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Restoring and sustaining agricultural landscapes: <BR>Iinsights for ecosystem services and rural livelihoods (Communication session)

EUROSOIL2020CONT-1631

EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL OF ORPHAN CROPS TOWARDS RURAL LIVELIHOODS SUSTAINABILITY

Patrícia Vidigal^{* 1}, Maria Manuel Romeiras¹, Filipa Monteiro^{1, 2}

¹Linking Landscape, Environment, Agriculture and Food (LEAF), School of Agriculture of the University of Lisbon, ²Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (cE3c), Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

Content: Sustainability of rural livelihoods is mainly supported by agriculture outcomes. In order to sustain high yields, economic revenue, and increasing food supplies in a changing climate, farmers resort to practices that ultimately lead to ecosystem disruption. Thus, farmers have to employ strategies that allow sustainable yields in the future, without comprising their livelihoods. Such strategies will rely on the combination of sustainable intensification, ecological restoration and conservation strategies. This is particularly important in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where a wide diversity of farming systems are present and almost all countries have agriculture-based economies. Our analysis identified 15 farming systems within different agroecological zones, being the mixed-crop farming system prominent, offering the best changes for system resilience, biodiversity and ecosystem enrichment. To increase agroecosystem resilience, farmers can improve soil health, through intercropping with multi-purpose legumes, for natural nitrogen fixation within agroforestry and/or cereal cropping systems. To improve ecosystem management and biodiversity, one has to acknowledge the undeniable potential of orphan crops diversity that have the ability to withstand extreme environmental constrains. Although, the knowledge of the benefits offered by mixed farming systems is indigenous, the pressure for higher yields promoted intensive cultivation regimes in pursue of global market needs. For example, in West Africa (WA) cashew production represents 45% of the world production, making this crop of enormous economic importance, especially in Guinea-Bissau (GB) which accounts for 80% of smallholder’s income. The intensive monoculture regime of cashew production in GB, although productive in a short run, can in the long run negatively impact the agroecosystem. Thus, promoting cashew agroforestry system with indigenous legumes can offer a sustainable solution for the future of this small WA country regarding country revenue and smallholder livelihoods. On the other hand, in East Africa, the top crop production is maize produced mainly under monoculture regime. However, there is evidence of the intercropping potential with orphan legumes, such as Lablab purpureus (L.) Sweet, offering a synergistic benefit to maize yield and soil health. Similarly, the rotation of this orphan legume with other crops, such as tomato, has resulted in benefits to soil towards a sustainable tomato production. The world relies on only 30 species to meet global food demands, while there are 12,000 crop species classified as suitable for human consumption, but have been neglected by researchers and decision makers and have now being recognized as crops for the future, due to the potential that hold as food, nutritional content, and economic security. The African Orphan Crop Consortium (AOCC) has been established and assigned to work on 101 selected crops originated or established in Africa. In this talk, we will present i) the diversity of SSA farming systems, ii) the benefits of diversifying cropping systems to promote a sustainable production, iii) and prospect examples of intercropping/agroforestry options on farming systems, demonstrating  beneficial ecological relationships with significant impact at securing rural livelihoods sustainability.

Disclosure of Interest: None Declared

Keywords: agroecosystem, agroforestry, farming systems, intercropping, orphan crops, sustainable intensification