INDIGENOUS-FARMING-ADAPTIVE SUIDEN AND AGROFORESTRY SYSTEMS

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Why has the green revolution not yet been realized in West Africa? The "sawah" hypothesis was put forward to resolve the problems to restore the African food and environmental crises. The term "sawah" originated from Malay and refers to leveled irrigated rice fields with bunding. Sawah is the prerequisite for realizing the green revolution as well as preserving and even restoring the ecological environments. Irrigation and drainage without farmers'sawah farming technologies displayd a very low efficiency or an even dangerous because of accelerating erosion. Thus the development of irrigation has been slow. In the absence of water control, fertilizers cannot be used efficiently. Accordingly the high yielding varieties are useless.Integrated approach for total watershed management is important. For the sawah development we should look not only at the valley bottoms but the upland forest. The lowland soil formation involves the transport and sedimentation of eroded topsoils under upland f … More orest by river water. In the sawah based farming system this geological fertilization process can be enhanced in combination with sustainable management of forest at the upland. Long term sustainability of sawah farming can be attributed to this processAmong the various lowland ecologies in West Africa, small inland valleys will be the first target for the small scale sawah based rice farming by the participatory approach for the development, floodplain comes next, huge inland basins and delta need heavy investment for development and maintenance.On-farm researches for the introduction of sawah based rice farming were conducted on the benchmark small inland valleys in Bida, central Nigeria. Although sawah gave higher yields and enhanced soil and water conservation, some sawahs constructed at the benchmark sites were not maintained by the farmers after the termination of the trials, but some farmers maintain and even expand the sawahs by themselves. Only demonstration especially by foreign experts is not enough. The key issue is how the new system can be integrated into indigenous farming systems through trial and error with local farmers' active participation and evaluation. The close link between researcher and extension officer is the prerequisite. The new discipline, such as extension researcher or research extension officer, is desirable. Less