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The Nioumakele Small Producers Support Project (APPN), launched in 1992 by IFAD, enabled small farmers to organize themselves around intensive development sites, then introduced the system of contouring to combat erosion, encouraged mixed cropping and promoted the use of improved plant varieties. Apart from introducing live fencing, the project also organized milk producers, thus making it easier for Agence Francaise de Developpement to launch a local milk processing plant in 2002.

The carefully enclosed, green plots of the Nioumakele region on Nzwani Island contrast with the sterile, bare slopes known as padza that can be seen elsewhere throughout the Comoros archipelago. In this region, populated essentially by poor farmers, the results of the live fence technique have been spectacular. In the space of 20 years, the landscape of the poorest region in the archipelago has been transformed. “The land was very severely degraded,” says Mariame Anthony, an agricultural expert and head of the region’s agricultural training centre. “Erosion was very pronounced and productivity was low.”

The best land in the Nioumakele region previously belonged to a French colonial company exporting ylang-ylang, cloves and vanilla, while Comorians had fairly inaccessible, unproductive land on slopes. Furthermore, traditional rice-growing techniques based on a slash-and-burn system and the effects of population pressure on land had accelerated soil degradation over the years, transforming it into padza.

Thirty years of successive innovations
Over the years, there have been a number of interventions in the region to try to remedy the situation, in particular through the Office for the Development of Agricultural Production, which began soil conservation activities in 1970. Fifteen years later, the Company for the Economic Development of the Comoros was concerned with land distribution, the development of cash crops and the combination of food-crop production and livestock farming. Then the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) introduced the dung shed concept.

The farmers themselves initially improved on the dung shed system through the technique of tethering the cow and moving it around the plot, rather than going out themselves to feed it and gather the manure. The technique of using hedges to enclose plots, introduced and disseminated by IFAD, then completed the process by combining the various approaches. The live fence principle is fairly simple: the plot is enclosed with a live fence of fodder trees, composed mainly of sandragon and gliricidia, with intermediate hedges of penissetum, on which the cow feeds, tied to a stake, the cow produces manure, which is used to fertilize the land. The cow is moved around so that the farmer’s plot (or plots) is covered. One plot is dedicated to the production of fodder, grass and legumes to feed the cow or for sale. Moreover, farmers with several cows can rent them out to farmers who have none so that they too can fertilize their plots.

Higher yielding dairy cows
As a complement to their agricultural activities, in the 1970s FAO and IFAD introduced Friesian bulls in order to improve the genetic stock of dairy cows. As a result, the average daily yield is now 8 to 10 litres of milk, as against 1 to 2 litres for local cows, while champion milkers can produce up to 18 litres a day.

Genetic improvement of cows has had major economic repercussions, tripling or even quadrupling household income. Milk is a product in high demand, especially during Ramadan and in summer, the season when migrants return.

In addition, the increase in children’s milk consumption has led to an improvement in the nutrition of this section of the population, which previously suffered from a severe nutritional imbalance. The success of these genetic improvement activities, combined with the results of the pilot artificial insemination project carried out in collaboration with Veterinaires sans frontieres (VSF) of Belgium, has encouraged IFAD to expand such interventions in its new National Programme for Sustainable Human Development, launched in 2007.

The market, a persistent problem
While live fencing has had a beneficial effect on the region’s agricultural production and helped to reduce families’ poverty, it has certainly not solved all the problems. Yssouf Mdigo, a farmer and herder in the region, manages to make ends meet by having another full-time job in Mutsamudu, the island’s capital, where he transports goods in a wheelbarrow. He and his wife have three plots, but the market is so small that they would have to diversify their agricultural production further in order to dispose of their produce.

“The economic situation means that I have to work a long way from home,” Yssouf Mdigo says. So their agricultural production does not yet meet their financial needs, although it does cover the family’s food and nutritional needs, which is already a major step forward.

Nioumakele: an example of sustainable agriculture in an over-populated area
Despite persistent difficulties for the poorest families, the live fence technique has enabled an entire region to be rehabilitated, despite the fact that soil degradation seemed irreversible with the growth in the rural population. With the commitment of farmers, the establishment of appropriate agricultural techniques and the intensification of livestock production, the Nioumakele experience vividly shows that, contrary to all expectations, an arid region can overcome the padza and regain its fertility.

Source: IFAD