Audioslide presentation on the latest publication on Engaruka

The paper published recently on Agricultural Water Management titled "Managing variability and scarcity.  Ananalysis of Engaruka: a Maasai smallholder irrigation farming community" is presented in the audioslide format here. Check it out if you want a quick summary of what the paper is all about!  

Field Diary, Issue 1, July 2015
Geert W van der Plas, Annemiek Pas Schrijver and Colin Courtney Mustaphi (eds)

The first issue of the Field Diary is out. The Field Diary is a compilation of stories from PhD students working all over the world sharing their field experiences.

Welcome to the first edition of Field Diary!
Many of us are out in the field and busy doing our research. Each of us lives through different experiences while we’re out there, trekking across the African landscape and elsewhere in the world. There are good times and difficult times, and sometimes we can feel a little disconnected from the rest of the world. That is why we introduce the field diary. We can all share our experiences from the field, the joys, the discoveries, but also the frustrations. And by writing and reading these stories we can share these feelings, and be a little bit more connected again.
We will try to release a field diary at least twice a year, and give each edition a different flavor by giving it a theme that relates to field work. The field diary is an initiative of the REAL project, and everyone is welcome to contribute.
From the editorial team, we hope that you enjoy these stories from the field. We wish you an amazing time in the field and don’t forget to look up from your work once in a while and realize how lucky we are to be able to do this amazing work!

The editorial team

Click on Field Diary if you want to access the full version.

First publication on contemporary smallholder irrigation farming in Engaruka, Tanzania is now available!

The article titled "Managing variability and scarcity. An analysis of Engaruka: A Maasai smallholder irrigation farming community" is now available at Agricultural Water Management online platform. 

This article examines the common-pool regime of Engaruka, a smallholder irrigation farming community in northern Tanzania. Irrigation is a complex issue due to water asymmetry. Water use is regulated in Engaruka through boundary, allocation, input and penalty rules by a users’ association that controls and negotiates water allocation to avoid conflicts among headenders and tailenders. As different crops – maize and beans, bananas and vegetables – are cultivated, different watering schemes are applied depending on the water requirements of every single crop. Farmers benefit from different irrigation schedules and from different soil characteristics through having their plots both downstream and upstream. In fact, depending on water supply, cultivation is resourcefully extended and retracted. Engaruka is an ethnically homogeneous and interdependent community where headenders and tailenders are often the same people and are hence inhibited to carry out unilateral action. Drawing on common-pool resource literature, this study argues that in a context of population pressure alongside limited and fluctuating water availability, non-equilibrium behavior, consisting in negotiating water rights and modifying irrigation area continuously through demand management, is crucial for the satisfaction of basic and productive needs and for the avoidance of water conflicts.

This link gives access for free to the fulltext until August 24th. 

Archaeobotany: a crucial key to African agrarian history

Participants at the 8th International Workshop on Africa Archaeobotany in Modena June 22rd to 25th 2015

The history of farming in pre-colonial Africa is - as yet - very poorly synthesised. As Daryl Stump has highlighted this means that all kinds of arguments for future rural development can claim to have a basis in history. Either precolonial farming was ancient and backward or it was longlived and sustainable.... Read Daryls article on this from this LINK.

This is common. When the history is little researched, little known and little popularised historical arguments can be used in many ways without critical reflection. It is now high time for African agricultural history to be better researched, better syntesised and better disseminated. When it comes to basic research to uncover the history of crops and farming methods archaeobotany does really have an important role to play. I was lucky to have a presentation of my mapping project accepted at the 8th International Workshop on African Archaeobotany in Modena last week, though I did not have any new archaeobotanical research to present.  I  was impressed by the wealth of knowledge presented there. Yes, many of the presentations were very empirical and localised. This and that crop was cultivated here and at that time. But this meticulous work of identifying crops of the past from carbonised seeds, from phytoliths, from pollen and from new methods like isotope analysis, forms the absolutely necessary basis for reconstructing agrarian history in times and places where no written history exists. We were also shown how such detailed studies can be synthesised as in Chris Stevens presentation of the fascinating history of the domestication of Sorghum - one of Africas contribution to world crops. I have always admired the work of the group in Frankfurt under Katarina Neumann and they also showed at the conference the capacity to be detailed and exact and at the same time clearly relate to the research frontier in presentations by Barbara Eichhorn (millet before vegeculture in the rainforest!), Alexa Höhn and Katharina Neumann.

Participatory action research to mitigate conflict over forest use and management in Ethiopia

A recently published paper entitled ‘Do Interventions from Participatory Action Research Improve Livelihood and Reduce Conflicts Over Forest Resources? A Case Study from South Central Ethiopia’ has reported lessons and experiences from a four years participatory action research conducted to mitigate conflict over forest use and management.

Abstract

Participatory action research was conducted in south central Ethiopia to understand in what ways conflict over forest use and management between the former Arsi Forest and Wildlife Enterprise and the surrounding communities could be managed. Through interviews, focus group discussions, negotiations and series of stakeholder meetings existing scenarios of conflict over forest use and management were assessed, and alternatives interventions were identified and implemented based on the principle of maximizing the goals of local development and forest conservation. A cooperative with three major alternative livelihood activities—cash-credit provision, and poultry and sheep production—was established. It was found that working with communities in collaboration can reduce conflicts over forest management and support local livelihoods. The intervention had reduced ‘illegal’ use of forest resource for income generation and domestic use while within a year the alternative livelihood activities had generated a modest income to 68 % of the individuals involved. The study also demonstrated that working with multiple stakeholders is a challenging and slow process that requires understanding the complex local socioeconomic structure and dynamics. It is concluded that participatory approaches are a better way of bringing about a change in a society where conflicts arise due to resources limitation, and could be avoided by sharing benefits and responsibilities.

Full text available at Small-scale Forestry journal, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11842-015-9297-7

How ancient canals can solve current water scarcity issues

I take the opportunity to share this short reportage on Al Jazeera about the ancient water canals in the outskirts of Lima, Peru. Once run-down waterways have been restored and are now adding to water security in a sprawling city faced with reduced precipitations and changing weather patterns.

While the reporting done by Al Jazeera might tend to romanticize the importance of so called traditional technologies in responding to current challenges, there is an important message in this story. Scientific predictions about climatic changes and scientific methods, coupled with local knowledge and management and indigenous materials and techniques can be instrumental in improving the efficiency and functionment of existing, but often abandoned, historic water and field systems.

A popular report of a research project on “Ecosystem services and biodiversity in tropical agricultural landscapes”

A popular report of a research project in ecology and human geography entitled Nature, people and agriculture in southwestern Ethiopia: the interaction between small scale agriculture and the diversity of organisms in mosaic landscapes (ISBN: 978-91-7540-172-0) was published.

This booklet is about ecosystem services and biodiversity in tropical agricultural landscapes (See a conceptual model of the project below). It is the final report written in a popular way from the research project Examining mismatches between management and the supply of ecosystem services in Ethiopian agroecosystems across scales in space and time. The project was financed by the Swedish government through SIDA and Formas to Prof. Kristoffer Hylander at Stockholm University in collaboration with Prof. Sileshi Nemomissa and other staff from Sweden and Ethiopia. Most work of this project has been conducted as PhD-projects.


A conceptual figure illustrating the main focus of the project. (A) The biodiversity of the landscape can act on crops by enhancing and decreasing yields. (B,C) Farmers can learn about this and (D) decide on management actions. (E, F) All of this is happening in the context of a landscape and (G) external factors could also affect the system.

The booklet was written by project leaders and members. In January 2015, the booklet was distributed to different stakeholders mostly in Southwestern Ethiopia, where the research project was conducted for over four years. The booklet was also discussed at a public lecture and meetings with staff at district adminstration and agricultural offices. The booklet was written in three languages: English, Afaan Oromo and Amharic.