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[Editor's note: The United Nations has declared 2014 theÌýInternational Year of Family FarmingÌý(IYFF) to highlight the importance of family and smallholder farmers. Food Tank is partnering with theÌýUN Food and Agriculture OrganizationÌý(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.]

TheÌýUN Food and Agriculture Organization reports that aÌýquarter of the world’s hungry live in sub-Saharan Africa. Supporting small-scale farmers will be critical to reducing hunger and poverty in the region. Kenya’sÌýInternational Center of Insect Physiology and EcologyÌý(icipe) has developed an intercropping strategy, calledÌýPush-Pull, that helps farmers increase productivity, strengthen soils, and protect staple foods from pests – 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 oftenÌýlose up to 80 percentÌýof their crop toÌýstemborers, a type of moth that lays its eggs inside the stems of corn, sorghum, and other staple crops.

Perhaps more insidious isÌýstriga, a parasitic plant, also known as witchweed, which stunts crop growth and regularly causes farmers to loseÌý30 to 100 percentÌýof their crop. The combination of these pests often destroys entire harvests and costs an estimated $7 billionÌýevery year. Typical pesticides and herbicides that might solve the problem are expensive, environmentally damaging, and largely ineffective once the pests are established.Ìý

Push-Pull offers a different solution, introducing plants thatÌýnaturally repel and attractÌýstemborers to keep them away from crops. The system adds a repellent crop to farmers’ 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 plantsÌýcontrol striga, producing a substance thatÌýcauses suicidal germination—promoting striga’s 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 aÌýcover 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 helpsÌýprevent erosion.

So far, more thanÌý55,600 farmers in East AfricaÌýhave implemented icipe’s Push-Pull system, resulting inÌýmore than triple the average maizeÌýyields achieved under previous practices. Icipe is working to expanding the practice across sub-Saharan Africa, connecting with farmersÌýthrough radio, print materials, and hands-on training programs.

• Food Tank (www.foodtank.org) is a think tank focused on a feeding the world better. We research and highlightÌýenvironmentally, socially, and economicallyÌýsustainable ways of alleviating hunger, obesity, and poverty and create networks of people, organizations, and content to push for food system change.