Trees and CA in Arid Areas · Trees & CA in Zambia – MICCA Webinar . Today’s topics 1. Trees on...

TREES AND CONSERVATION

AGRICULTURE IN ARID AREAS ZAMBIA CASE STUDY

MICCA Learning Event – 13 September 2012

Samuel Bell Doctoral Candidate, Dyson School at Cornell University

Director, Shared Value Africa Ltd.

Introduction

• Working in Zambia since 2006

• Doctoral research on sustainable development and synergies

between agriculture and environment

• Project development and carbon finance

• Project Partners include:

• Dunavant Zambia Ltd (cotton company)

• Community Markets for Conservation “COMACO”

• USAID/Profit and Musika International Development

• Research Partners include:

• Innovations for Poverty Action

• Tufts University, Harvard, UCSB

• World Vision / Land O’ Lakes Development

Trees & CA in Zambia – MICCA Webinar

Today’s topics

1. Trees on Farms Programme – Nthaka Yamoyo

• Agriculture in Zambia

• Conservation agriculture (CA) and actors in Zambia

• Adding trees to CA (Faidherbia and Gliricidia) and benefits

• Farmer Economics of trees and conservation agriculture

• Monitoring technology and preliminary data/findings

2. Trees, Conservation Agriculture and Carbon Markets

• Soil carbon accounting methodologies

• Methodologies: limitations for trees with CA

• Project economics

3. Current Research on Adoption- randomized controlled trial

• Objectives and design

• Preliminary Results


Smallholder Agriculture in Zambia

• Degraded soils and low input - low yield (1 - 2 t/ha maize) rain-fed

small subsistence farming systems using ploughing, ridging and

ridge-splitting

• Focus regions average 700-1000mm rainfall, short growing season

• 29% of land is agriculture,

but only 7% arable (FAO)

• 67% of maize producers (1m+ hhs)

farm 1.1ha and no surplus yield

• Rural households increased by 45%

2000-2010

• Agriculture key driver of

very high deforestation rate

• How to improve these stats?

Trees & CA in Zambia – MICCA Webinar 1. Trees on Farms Programme

Agroecological Regions of Zambia

Conservation Agriculture in Zambia

• Key Zambian organizations promoting Conservation Agriculture:

• Conservation Farming Unit (est.1996): primary focus tillage & good

agronomy – a leader in developing best practice conservation

agriculture in Zambia

• Community Markets for Conservation (est. 2003): focus on protecting

biodiversity through diversified livelihoods, markets, and CA

• Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, DRZ

• Common Challenges:

• Barriers to adoption

• Weak marketing of immediate benefits (resulting from good agronomy)

• Perceived longer time horizon of investment

• Resource constrained (land and labor)

• Farmer unable to benefit from positive externalities (incentives needed)

• Policy environment distorts incentives, crowds out investment

• Farmer input support programme, Food Reserve Agency

1. Trees on Farms Programme Trees & CA in Zambia – MICCA Webinar

Trees on Farms Programme - Zambia

Features Trees on Farms Programme

Programme objectives • Increasing agricultural productivity

• Increasing climate resilience

• Climate change mitigation (emission reductions)

Farming systems • Small-scale, subsistence and outgrower agriculture

• Mixed cropping systems

Key activities • Tree planting to enhance conservation agriculture

• Focus on nitrogen fixing species Faidherbia albida

and Gliricidia sepium

Project developer Shared Value Africa Ltd

Aggregation 7,000 farmer households by end of 2012, scaling to

80,000 in 2015. Lead farmer extension structure

Scale-up partners Dunavant Zambia Ltd, Musika International

Development Zambia, others

1. Trees on Farms Programme Trees & CA in Zambia – MICCA Webinar

Enhancing conservation agriculture with

intercropped legume trees • Conservation agriculture improves SOC by impacting 3

major factors influencing it: 1. Increased quantities of organic materials returned to soils (no burning

and biomass from cover crops)

2. Preservation of soil aggregates: minimum or no tillage, eg permanent

planting basins, magoye ripper, disturbs

Adding trees to the mix (legumes!)

• Sequencing: Gliricidia (short term) and Faidherbia (long term

• Faidherbia is reverse phenology, and very well suited to

interplanting

• No competition with crops in growing season

• Active in dry season; pods for livestock (up to 1000kg/tree) and flowers

for honey in time of scarcity (Barnes, 2003)

• Nutrient cycling from deep soil, high biomass production

• Widespread evidence of yield increases; up to 240-400% (CFU)

• Gliricidia is fast growing legume, can be coppiced

• Added biomass to soils, nitrogen fixing,

• Coppiced biomass for other purposes (energy needs, urban markets)

• Environmental benefits: Climate mitigation, soil health & fertility,

erosion protection, improve soil structure water infiltration etc

• Co-benefits - food security, resilience to weather shocks


Farmer Economics

Get the priorities right:

Evidence on CA in Zambia suggests yields of 5 t/ha maize is feasible (CFU, 2011).


Farmer Economics

Trees & CA in Zambia – MICCA Webinar 2. Trees, CA & Carbon Markets

Source: World Bank

Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project:

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) for a

Learning laboratory • Real time data using mobile-phone based surveys

• Integrated GPS allows for plot geo-referencing

• Cost effective &

user-friendly


M&E for a learning laboratory • Adaptive management key in addressing challenges

• Data arriving real-time, reducing lead-time to include results in

planning

• Survey currently underway, some preliminary results

• ~ 50% of farmers who joined training sessions planted trees

• Some evidence of adoption by those most to benefit:


26

40

63

14

26

33

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Clay Loam Sand

Average Tree Planting & Survival by Soil Type

Planted Faidherbia

Surviving Faidherbia

13% 12%

5%

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

14%

Good Normal Poor

Crop Residue Burning by Soil Quality (self reported)

Burned

Source: Trees on Farms

M&E for a learning laboratory • How to use this information?

• Refocus training

• Use data analysis to evaluate…

• Causal impact on outcomes?


16%

31%

24%

5%

24%

Biggest Challenges in Tree Planting

Building fire breaks

Managing nursery

Other

preparing field and transplanting seedlings

watering during dry season

Source: Trees on Farms data

Consider alternative models

- Centralized nurseries?

Technology adoption spillovers

- A market for seedlings?

Source: Lewis et al, 2011, PNAS

Trees, CA and Carbon Markets Soil Carbon Accounting Methodologies and Standards

•Increasing soil carbon through conservation agriculture

• applicable only under voluntary markets (eg Verified Carbon Standard),

not Clean Development Mechanism

• Two accounting options

• Measurement – eg “Soil Carbon” methodology (under review)

• activity-based modeling – eg Adoption of Sustainable Land Management

Practices (SALM) (approved)

•Soil carbon meth is broad in scope

• Allows estimates to 90cm depth

•SALM is more focused on CA practices

• Only 30cm max modeled depth.

•Each allow for the inclusion of trees.


Limitations of methodologies • Methodologies if trees are added to conservation agriculture:

• CDM (AR-AMS0004) allows a default 0.5tC/ha/yr (1.83 tCO2/ha/yr) over

20 years.

• SALM applies AR-AMS0001e for woody biomass and modeling for soil

carbon and nitrogen emissions from legumes

• Both approaches are reasonable measures of soil carbon

increments from conservation agriculture alone, but don’t capture

full potential of trees due to soil depth limitations.

• For example: Maize-Gliricidia (coppiced) led to 60-76 tC/ha in 7-

10yrs (Kaonga, 2009)

• Soil dynamics and greenhouse gas very complex – N02/CH4?

• Chronosequences, or extension of current soil models to include

lower soil profiles?


Project Economics • High cost of entry, substantial regulatory risks involved

• Aggregation is key

• Institutional setting &

Transaction costs

• Low cost/high quality

monitoring systems

• Donor or grant funding

at outset (public/private)

• Emphasize farmer benefits

and co-benefits

• carbon is a distraction

• Linkages with related

activities

• REDD+

• Household energy needs

(fuelwood cookstoves)


Project Economics Results of the agricultural mitigation potential screening: Focus on

smallholder mixed cropping systems & best coffee practices

Commodity Smallholder

Mixed cropping

systems

Maize Bio-fuels Coffee Tea Sugar

Area available in

million ha

3 1.6 Semi-arid: 0.9 0.15 0.15 0.14

GHG mitigation

activities

SALM: Agronomy

Nutrient mgmt

Water mgmt

Agroforestry

Set aside land

Residue

mgmt.

Jatropha/Crot

on

1) Fuel-switch

2) AR

1) Shade trees,

multiple

cropping

2) Mulching

3) Fertilizer use

efficiency

Inter-

cropping

no option

in Kenya

1) No/ burning of

residues

2) Mulching

systems

3) Fertilizer related

emissions

Existing

extension

service

0 0 0 + ++ +

Tech. GHG

mitigation

potential in t

CO2e/ha/y.

2 - 5 0.5 1) 1-12

2) 2.5-5.0

High

bandwidth

3 – 8 ----- 7.8 in 3 years

14 in 10 y.

20 in 20 y.

Economic

mitigation

potential

++ ? ? ++ 0 +


Source: World Bank

Project Economics • Based on preliminary data, Faidherbia 7.6 tCO2/ha per annum

averaged over 20yrs (a large tree)

• Including default 0.5tC/ha per annum soil carbon

• Growth in sigmoidal form –

annualizing returns dependent on

ERPA forward sales (unlikely)

• Very low initial revenue streams

• Paired with Gliricidia

• Fast growing

• Coppicing results in high root

turnover and soil carbon increase

• Climate mitigation and carbon

finance potential increases greatly

through a sequenced approach in Zambia

• BUT - Get the priorities right - primary concern farmer benefits

.


Yr 0 Yr 20

Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) Implemented within the Trees for Farms Programme partnering with

Dunavant (out-grower cotton company)

• ~ 1200 total participants in one district, planting 50 FA trees in ½ ha

•Fits into literature on Payments for Environmental Services, but

applicable to agricultural technology adoption challenges

Setting:

•Tree planting: long-term private benefits, with positive externalities

under-provision of tree planting

• Change prices (provide incentives or lower take-up costs) to increase

the provision of tree planting to socially efficient levels.

•Non-binding contracts and uncertain opportunity costs lead to:

• High take-up & low performance

• Increased transaction costs (project implementation costs increase)

Trees & CA in Zambia – MICCA Webinar 3. Trees; Research on Adoption

RCT

Objectives:

• How to structure contract design to improve programme performance?

Research design

• Systematic variation in direct incentives and cost sharing of inputs

• Attendance fee to address liquidity issues

• Randomization and controls

Design allows us to

• separate two factors in determining outcomes:

• Selection effect

• Effort effect

• and look for evidence of

• the option value of contract

• Information and liquidity constraints affecting adoption

• the effect of monitoring on outcomes


RCT – preliminary results Survival data not yet available, but we have transplanting data

• Take-up is decreasing in cost-sharing, and increasing in reward

• 2.2% decrease in probability of take-up for 1000ZMK (USD 0.2)

increase in input price.

• 0.4% increase in probability of take-up for 5000 ZMK (USD 1) increase

in reward

• Compliance (40 trees transplanted) increasing in reward

• 0.1% increase in probability of compliance for 1000 ZMK increase in

reward

• Impact of monitoring and support

• On average, weekly monitoring increases the number of trees planted

by 11, representing a 40% increase from 28

• Tentative conclusion? Cost sharing in order to provide greater

incentives not a good idea. Emphasize monitoring/support!


RCT – preliminary results

Potential for targeting?

Variability in transplanting (realized uncertainty in performance) as it

is seen by programme implementers:

• Only 20% of this variability is unknown to farmers (individual

uncertainty)

• Remaining 80% of the uncertainty the programme faces is the

result of the different types of farmers out there (related to ability,

constraints, opportunity costs, preferences and the constraints

under which they operate.

Targeting to enhance programme outcomes could be possible.


Review and conclusions

1. Trees on Farms Programme – Nthaka Yamoyo • Agriculture in Zambia

• CA practices and actors in Zambia

• Tree ‘technology’ (Faidherbia and Gliricidia) and benefits

• Monitoring technology and preliminary data/findings

2. Trees, CA and Carbon Markets • Market access

• Methodologies and challenges

• Economics and incentives

3. Current research on adoption- randomized controlled trial

• Objectives and design

• Preliminary Results


Thank you

References and links:

Conservation Farming Unit, Zambia: http://conservationagriculture.org/

Barnes, 2003. Faidherbia Albida: Monograph and Annotated Bibliography, Tropical Forestry Papers

no. 41. 267pp. Oxford Forestry Institute (OFI). Oxford, UK. ISBN:0 85704 156 4. ISSN:0141-9668 (an

http://www.dfid.gov.uk/r4d/Output/11837/Default.aspx (pdf available - an excellent resource)

Kaonga, Martin L., and Tim P. Bayliss-Smith. 2009. "Carbon pools in tree biomass and the soil in

improved fallows in eastern Zambia". Agroforestry Systems. 76 (1): 37-51.

Lewis D., Kabila M., Mukamba M., Bell S.D., Lee D.R., et al. 2011. "Community Markets for

Conservation (COMACO) links biodiversity conservation with sustainable improvements in livelihoods

and food production". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of

America. 108 (34): 13957-13962.

RCT Research Authors: Jack, K (Tufts); Oliva, P (UCSB); Walker, E (Harvard); Bell, S (Cornell).

Verified Carbon Standard: http://v-c-s.org/

http://conservationagriculture.org/http://www.dfid.gov.uk/r4d/Output/11837/Default.aspxhttp://www.dfid.gov.uk/r4d/Output/11837/Default.aspxhttp://v-c-s.org/http://v-c-s.org/http://v-c-s.org/http://v-c-s.org/http://v-c-s.org/

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