Trees for Life in Mozambique
At the inaugural Fortune Forum Summit in London addressed by former US Presidet Bill Clinton, six generous patrons purchased"Trees for Life" prizes. Each prize will fund the planting of trees back into a threatened forest environment in sub-Saharan Africa . Without sustainable farming techniques, soil degradation forces people to practice shifting agriculture and continued deforestation. The forest established with the money raised by the charity auction for Trees for Life will be used to assist a Miombo forest community in central Mozambique to build sustainable livelihoods.
Land-use change is at the heart of what is happening in this area - agroforestry, forest rehabilitation and the sustainable utilisation of timber and non-timber forest products. African Renaissance will be supporting an ongoing initiative that addresses food security issues, introduces cash crops and manages environmental degradation.
400 families in the Nhambita traditional community have embraced a programme to transform the way they use their natural resources. This programme involves a move away from shifting or "slash and burn" agriculture on 500 plots or clearings with subsistence crops planted on rapidly degrading soils to cash and high value food crops. Central to changing land use is tree planting and this typically means an additional average income of over 140 USD per hectare to the farmer from the sale of Voluntary Emissions Reductions (VER's) carbon offsets (previous average annual income was USD40- 80 per annum) and an additional 35 USD paid into the community fund paid for the planting and care of trees on their land. Community members earning income and direct benefits from the project have surplus time for other income generating activities for the first time.
Implementation programme for Trees for Life
The that these generous donations will fund will carefully chosen to bring maximum benefit back to this forest community. To maximise the long term impact of this initiative the focus will be on planting orchards that will become the seed banks and source of invaluable grafting material for the future transformation of this landscape and the community who live here. By grafting improved cultivar top-stock onto low value local trees, this programme adds value to existing trees transforming them into valuable producers of fruit and nuts and reduces deforestation. Buying in the improved cultivars is expensive and beyond the means of most Mozambique farmers – producing them locally will make a difference.
1. African Renaissance will hold a series of meetings with the Nhambita Community Council to identify the sites for the planting and plan the programme of planting. The council represents the 6000 residents of the Nhambita Traditional Authority in the buffer zone of the Gorongosa National Park in central Mozambique .
2. We will immediately commence with a seed collection programme for indigenous species, the germination of root stock and acquisition of grafting material for fruit trees.
3. Community nurseries will germinate and prepare all of the trees for the planting - we envisage that the six sponsored tree planting projects to involve the production of close to 65 0000 trees.
4. The planting will include a mixture of :
(a) the planting of special orchards for the supply of seed and grafting material for agroforestry planting such as fruit and nut orchards, wood fuel, timber, fodder, traditional medicines and nitrogen fixing species; and
(b) reforestation planting which will involve either the re-establishment of Miombo forest destroyed by unsustainable agriculture or charcoal production, and the replanting of specific high value species "high-graded" by illegal logging.
5. These special orchards will provide the community with a valuable long term resource to produce seed and grafting material for the production of trees for the commercial market. The orchards will provide “scions” for grafting onto local, hardy rootstock to improve cultivars and give farmers and opportunity to produce marketable produce.
The benefits of Grafting: Grafting fruit trees enables the cloning of the commercial qualities of a particular fruit variety on another local hardy tree – this has great advantages over seed germination as the quality of the fruit from trees grown from seed can be highly variable. Grafted trees come into production much earlier than trees grown from seeds - they usually bear fruit within 2-3 years while using traditional methods trees grown from seed would only crop after 5-10 years.
How do we do this? Community nurseries produce large quantities of seedlings in plastic bags and trained workers graft them with commercial varieties. These seedlings are then distributed to farmers for planting in their plots and around their homesteads. Top-grafting is used to transform existing low-quality fruit trees, by pruning them and then grafting them with commercial varieties grown in the special nurseries. A team of trained grafting technicians drawn from the community graft the trees.
The income generated from the sale of these improved trees provides a long term income into the community trust fund and enhances sustainability as a big market for improved cultivars exists within Mozambique .
6. All of this activity will generate employment and income for the local community during implementation phase and the successful forests/orchards will generate long term income for the community.
7. The produce from the orchards provide a valuable source of food for the community.
8. The planting of nitrogen fixing trees interspersed with food crops addresses the degradation of soil fertility typical of shifting agriculture, reduces the time required to keep a field in fallow and increases yields.
The donations received by African Renaissance at last years Fortune Forum summit in London for the Trees for Life programme are funding a very special project in Mozambique . The Nhambita community in the Sofala Province have a successful community nursery that produces tens of thousands of trees every year. Members of the community who work in the nursery have been trained in grafting techniques to produce high quality fruit trees. To become viable as a long term source of valuable fruit trees, the nursery needs to have orchards of special improved trees that will supply the scions (cuttings) that will be grafted onto local rootstock and produce the new trees.
Last year the community committee that represents some 8000 people, approached the Trees for Africa programme to ask for support to transform their successful nursery into a self-sufficient business venture that could supply long term employment and income to the community. After consultations with the role players it was agreed that to maximise the long term impact of this initiative, the focus will be on planting orchards that will become the genetic banks and source of invaluable grafting material for the future transformation of this landscape and the livelihoods of the community who live there. By grafting improved cultivar top-stock onto low-value but hardy local trees, the nursery adds value to existing trees - transforming them into valuable producers of fruit and nuts and reducing deforestation. Buying in the improved cultivars is expensive and beyond the means of most Mozambique farmers – producing them locally will make a difference.
Mozambiquen forester Antonio Serra who is overseeing the establishment of the nurseries addresses the Fortune Forum summit in London.
The community nursery is germinating and preparing all of the rootstock trees for grafting. Six species of fruit trees have been selected and the improved cultivar trees are being imported from South Africa and planted out. These are orange, mango, lemon, tangerine, litchi, avocado and cashew trees. They are being planted into orchards and drip irrigation systems with peddle pumps to pump water to the orchards have been installed.
These special orchards will provide the community with a valuable long term resource to produce seed and grafting material for the production of trees for the commercial market. The orchards will provide “scions” for grafting onto local, hardy rootstock to improve cultivars and give farmers and opportunity to produce marketable produce.
Grafting fruit trees enables the cloning of the commercial qualities of a particular fruit variety on another local hardy tree – this has great advantages over seed germination as the quality of the fruit from trees grown from seed can be highly variable. Grafted trees come into production much earlier than trees grown from seeds - they usually bear fruit within 2-3 years while using traditional methods trees grown from seed would only crop after 5-10 years.
The objective is for community nurseries to produce large quantities of seedlings in plastic bags and trained workers to graft them with commercial varieties. These seedlings are then supplied for local plots and around their homesteads or sold to farmers. Top-grafting is used to transform existing low-quality fruit trees, by pruning them and then grafting them with commercial varieties grown in the special nurseries. A team of trained grafting technicians drawn from the community graft the trees.
The income generated from the sale of these improved trees provides a long term income into the community trust fund and enhances sustainability as a big market for improved cultivars exists within Mozambique . All of this activity will generate employment and income for the local community during implementation phase and the successful forests/orchards will generate long term income for the community. The produce from the orchards provide a valuable source of food for the community.