Organic farming: humans and nature benefit equally

Workie Shumye is a smallholder farmer in Madegudina, an Ethiopian village about 40 kilometres from the capital Addis Ababa. She grows organic vegetables, herbs and cereals at home in her garden, on less than half a hectare. Elephant grass grows around the property, serving as fodder for her chickens and cows. Most of the harvest goes towards feeding her family, the rest she sells at market. "Producing healthy food for my family is my top priority; the money I earn at the market is a welcome extra," she said in an article in the Ethiopian magazine MIZAN.

Shumye is taking part in the Ecological Organic Agriculture Initiative (EOA-I), a project run by the NGO Biovision Africa Trust with the aim of making organic farming more widespread in Africa and improving food security.

The initiative emerged from the African Union's decision in 2011 to mainstream organic farming into African countries' national agricultural production systems by 2025. It is currently being implemented in nine countries – Benin, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda – and is largely funded by the SDC.

There has indeed been a rise in organic farming on the African continent in recent years. Whereas this type of agriculture occupied an area of 1.8 million hectares in 2016, about two million hectares are now being farmed ecologically. The important role agroecology plays in the fight against food insecurity, soil degradation, poverty and climate change is gaining in recognition.

Nevertheless, many challenges remain. "There is a lack of effort on the part of politicians to promote organic farming," says Venancia Wambua, a project manager at the EOA Initiative. Access to ecological resources and information on cultivation techniques, agricultural inputs and market infrastructures is very limited. "The value chain is what we need to focus on most," says Wambua.

In addition to knowledge-sharing and networking among stakeholders, the initiative's main objective is to increase the market share of quality organic products, both locally and nationally. It aims to achieve this, for example, by assisting producers with transport, facilitating access to seeds and inputs such as organic fertilisers, or putting them in touch with financial institutions willing to grant low-interest loans. "However, we don't just promote food production. We also encourage its processing into marketable foodstuffs, such as tomato sauce," says Wambua.

"Many farmers are interested in agroecology," says Atalo Belay from the Pesticide Action Network (PAN), who is in charge of advisory and communication activities for the EOA Initiative in Ethiopia. The prospect of actually increasing their yields in this way after the first three years provides additional motivation. Belay provides smallholder farmers with support regarding farming techniques and the production of compost or organic fertilisers. But he also helps them set up farm cooperatives or undergo certification procedures, both of which are 'very complex' processes.

Today, farmer Workie Shumye runs an organic farmers' market in the capital Addis Ababa, which was created as part of the initiative. It is also intended as a means of bringing producers and consumers together. The interest is clearly there: the market was initially held once a month, but now takes place twice every month due to the high demand.

According to Belay, integrating smallholder families from very remote areas into the value chain is a more difficult task. A 'vegetable basket' subscription scheme was recently launched in some villages, enabling consumers to purchase their products directly from the local farmers.

The spread of organic farming also protects biodiversity, as a project in Benin shows. Farmers there have formed a group totalling 16 members in order to produce their own organic banana seeds. In doing so, they are responding to a problem faced by most farmers in Benin: that they only have access to poor quality seeds, which are often infected by pests. The group has now created a communal seedbed in which it keeps its seeds until they are ready for planting.

And in Kenya, farmers' groups, especially those made up of women and young people, are being trained in agroforestry, with the result that more and more perennials are being integrated with food crops. They provide fruit as well as fodder for the animals, and protect the soil from erosion. Over 35,000 seedlings are kept at two tree nurseries that have been set up.

The EOA Initiative has delivered success stories in all of the countries involved since its launch in 2014: for example, organic certification standards and procedures have been introduced in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Benin and Nigeria, and producers have been certified in all these countries. Organic farmers' markets have been set up, tools for collecting market information and databases have been established, and at least 21,000 farmers have gained access to markets.