海角大神

[Editor's note: The United Nations has declared 2014 the听听(IYFF) to highlight the importance of family and smallholder farmers. Food Tank is partnering with the听听(FAO) to commemorate IYFF and will feature weekly posts and other media highlighting the innovations that family farmers are using to alleviate hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation along with the campaigns and policies that support them.]

The听UN Food and Agriculture Organization reports that a听quarter of the world鈥檚 hungry live in sub-Saharan Africa. Supporting small-scale farmers will be critical to reducing hunger and poverty in the region. has developed an intercropping strategy, called听Push-Pull, that helps farmers increase productivity, strengthen soils, and protect staple foods from pests 鈥� all without expensive chemical fertilizers or pesticides.

Push-Pull was originally designed to help farmers deal with crop loss from two especially destructive pests: stemborers and striga weeds. Family farmers in sub-Saharan Africa often听lose up to 80 percent听of their crop to听stemborers, a type of moth that lays its eggs inside the stems of corn, sorghum, and other staple crops.

Perhaps more insidious is听striga, a parasitic plant, also known as witchweed, which stunts crop growth and regularly causes farmers to lose听30 to 100 percent听of their crop. The combination of these pests often destroys entire harvests and costs an estimated $7 billion听every year. Typical pesticides and herbicides that might solve the problem are expensive, environmentally damaging, and largely ineffective once the pests are established.听

Push-Pull offers a different solution, introducing plants that听naturally repel and attract听stemborers to keep them away from crops. The system adds a repellent crop to farmers鈥� fields, such desmodium, and then surrounds the field with a border of attractive plants, such as Napier grass.

Stemborers are then simultaneously pushed away from the maize field and pulled toward the border. In addition to protecting fields from stemborers, the intercropped desmodium plants听control striga, producing a substance that听causes suicidal germination鈥攑romoting striga鈥檚 initial growth and then stopping it.This eliminates striga plants from these fields, and because desmodium is a perennial plant, it keeps them free of striga between harvest seasons as well.

Desmodium also functions as a听cover crop, which can be plowed back into the soil to increase soil health and nutrient content. Napier grass is also useful as a feed crop for animals, and its root system helps听prevent erosion.

So far, more than听55,600 farmers in East Africa听have implemented icipe鈥檚 Push-Pull system, resulting in听more than triple the average maize听yields achieved under previous practices. Icipe is working to expanding the practice across sub-Saharan Africa, connecting with farmers听through radio, print materials, and hands-on training programs.

鈥� Food Tank () is a think tank focused on a feeding the world better. We research and highlight听environmentally, socially, and economically听sustainable ways of alleviating hunger, obesity, and poverty and create networks of people, organizations, and content to push for food system change.