1.1 The Need for International Research in Agroforestry
1.2 Evolution and Current Status
1.3 Responses to the Last EPMR and Centre-Commissioned External Reviews
Smallholder households in much of the tropics depend on integrated mixed production systems to meet their demands for food, fodder and other non-food items, as well as for cash from sale of various tree and non-tree products. It is through the same agroforestry systems that households attempt to maintain the resource base of their farms and minimize production risks. Indeed, the evidence of the importance of integrated crop-livestock-tree production systems in sustaining smallholder farming communities is becoming stronger.
Smallholder producers at subsistence and semi-subsistence levels (the poor for whom the CGIAR attempts to alleviate poverty) attempt to optimize the output of a set of biological products within the constraints imposed by traditional knowledge, labour availability, the environment, the need to maintain a minimum level of natural fertility, and pests and diseases. Smallholder mixed production systems aim at capturing maximum synergies, in space and time, between the different components. However, these systems have traditionally relied on indigenous experiential knowledge as the main source of innovative change in production practices. In the absence of inputs to replenish and enhance soil fertility, and of scientific knowledge for managing synergistic ecological relationships at higher levels of outputs, smallholder production has either stabilized at a low level, or, as is the case in Sub-Saharan Africa, has declined.
In the case of those smallholder shifting cultivation systems in the humid tropics, that do not benefit from the resource-enhancing processes inherent in the agroforestry-based mixed systems, land degradation has become a major environmental, social and economic concern. In the lowland semi-arid areas and in the moist uplands and highlands, particularly where rapid horizontal expansion has occurred, lack of experience and knowledge about land development, water and landscape management and erosion control have led to large scale land degradation with negative off-site downstream consequences.
While the biological potential of smallholder agroforestry systems is well recognized, these systems are complex, knowledge-intensive and require land management skills that go beyond the farm boundaries into landscape and watershed management. Until recently, there has been a visible lack of concerted scientific research effort to generate knowledge and technologies to raise productivity and output and to help foster an enabling policy environment. Consequently, improvements in agricultural productivity or use and management of natural resources in smallholder agroforestry systems in the tropics have not thus far been able to play a significant role in poverty alleviation processes, in the enhancement of the resource base, or in large-scale landscape and watershed management.
Agroforestry can be an attractive alternative to shifting cultivation or slash-and-burn agriculture in those areas where these production systems have become unsustainable due to high population densities. Agroforestry technologies may be appropriate for the rehabilitation of degraded lands and for the improvement of secondary forest fallows and derived grasslands. In sub-humid and semi-arid savannas, overgrazing, continuous cropping without fertilizer inputs and other practices by resource-poor farmers are causing massive soil fertility depletion. Agroforestry technologies have the potential to help reverse these processes and provide smallholders with food, fodder, fuelwood and other sources of income. However, the previous ICRAF EPMR Panel pointed out that agroforestry research in general had not yet validated many of the claims made for site improvement, increased productivity and yield, and sustainability that can result from application of its technologies. Similarly, many of the disadvantages, such as competition between trees and food crops for light, water and nutrients remained unquantified at that time. However, ICRAF's research work during this review period, particularly in the area of component interactions and systems evaluation, has provided considerable evidence of the potential of agroforestry systems and the advantages associated with them.
While agroforestry systems have evolved over centuries, and there is long history of household gardens, agroforestry as a formalized research approach to land use management, and to maximize benefits from tree-based systems, is a recent development. When ICRAF was established as a Council in 1977, there were few national-level research programmes on enhancing the productivity and natural resources management of agroforestry-based mixed systems. This situation has improved significantly due to ICRAF's efforts in concert with those of its national partners. By 1989, the need for a concerted international research effort to generate agroforestry technologies and policy oriented information and to strengthen national agroforestry research programmes had become a high priority. At the same time, the potential comparative advantage of an international institution such as ICRAF in generating international public goods, and of national programmes in adding local value, had begun to be recognized.
At the time of the 1993 EPMR of ICRAF, few new technologies had emerged from agroforestry research that had been widely adopted by farmers. There had been a tendency to concentrate on the ecophysiological and theoretical aspects of agroforestry, with attempts to develop technology packages on-station, without sufficient complementary research on the social, economic and policy matters, as well as on-farm variability and farmers capacity that will ultimately determine adoption by, and impact on, the poor.
During the past five years, the importance of trees in smallholder mixed systems has become even more evident. In the opinion of the Panel, roughly two-thirds of the rural poor (i.e., some 600 million people in the developing regions) live in the less favoured rainfed areas and a large majority rely for their livelihood directly on smallholder mixed systems mostly involving agroforestry. The remaining one-third, who are mostly the landless rural poor, work mainly in the favoured rainfed and irrigated agricultural areas either as share croppers or agricultural labourers. These people, as well as the majority of the urban poor, benefit in varying degrees from different kinds of agroforestry products arising from the smallholder agroforestry systems. The situation is not expected to change significantly in the foreseeable future.
Large absolute increases in the numbers of poor small farmers and of urban poor expected over the next few decades, will increase the pressure on the land resource base for greater productivity and output from smallholder agroforestry systems. As highlighted in ICRAF's current MTP, these can be mitigated through improvements in tree resources that aim at boosting the two major functions fulfilled by trees on farms and in landscape: (i) provision of products that can be marketed for cash or used domestically; and (ii) provision of services that increase crop yields and environmental resilience. The Panel concurs with ICRAF that these constitute the two global challenges for the agroforestry research and community.
In the light of all of the above, the Panel believes that the case for international research in agroforestry is stronger than ever before. There is need for verification of the benefits and costs of alternative land use technologies under different conditions; of adoption, obstacles and potentials; of the possibilities for agroforestry to contribute to global environmental benefits; and of agroforestry to help in the fight to reduce existing poverty and prevent future poverty for many millions of smallholder farmers in the tropics attempting as best possible to eke out a living from oftentimes marginal lands under continuous cropping.
ICRAF was admitted to the CGIAR System in May 1991. ICRAF's third Director General was appointed just prior to that entry. Joining the CGIAR System called for a transformation from an advocacy Council to an international research Centre with an agenda and mode of operation consistent with the CGIAR mission, goals, priorities and strategies.
The First CGIAR-Commissioned External Programme and Management Review (EPMR), conducted in 1993, supported the development of quality science while maintaining ICRAF's strong partnership with NARS. The Review concluded that "ICRAF stands at the centre of the most important land use issues in the tropics, a secure foundation for its future development."
Since that time, ICRAF has experienced a profound process of change, transforming itself into a global research Centre. These changes are reflected in a major growth in resources (from US$14 million in 1993 to US $23.5 million in 1997), new staff (65% of the current professional staff entered after 1993); operations in six ecoregions in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia; and up-to-date research facilities at headquarters.
ICRAF today is a full-fledged CGIAR Centre that uses development-oriented science to foster the use of trees on farms. The Centre's current MTP (1998-2000) focuses on five "pillars" of research and development that bring together activities in six ecoregions and give global coherence and perspective to ICRAF's work through five global programmes. The five pillars are: policy research, domestication of agroforestry trees, and soil fertility replenishment, accelerating impact and capacity and institutional strengthening. The Research Division oversees three programmes (Natural Resources Strategies and Policy; Domestication of Agroforestry Trees; Ecosystems Rehabilitation) related to the first three pillars respectively, while the newly created Development Division oversees two programmes (Systems Evaluation and Dissemination; Capacity and Institutional Strengthening) related to the last two.
The five programmes operate in six ecoregions as well as at headquarters, thus addressing the poverty and environmental issues centred around the two major global challenges mentioned earlier. The ecoregions of Southern Africa, Eastern and Central Africa and the Sahel tackle the issue of overcoming exacerbated land degradation through agroforestry in those parts of Africa where decreasing per-capita food production and poverty are acute. The other three in the humid tropics of Southeast Asia, Latin America and West Africa, focus on the search for alternatives to slash-and-burn agriculture at the margins of the world's tropical moist forests, where major global environmental damage occurs amidst rural poverty. ICRAF is also the convening centre for two CGIAR Systemwide ecoregional programmes: Alternatives to Slash and Burn (ASB) and the African Highlands Initiative (AHI). Together, the programmes and regions provide the range of biophysical, environmental and socioeconomic conditions that enables ICRAF to produce international public goods from agroforestry research in partnership with a variety of collaborators.
A significant evolution is taking place in the management and work environment of the Centre. In management, the changes include the creation of a Development Division, regionalisation, more delegation to middle management, an activity-based budget management system and management training to foster the evolution towards a team-based learning institution. There is a wide range of disciplines represented in its body of scientists, including anthropology, landscape ecology, forest ecology and ethnobotany. ICRAF's research and development agenda focuses on multidisciplinary, systems thinking with emphasis on the analysis of the trade-offs between environmental resilience and income production at several spatial and temporal scales. Participatory approaches focusing on partnerships with many kinds of institutions continue to be the guiding principle of its operations.
ICRAF's First EPMR in 1993 made 10 recommendations. ICRAF's responses to these recommendations, together with Panel comments, are in Appendix III. The Panel assessed the various actions taken by ICRAF in the appropriate sections of this Report and concludes that ICRAF has largely or fully implemented seven recommendations and partially implemented two. One recommendation was not implemented for justifiable reasons.
In conducting this Review, the Panel was requested to interpret its Terms of Reference in the light of the new approach to EPMRs. The new approach comprises a single integrated system with two components: (i) a set of Centre Commissioned External Reviews (CCERs); and (ii) the CGIAR external review of the Centre. The Panel understood that CCERs are normally commissioned by Centre Boards and expected to generate high quality information that would serve as inputs to the EPMRs, thus allowing the latter panel to concentrate on the most important strategic issues facing the Centre. All the ICRAF CCERs so far have been commissioned either by the Centre management or by programme staff.
Since 1994, ICRAF has undertaken the following ten Centre Commissioned External Reviews (CCERs), covering both programme and management areas.
1. External Evaluation of the Project Alternatives to Slash and Burn, February 1995.2. External Evaluation of the Kenya National Agroforestry Project for the Coffee-Based Land Use Systems (Embu), June 1995.
3. Evaluation of the African Highlands Initiative, May 1966.
4. External Review of the Finance and Administration Division, October 1996.
5. A Field Survey on ICRAF's Research/MPT Nurseries, Their Present Status and Potential Regarding Improvement of Quality and Quantity, March 1997.
6. Progress Report on STAP Selective Reviews: Alternatives to Slash and Burn, Phase I, March 1997.
7. Domestication of Indigenous Fruit Trees of the Miombo Woodlands in Southern Africa - Improvement of Propagation and Plant Production Facilities, June 1997.
8. Review of Research and Community Nurseries in Mexico and Peru, December 1997.
9. Internally Commissioned External Review of Present Situation and Recommendations for the Future Related to the Preparation of 5-Year Workplan, 1998-2002 and Annual Workplan, 1998 for Programme 2 Activities at ICRAF Headquarters, January 1998.
10. Internally Commissioned External Review of Programme 3 - Ecosystem Rehabilitation, April 1998.
These reviews supplement a number of other external assessments undertaken by donors, covering specific activities or projects of interest to the particular donor. In addition, reports of several self-assessments were made available to the Panel. Collectively, these CCERs, donor reviews and self-assessments have provided ICRAF staff and management with useful external and internal perspectives on their work and have contributed to the gradual strengthening of research programmes and institution-wide operations.
The Panel has carefully examined the ICRAF-commissioned external reviews and management's response to the comments and recommendations made. As might be expected, the reviews are of variable scope and quality, partly due to limitations of the terms of reference, the resources and time allocated, as well as the expertise and experience of the reviewers. The Panel is generally satisfied, however, with both the independence of the external review teams and the constructive responses of ICRAF's staff and management to the suggestions and recommendations made. The Panel has used these reports as background material for undertaking its own assessment. However, because of the forward-looking, strategic nature of the current EPMR, and the somewhat narrow scope of many of the CCERs, the Panel has not commented in detail on most of the CCERs. The Panel noted that, thus far, no CCERs have been commissioned by the ICRAF Board, and the Panel comments further on this aspect in Chapter 4.
