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Sodic Lands
Reclamation Project: Lessons
for Africa
Introduction: African
agriculture is in decline and faces several challenges today. In
this context, a team from East Africa visited the World Bank supported
Sodic Lands Reclamation Project in India – a farmer driven
project that used indigenous knowledge to increase agricultural
production and incomes. The major constraints were sodic soils,
a result of inappropriate irrigation management and brown plant
hoppers which often destroyed up to 50% of crop yields. By combining
local and modern knowledge, farmers applied gypsum, build contour
bunds, leached the soil, started multi-cropping and green manuring
to reclaim the land. They controlled brown plant hoppers with neem
extract, rice husk and green manure. After five years, yields and
incomes had risen by 60 percent. The farmers created a farmers field
school to incorporate these practices into agricultural extension
delivery services and provide training to empower women through
self help groups. In this debriefing, the East African delegation
reflects on how IK not only contributed to technical and economic
gains, but also helped create a farmer owned training institution
with tremendous credibility and outreach. Can the lessons learnt
be applied to Africa?
The video can be viewed in its entirety or via
shorter clips sorted along the main themes (blue underlined) which
emerged during the debriefing. This debriefing was organized by
the Knowledge and Learning Group as part of AFTQK’s knowledge
sharing and learning services. Dr. Z.M.Nyiira, Director Uganda National
Council for Science and Technology and the Bank team conducted the
debriefing on October 1st, 2002.
Sodic
Lands Debriefing (1:07:05 min)
1. Setting
the agenda (1:16 min)
2. Kenyan Discussion
(13:09 min)
a. Documentation
– this is a step further than what we have done (38 sec)
b. Extent
of womens empowerment – capacity building for women
(34 sec)
c. Dry
land – more prevalent in Kenya; how can it be made
productive (36 sec)
d. Key
lessons learned from farmers field school visit: (10:20
min)
i. Micro
planning – communities actively involved, gender
balance (59 sec)
ii. Joint
land ownership – helped empower the women (16 sec)
iii. Community
participation – using IK for self development, blending
traditional with scientific (1:43 min)
iv. Grassroots
participation – ‘when people own the project
they are really committed’ (1:59 min)
v. Strategies
used to teach farmers – farmer to farmer training
(48 sec)
vi. Involvement
of the community leaders – helped realize community
needs and aspirations (49 sec)
vii. Integration
of activities – e.g. health with agriculture (37
sec)
viii. Democratization
of activities – at the community level (37 sec)
ix. Working
relationships had transparency – all partners worked
together (1:11 min)
x. Motivation
factors were built in – through right incentive
mechanisms (36 sec)
3. Ethiopian
Discussion (28:01 min)
a. Seen
a number of options – ownerships, especially by
women groups, agents of social change (2:32 min)
b. Sustainability
– of land reclamation based on farmers indigenous efforts
(31 sec)
c. Integrated
pest management – using IK that is environmentally
friendly and cost effective (1:13 min)
d. Land reclamation
is expensive… – and is difficult to sustain;
need to address the root causes and not just the symptoms
(1:49 sec)
e. Addressing
the root causes – there should be some intervention
upstream (41 sec)
f. Need more
information from projects – on the cost effectiveness
(2:13 min)
g. Focus
on IK aspects – sustainability based on application
of IK (56 sec)
h. Micro
financing – will help in the sustainability of the
project (34 sec)
i. Revitalizing
communities – by making resources productive again
and ensuring food security (1:48 min)
j. Need to
learn the principle – and extrapolate to our countries
(1:48 min)
k. The IK
component – can gypsum be replaced with other indigenous
materials? Applying lessons from Ethiopia (2:10 min)
4. Ugandan
Discussion (15:22 min)
a. Participatory
community planning – ‘seeing that a community
can own something together; women speak out’ (1:37 min)
b. Gains
for the whole community – holistic and integrated
model for development (50 sec)
c. Transparency
and accountability – entire community involved (39
sec)
d. MIS system
– important to document the process; not just quantitatively
but also qualitatively (51 sec)
e. ’…don't
know what other projects are doing...' – in Uganda;
we have never had an exchange within our own countries; learnt
a lot from India (1:00 min)
f. Validation
of IK – through testing and application (38 sec)
g. Empowering
women – need to have them involved right from the
outset (2:02 min)
h. Food security
– fix and maintain current wastelands using indigenous
and scientific knowledge (1:11 min)
i. Seeing
results – a challenge for us in our own countries
(48 sec)
5. Learning
from each other and the role for the Bank (1:35 min)
6. Current projects
in Ethiopia (55 sec)
7. Summary /
Closing Remarks (4:58 min)
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