AGROFORESTRY

Agroforestry - cultivation of trees and agricultural crops together, can mean a more dignified life for small-scale farmers. A life without hunger and poverty. A life with a lot of possibilities. Vi Agroforestry works with agroforestry in East Africa; in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania - around Lake Victoria.

 

The majority of poor people live in rural areas, in East Africa as well as around the world. Agroforestry enables poor small-scale farmers to improve their situation. Vi Agroforestry provides knowledge to improve livelihood, knowledge that is sustained in the society and transferred to coming generations. That the families get a new knowledge base, higher and more secure living conditions and thereby improved self-respect, is an aim and an effect of the work of the Vi Agroforestry Programme.

The Programme mission is:

• To integrate agroforestry within the farming systems of small-scale farmers in the Lake Victoria basin, and make it the engine of economic growth and poverty alleviation.

 

Our goal is:

• To contribute towards improved livelihood of small-scale farmers in selected districts around Lake Victoria.

Our immediate objectives in selected areas should be reached on household level within five years; they are to substantially:
• Increase food and nutritional security
• Increase fuel-wood availability
• Increase income

 

In our daily work in Vi Agroforestry we frequently see examples that agroforestry improves the livelihood of small-scale farmers. Families who now can afford school-fees and health care, families who eats three cooked meals per day, widows who can support themselves and their children not depending on in-laws, women who doesn't have to walk long distances to get fuel-wood since they now have it at home, groups of farmers who manage passion fruit plantations or goats and get income from the sale.

 

The definition of Agroforestry

We use the definition by World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) from 1993:

"Agroforestry is a collective name for land-use systems and practices in which woody perennials are deliberately integrated with crops and/or animals on the same land management unit. The integration can be either in a spatial mixture or in a temporal sequence. There are normally both ecological and economic interactions between woody and non-woody components in agroforestry".

 

It means that trees are intentionally used within agricultural systems. Knowledge, careful selection of species and good management of trees and crops are needed to maximise the production and positive effects of trees and to minimise negative competitive effects on crops.
 

 

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