Crop water technology and markets:  Increased food security and income in the Limpopo Basin through integrated crop, water and soil fertility options and public-private partnership

Project Duration: 

2005-2008

Geographical Focus: 

Limpopo Basin

Project Description / Background

The biggest challenges facing smallholder farming communities in the Limpopo Basin of southern Africa are food insecurity, poverty and ill-health. Many parts of the basin are routinely food-deficient and rely on food aid. In the past two seasons there have been confirmed reports of starvation deaths in basin areas in both Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The basin’s local economies depend on rainfed agricultural systems characterized by low productivity, vulnerability to frequent drought (and sometimes devastating floods), poor adoption of improved technologies, diminishing farm labor due to out-migration and HIV/AIDS, exacerbated by poorly developed input and output markets. 

This project recognizes that subsistence agriculture alone will neither meet future food needs nor address the growing poverty problem in these drought-stricken environments. There is need to strengthen linkages through a systems approach that integrates improved water and soil management with varietal improvement, markets and other institutional arrangements which facilitate farmer investment in improved production practices.

The potential results, products and services to farming communities of the Limpopo basin from this project will include:

• Farmer access to seed of improved cereal and legume varieties that mature early and thus escape terminal drought
• The judicious use of mineral fertilizers, in combinations with organic sources of plant nutrients, appropriate soil/water conservation measures and improved crop varieties
• New institutional arrangements that link the public and private sector with farmers’ uptake of technologies; this will also improve the sustainability of project outputs, and prevent agricultural resource degradation from nutrient mining and the exploitation of fragile lands
• Assessment of coping strategies of poor and HIV/AIDS-affected households, and the distributive impacts of agricultural commercialization on the livelihoods of these households, in order to better target technologies that mitigate effects of the pandemic.

Goal 

The project goal is to improve food security, incomes and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in the Limpopo Basin. To achieve this goal, the project will build on past and current collaborative research by national programs and the CGIAR on crop-water productivity in drought-prone areas, innovative approaches to participatory technology development and extension, and new institutional arrangements that link the public and private sector with the smallholder farmer in appropriate market chains.

Specific Objectives

Expected Project Outputs

• Agro-ecological zonations, crop water productivity in the basin, socio-economic and institutional characterization of target population established. Constraints to farm productivity in the cereal-based smallholder rainfed sector identified
• Improved drought-tolerant crops and varieties integrated with improved soil, water and crop management technologies appropriate to smallholder agriculture, verified and promoted
• Alternative farmer-market linkage models that provides incentives to adopt improved crop, soil and water management options evaluated, and promoted in two countries
• Training and information needs of technical collaborators and farming communities identified and addressed
• Impact assessment of drought-tolerant crops, new high-value crops, and soil, water and crop productivity enhancing technologies; policy recommendations developed
• Impact monitoring scheme and project management established

Partners 

• ICRISAT, Matopos Research Station
• CIMMYT Southern Africa Regional Office
• International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Pretoria
• CIAT, Colombia
• Institute Nacionale Investigacio Agricultura (INIA) Maputo, Mozambique
• Limpopo Province Agricultural Strategic Team (LIMPAST) South Africa
• Department of Agriculture Limpopo Province, South Africa
• University of Pretoria South Africa
• Agricultural Research Council  Harare, Zimbabwe
• Agricultural Research and Extension (AREX)  Harare, Zimbabwe

Donors

Challenge Program on Water for Food