Integrated community-driven engagement for sustainable enhancement of food production in East Africa: the Jali Ardhi [Care for the Land] project

非洲农业社区在粮食和饲料生产率方面面临着复杂的挑战和选择。在土壤退化、气候变化、人口增长、政治动荡、市场变化、土地保有权变化和移民的推动下，社会经济和文化转型对支持粮食和水安全的自然资源造成了前所未有的压力。初级生产系统面临压力，营养选择正在发生变化，发展与农业之间的关系正在发生深刻变化。面对水土流失和土地退化的有形威胁，东非的田园耕作系统现在正处于转折点，以证据为主导的干预措施的紧迫性前所未有，以支持更好和可持续的粮食生产，扭转威胁粮食和水安全的自然资源退化的趋势。我们方法的核心是需要摆脱自上而下的外部驱动的解决方案的实践。相反，我们需要利用我们科学研究的证据，与社区和农民合作，共同设计真正和持久的社会经济变革解决方案，并帮助这些社区和农民进行创新。我们认为，只有彻底和深入地了解社区的具体需要和优先事项，以及作出决策时所处的更广泛的政治和经济背景，才能实现持久的变革；这些雄心是我们当地适应办法的核心。因此，我们的研究翻译计划的目的是在整合研究证据和社区知识的基础上，实现适合当地情况的食品生产实践的改进。这些行动的同时目的是提高粮食产量并使其多样化，并恢复受损的农业景观，以巩固未来生产的可持续性。我们的伙伴社区是坦桑尼亚北部蒙杜利区的4个村庄，研究小组通过先前的NERC/GCRF研究与这些村庄建立了牢固的工作关系。每个社区都面临着牧地从低地到高地严重退化的挑战，多样化和因地制宜的恢复的想法和方法截然不同。这一方案将使有见地的辩论能够优化以挑战为主导和农民驱动的可持续提高农业粮食生产的最佳做法。首先，我们将从当地社会文化和环境的角度来解释(I)土壤肥力综合管理(ISFM)、(Ii)保护性农业(CA)和(Iii)节水农业(WASA)等既定范例中的关键举措，并将这些举措与当地作物和畜牧业生产系统和可行替代方案的既定研究知识相结合。其次，我们将建立一个预测性的证据基础，说明潜在的土地管理和种植举措的不同组合如何在减缓和恢复侵蚀方面影响景观功能。第三，我们将支持为每个社区共同设计行动计划，并开始实施。我们希望从这项研究转化行动中产生的成功案例将通过WOCAT[世界养护方法和技术概览]网络和我们建立的国际网络(例如，联合国粮农组织/国际原子能机构、非政府组织、东非共同体)分享，以接触到区域、国家和国际各级的政策制定者。坦桑尼亚北部这一背景下的行动将进一步用来支持全球土地复垦框架今后提出的建议，以应对整个东非裂谷系统区域及其他地区的可持续土地管理挑战。

African farming communities are faced with complex challenges and choices regarding food and feed productivity. Socio-economic and cultural transitions, driven by soil degradation, climate change, population growth, political upheaval, changes in markets, land tenure change and migration put unprecedented pressure on the natural resources that support food and water security. Primary production systems are under stress, nutritional choices are changing and the relationship between development and agriculture is undergoing profound transformation.In the face of physical threats of soil erosion and land degradation, East African pastoral farming systems are now at a tipping point, and there has never been a greater urgency for evidence-led interventions to support better, and sustainable food production and to reverse the degradation of natural resources that threatens food and water security. Central to our approach is the need for practices that move away from top-down externally driven solutions. Instead we need to use evidence from our scientific research to work with communities and farmers to collaboratively design solutions for real and lasting socio-economic change, and help those communities and farmers to innovate. We propose that sustained change can only be achieved through a thorough and deep understanding of community-specific needs and priorities, as well as the wider political and economic contexts in which policy decisions are made; ambitions which are at the heart of our local adaptation approach. The aim of our research translation programme is hence to realise locally-adapted enhancement of food production practices that are built on integration of research evidence and community knowledge. These actions have the parallel purpose of both enhancing and diversifying food productivity and also restoring damaged agricultural landscapes to underpin the sustainability of future production. Our partner communities are 4 villages in Monduli District of northern Tanzania with whom the research team has a strong and established working relationship through prior NERC/GCRF research. Each community is experiencing challenges of severe degradation of pastoral land from lowland to upland with contrasting ideas and approaches to diversification and locally-tailored restoration. This programme will enable informed debate to optimise best practice for challenge-led and farmer-driven sustainable enhancement of agricultural food production. Firstly we will interpret through a local socio-cultural and environmental lens key initiatives from stablished paradigms of (i) Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM), (ii) Conservation Agriculture (CA) and (iii) Water Smart Agriculture (WaSA) and integrate these with established research knowledge of local crop and livestock production systems and viable alternatives. Secondly we will develop a predictive evidence base of how different combinations of potential land management and cropping initiatives might affect landscape functionality in terms of erosion mitigation and restoration. Thirdly we will support co-design of action plans for each community and initiate their implementation.The success stories that we hope will emerge from this research translation action will be shared through the WOCAT [World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies] network and our established international networks (e.g. UN FAO/IAEA, NGOs, East Africa Community) to reach policy makers at regional, national and international levels. The action in this northern Tanzanian context will be further used to underpin future GCRF proposals to address sustainable land management challenges across the wider East Africa Rift System region and beyond.