Overview 

Agriculture in Africa has been severely impacted by soil and ecosystems degradation, driven by chronically low soil fertility compounded by soil nutrient mining, resulting in low productivity and food insecurity.  African agricultural development requires ‘a healthy soil producing a healthy crop’. At the same time, with growing imperatives to address climate change, African agriculture is no exception to pursue soil fertility management solutions contributing to regenerative development pathways.

 Regenerative Agriculture (RA) is an approach which is currently attracting global attention with its focus  to restore soil health and reduce soil degradation. RA proposes the implementation of practices that increase organic matters into the soil to promote microbial activity, by reducing mechanical soil disturbance, using cover crops and encouraging farm biodiversity.It assumes that If the biological, physical, and chemical improvement of the soil is promoted through this process, and good crop growth environment is ensured, the use of chemical fertilizers and argo-chemicals, whose prices have been recently increasing, could be reduced thus helping to ensure increased biodiversity and soil environmental health. It is further expected that improved cultivation methods such as reduced tillage and mulching will maintain soil organic matter, especially when combined with afforestation and other practices that contribute to carbon sequestration, reduced carbon emissions, and thus climate change mitigation. In turn, in African smallholder contexts, especially where soil is inherently infertile and soil nutrient mining is perversive, Sustainable Agricultural Intensification (SAI) has been long advocated and promoted. SAI priotizes improving productivity through integrated soil fertility management which may necessiate the judicious use  of organic as well as inorganic fertilizers along with some tilling practices depending on local edapho-climatic and socioeconomic conditions. 

Realizing the vision of RA in African smallholder contexts requires its compatibitility with SAI practices at farmers’ farm scale to achieve both improved soil health and food security. The key is how to reach the consensus on ‘truly regenerative management of a healthy soil’ which can be practically adopted by African smallholder farmers – either edaphological management of soil by regularly replenishing with essential nutrients for crop growth, or universal application of reduced inorganic fertilizers and reduced tillage. 

This event aims at offering a forum for research and development communities to exchange their experiences and insights on how to define what would mean ‘Regenerative Agriculture’ for improved soil health in different spatial/temporal scales and which technology portfolio and extension approaches would suit to African smallholder contexts to simultaneously realize the visions of RA in compatible with practices of SAI.

Update

• 2022-08-25
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