What Farm Size Sustains a Living? Exploring Future Options to Attain a Living Income From Smallholder Farming in the East African Highlands

Smallholder farming in sub-Saharan Africa keeps many rural households trapped in a cycle of poor productivity and low incomes. Two options to reach a decent income include intensification of production and expansion of farm areas per household. In this study, we explore what is a “viable farm size,” i.e., the farm area that is required to attain a “living income,” which sustains a nutritious diet, housing, education and health care. We used survey data from three contrasting sites in the East African highlands—Nyando (Kenya), Rakai (Uganda), and Lushoto (Tanzania) to explore viable farm sizes in six scenarios. Starting from the baseline cropping system, we built scenarios by incrementally including intensified and re-configured cropping systems, income from livestock and off-farm sources. In the most conservative scenario (baseline cropping patterns and yields, minus basic input costs), viable farm areas were 3.6, 2.4, and 2.1 ha, for Nyando, Rakai, and Lushoto, respectively—whereas current median farm areas were just 0.8, 1.8, and 0.8 ha. Given the skewed distribution of current farm areas, only few of the households in the study sites (0, 27, and 4% for Nyando, Rakai, and Lushoto, respectively) were able to attain a living income. Raising baseline yields to 50% of the water-limited yields strongly reduced the land area needed to achieve a viable farm size, and thereby enabled 92% of the households in Rakai and 70% of the households in Lushoto to attain a living income on their existing farm areas. By contrast, intensification of crop production alone was insufficient in Nyando, although including income from livestock enabled the majority of households (73%) to attain a living income with current farm areas. These scenarios show that increasing farm area and/or intensifying production is required for smallholder farmers to attain a living income from farming. Obviously such changes would require considerable capital and labor investment, as well as land reform and alternative off-farm employment options for those who exit farming.

Separate and Joint Interests: Understanding Gendered Innovation Processes in Ugandan Farm Systems

Agricultural innovation is considered paramount in solving poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition in the global south and notably in the East-African highlands. However, processes of change surrounding innovation in agriculture, and potential gender differences in their impacts, are often poorly understood. This paper resorts to principles from Farming Systems Research (FSR) and social gender analysis to study agricultural innovation processes and increase the understanding of the differential ways men and women engage with and are impacted by agricultural innovation(s). We analyze qualitative data from six Focus Group Discussions conducted in each of the two study communities located in Central and Western Uganda. These data focus on the most important agricultural innovations as perceived and assessed by men and women in their community. We list and discuss these most important innovations and further zoom in on one innovation per site: “Use of herbicides in maize production” in Central Uganda and “New agronomic practices for intensified highland banana production” in Western Uganda. Results clearly show that women's and men's domains are not separated as superficially might appear. Women and men have both separate and joint interests and adoption of an innovation by one gender, will affect the other too. The effects are multifold, with positive and negative elements. Women's ability to innovate is constrained as compared to men because gender norms limit women's agency in relation to mobility and financial independence amongst others. The two innovations studied were found to alter some gender roles and relations but did not unambiguously contribute to increasing gender equality.

Grid-Scale Impact of Climate Change and Human Influence on Soil Erosion within East African Highlands (Kagera Basin)

Under global climate change and pressure from human activities, soil erosion is becoming a major concern in the quest for regional sustainable development in the Kagera basin (KB). However, few studies in this region have comprehensively considered the impact of climate change and human influence on soil erosion, and the associated processes are unclear. Based on the premise of quantifying climate change, human influence, and soil erosion, this study undertook a neighborhood analysis as the theoretical support, for a grey relation analysis which was conducted to realize the qualitative assessment of the influence of climate change and human activities on soil erosion. The results show that 90.32% of the KB saw climate change as having a greater influence on soil erosion than human influence, with the remaining area 9.68% seeing human influence having a greater impact than climate change, mainly as a result of the effect of rangeland and farmland. The average soil erosion rate of the KB shows a very low level (10.54 t ha−1 yr−1), with rangeland and farmland being the main land use/land cover (LULC) types that see soil loss, followed by forest, wetland, and built-up areas. The climate change trends of the KB show the most dramatic changes in the northeast and southwest, gradually decreasing towards the line crossing from the Birunga National Park (Rwanda) to the Keza district (Tanzania). The human influence intensity (HII) shows a high level in the KB (21.93), where it is higher in the west and lower in the east of the basin.

Kinetic energy generation in cross-equatorial flow and the Somali Jet

<div>In response to the north-south pressure gradients set by the annual march of the Sun, a cross-equatorial flow that turns to become a low-level zonal jet at around 10 ° N (also known as Somali jet) is set in the lower troposphere (around 850 hPa) over the Indian ocean. These flows play a fundamental role in the Indian monsoon. A detailed understanding of small and large scale drivers of this flow is lacking. Here we present the analysis of Kinetic Energy (KE) budget of the low level flow using high spatio-temporal resolution ERA5 reanalysis to identify sources and sinks of KE generation. We find that a significant KE generation occurs over East African highlands, Western Ghats and the Arabian sea. Over the oceans, the KE generation occurs mainly due to cross-isobaric meridional winds in the boundary layer. In contrast, over East African highlands and Western ghats KE generation maximizes just above the boundary layer and mainly occurs due to interaction of flow with the orography. We propose a simple model to decompose lower tropospheric KE generation into contributions from surface pressure, orography and free-tropospheric gradients.</div>

Effect of Seasonal Drought on the Agronomic Performance of Four Banana Genotypes (Musa spp.) in the East African Highlands

Banana (Musa spp.), a perennial (sub-)tropical crop, suffers from seasonal droughts, which are typical of rain-fed agriculture. This study aimed at understanding the effect of seasonal drought on early growth, flowering and yield traits in bananas grown in the East African highlands. A field experiment was set up in North Tanzania using four genotypes from different geographical origins and two different ploidy levels. The treatments considered were exclusively rain-fed versus rain supplemented with irrigation. Growth in plant girth and leaf area were promising traits to detect the early effect of water deficit. Seasonal drought slowed down vegetative growth, thus significantly decreasing plant girth, plant height and the number of suckers produced when compared to irrigated plants. It also delayed flowering time and bunch maturity and had a negative effect on yield traits. However, the results depended on the genotype and crop cycle and their interaction with the treatments. “Nakitengwa”, an East African highland banana (EAHB; AAA genome group), which is adapted to the region, showed sensitivity to drought in terms of reduced bunch weight and expected yield, while “Cachaco” (ABB genome group) showed less sensitivity to drought but had a poorer yield than “Nakitengwa”. Our study confirms that seasonal drought has a negative impact on banana production in East Africa, where EAHBs are the most predominant type of bananas grown in the region. We also show that a drought-tolerant cultivar not adapted to the East African highlands had a low performance in terms of yield. We recommend a large-scale screening of diploid bananas to identify drought-tolerant genotypes to be used in the improvement of locally adapted and accepted varieties.

The Oldowan in the Egyptian Nile Valley

Although there is no good “Oldowan” record in the Egyptian Nile Valley, the presence of the “Pebble Tools Tradition” is confirmed by surface finds, scattered in the valley and the deserts, recorded through both early and recent excavations, and confirmed by three important stratified sites at Western Thebes, Nag el Amra and Abassieh. Evidence for the existence of the Oldowan complex in Egypt was found, although there was no water corridor connecting the East African highlands to the Mediterranean, as the Proto-Nile had its sources within Egypt itself at the time of the Plio-Pleistocene boundary. The western coast of the Red Sea also should be considered a possible corridor for early Pleistocene hominins. There is still much more research to be done, especially in the Eastern Egyptian Desert and Sinai, to obtain a clearer picture of the scenario that happened during the Plio-Pleistocene episode of hominin dispersal out of Africa.

Landscape positions dictating crop fertilizer responses in wheat-based farming systems of East African Highlands

Improving fertilizer use efficiency has remained a challenge, particularly for small-scale farming in undulating ‘abnormal’ landscapes of East Africa. Milne's 1930s concept on ‘Catena’ was considered as a breakthrough in understanding soil variability and its implication on productivity in East African highlands. However, there is limited information on how the ‘Catena’ features could be used for fine tuning fertilizer recommendations. We initiated multiple on-farm replicated experiments in three wheat-growing districts (Endamohoni, Lemo and Worreilu) in the Ethiopian highlands in 2014, 2015 and 2016 to assess landscape positions affecting crop-nutrient responses, identify yield limiting nutrients across the ‘Catena’ (N, P, K, S and Zn) and quantify effects of landscape positions on resources use efficiency. We clustered farmlands across the ‘Catena’ (Hillslopes, Midslopes and Footslopes) based on land scape positions in the respective locations. Wheat yield was more strongly and significantly affected by landscape positions (P < 0.001) than by nutrient sources or rates. The crop response to fertilizers was 50 to 300% higher in foot slopes than in hillslopes, depending on locations and inputs levels. With increasing slope, there was a decrease in a crop fertilizer response due to a significant decrease in soil organic carbon, clay content and soil water content, with r2 of 0.95, 0.86 and 0.96, respectively. The difference in the crop response between landscape positions was significantly higher (P < 0.05) with higher rates of nutrient applications (>N92 P46) while differences between landscape positions diminish at lower rates. Yield benefits due to application of K was significant only in the dry years (P < 0.05), while there was hardly any yield benefit from the application of zinc and sulfur. The crop nitrogen recovery fraction and crop water productivity decreased with an increasing slope regardless of nutrient combinations. The results indicated that the landscape position could be considered as a proxy indicator for targeted fertilizer application, particularly in farms with undulating topographic features. Hillslopes are better served by the application of organic fertilizers along with conservation measures as applying higher rates of mineral fertilizer in hillslopes would rather increase the risk of downstream nutrient movement.