and technology packages on integrated soil fertility management, and influence policy environments for investment in agriculture.

Five years of the programme's response to this agenda through the application of a set of approaches and technologies, including going beyond demonstrations, improving farm input quality and availability for smallholder farmers, and training and education of scientists and agronomists has demonstrated, by practical cases and lessons documented across different projects, that it is important and possible to create innovative solutions that motivate farmers to adopt new technologies which will help them deal with the systemic challenges that confront them.

“Technically, there is agreement among the experts in soils and agronomy that the best approach is one that integrates organic and inorganic sources of nutrients – so-called integrated soil fertility management technologies. The challenge, though, has been how to get farmers to adopt it on a wide scale. And it is this daunting task that AGRA's Soil Health Programme undertook in 2008,” said Dr Jama.

One great contribution of the programme, so far, has been its huge investments in strengthening national capacity for research and innovation, through the training of over 170 soil scientists and agronomists in 11 universities across 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa to promote a sustainable agricultural environment, through innovative technologies, including resilience of the agriculture production system to climate change and variability within and across seasons.

“By going 'beyond demonstrations,' AGRA has championed the uptake of integrated soil fertility management by thousands of farmers in many countries.”

“Investing in Soil is an example of how a programme that is informed by research has benefited the livelihoods of millions of poor and disadvantaged farmers, including women and young people. It has done this, in part, through training and capacity building of farmers and agro-service providers, and by engaging non-traditional private-sector players and policymakers.”