Just in time for today’s International Biological Diversity Day, the AID by Trade Foundation has announced that it has successfully completed a 2.8 million euro project for climate silence agriculture in Africa. For this, healthy soils, responsible use of water resources and the preservation of biodiversity play a key role.
The Car IMMA project (“Climate Adaptation and Resilience-A Pan-African Learning & Knowledge Exchange Exchange Project on Improved Soil Management”) has received more than 100,000 farmers in the past three years: inside Africa to test various ground-improving measures. The results are encouraging: yields on demonstration areas rose significantly, even in times of climate change.
Income and resilience in times of climate change
In the Côte d’Ivoire, for example, yield increases of up to 37 percent in comparison to fields without measures to optimize ground. After the harvest in the 2022/23 season was severely affected by pest infestation, the participating Ivorian farmers recorded an average increase in yield in the program in the program in the 2023/2024 season from 272 kilograms per hectare to 1,007 kilograms per hectare. This led to an average increase in income of 509 euros.
Specifically, cross-country and cross-company meetings have been organized for over three years to test and share knowledge and knowledge with the farmers: inside and partners: on-site the production and effects of compost, biochalle and the composting method Bokashi as well as erosion protection techniques and soil processing methods.
Integrated pest and production management, strategic crop rotation and diversification, cover fruits and tree plantings were also part of the initiative. At the same time, innovative training materials were developed that are intended to ensure long -term sensitization beyond the project duration, explains the AID by Trade Foundation.
This was also pleased that women in all project regions take on women in modeling functions, spread the innovative ideas of the project and get involved in compost production that many are used as new sources of income.
“It speaks for itself that far more than the total of 100,000 small farmer can be trained in theory and practice in regenerative and climate -based agriculture,” says Tina Stridde, managing director of the AID by Trade Foundation.
“In the project, together with scientists: Inside, Agrarexpert: Inside and small farmer: Interior compost and biochar brought to the fields and performed feasibility analyzes for carbon credits in the small -scale cotton production. We have tested new ways that can also ensure good views of stable income for small farmer: inside and their families,” confirms Stridde.
“Car-ISMA has motivated us to work more closely with the farmer: to strengthen their resistance. We now integrate many of the new techniques into our main activities and check the potential to save carbon in the ground in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, whereby we rely on proven regenerative floor practices,” explains Ivans Trigo Popinsky, production manager at San-JFS, a cotton company involved in the Car IMMA project in Mozambique.
In addition, feasibility studies for carbon binding were carried out in order to evaluate the potential of different soil improvement methods. In the long term, these findings could open up new sources of income through carbon credits in the small -scale cotton cultivation, according to the AID by Trade Foundation.
Car-ISMA was launched as the initiative of the AID by Trade Foundation and as part of the Sub-Saharan Cotton Initiative with funds from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) by the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ). The project was implemented together with the agricultural group LDC Suisse and across borders with active cotton societies in Côte d’Ivoire, Sambia and Mozambique.