ECHO Best Practice Notes

Best Practices in Livestock Projects - 2024/11/06

This ECHO Best Practice Note distills insights from farmers and other specialists who collaborated in promoting livestock as a means to improve rural livelihoods. Acknowledgment is given especially to Heifer International and to all its partners who developed a substantial program that still impacts thousands of families. Livestock are indeed a beneficial part of most agricultural systems, contrary to some modern theories of their obsolescence. Poverty reduction must remain a primary objective of livestock development programs. Challenges such as diminishing access to land and water resources and limited extension and veterinary services remain in East Africa.

Best Practices for Tropical Dryland Agriculture - 2021/12/16

It is estimated that drylands occupy 40% of the earth’s surface. Drylands are regions where the average annual precipitation is less than 65% of the average annual potential evapotranspiration (an Aridity Index of < 0.65). The FAO Aridity Index is defined as a 30 year average of annual precipitation divided by annual potential evapotranspiration. Thriving and even surviving in dryland climates has always been a challenge. Similarly, yearly rainfall has always been variable with droughts and floods occurring regularly for millennia.

Selecting Legumes as Green Manure/Cover Crops - 2017/05/26

By integrating legumes into cropping systems, small-scale farmers in low-resource settings can invest in the long-term health and resilience of their soils. Success or failure depends largely on choosing the right legume(s). With that in mind, this document presents insights on legume selection that ECHO has learned from comparing legumes across parts of Southeast Asia and through five seasons of legume screening and intercropping trials in South Africa.

Green manure/cover crops are plants used to cover and improve the soil, as well as to positively impact the ecology of the land and other crop plants. Many plants can be used as GMCCs, but this document focuses on legumes—plants belonging to the Fabaceae family. They are known for their ability, in conjunction with soil bacteria, to convert nitrogen from the atmosphere into ‘fixed’ nitrogen that plants can take up. This process is called biological nitrogen fixation.

Best Practices in Conservation Agriculture - 2016/09/28

Farmers in many parts of the world, because of human population growth, have little choice but to crop their land continuously, with scarce resources to replace nutrients withdrawn by each successive crop. Crop residues are often lost as a source of organic matter and mulch, usually through burning or by removal for animal feed or cooking fuel. Especially where nutrient reserves are already low, and topsoil is exposed to erosion, soils lose their capacity to sustain adequate crop yields. Additionally, extreme weather events, adverse changes in climate, human conflict, and sickness can all work against smallholder farmers’ abilities to sustain the productive capacity of their soils. Conservation Agriculture attempts to address these problems.

Conservation agriculture (CA) is a resource-saving land management approach that optimizes and sustains the capacity of soils to produce food. In CA, sustainability is linked to the ecological preservation of agricultural landscapes. This is achieved through 1) minimal soil disturbance, 2) keeping soils covered, and 3) crop diversification. Implementing these three elements requires a combination of practices, for which there are many options. Thinking of CA as an overall system, rather than a fixed set of techniques, gives farmers and practitioners the freedom to evaluate and adopt a set of CA-related practices appropriate to local needs.

Seed Storage in the Tropics - 2016/03/22

Yearly production of grains, pulses, and vegetables depends on a reliable supply of quality seed. This is true for the farmer growing a crop to feed their family as well as for the agricultural worker evaluating and growing out seeds of a new crop species or variety that could improve lives. In both cases, seeds need to be stored during the interval between the harvesting of one crop and the planting of another. 

Focusing on the needs of agricultural development workers, there could be multiple reasons for needing to learn more about seed storage. Perhaps seeds or promising crops are brought to a project area, but they cannot be planted immediately. Seeds of valuable, local varieties may need to be stored for future observation trials or to be grown out in anticipation of a community seed exchange event. Proper seed storage techniques can be crucial to maintaining not only the viability of seeds, but also the credibility of agricultural change agents and the ultimate success of a plant introduction.

Seeds deteriorate quickly under high heat and humidity. Seasonal variations exist within both dryland and humid tropical regions; however, the humid tropics are especially likely to have extremes in both heat and humidity. At the same time, resources to create ideal storage conditions are limited in many parts of the tropics. Electricity for seed drying, air cooling and de-humidifying storage rooms may be non-existent or erratic. This document outlines practical steps and techniques that can be used to store seeds under such conditions.

Institutional Agricultural Design - 2014/04/01

ECHO frequently receives questions from members of our network, asking how available land could be used to grow food and/or create income to augment an otherwise non-agricultural project. Broadly speaking, they are asking how to begin an institutional agriculture project—a coordinated agriculture effort undertaken by an institution or community of people, for the purpose of creating economic, environmental and/or nutritional benefits.

Some examples of institutional agriculture projects are:

• 40 laying hens which provide eggs for an orphanage
• a medicinal plant garden on the grounds of a village medical clinic
• Four hectares of rice, three hectares of fruit trees and 20 beehives operated by a vocational school
• a moringa seedling nursery at a small, private primary school

This Best Practices Note explores common pitfalls and challenges related to design and implementation of an institutional agriculture project. It also outlines proven principles and practices that a development practitioner can implement in a variety of settings.

Assisting Pastoralists - 2014/02/26

Pastoralism is a livelihood whereby people depend upon herding domesticated livestock. In East Africa, pastoralists depend primarily upon cattle, sheep, donkeys, goats and camels— listed in order of least resilience as one moves into drier and more arid lowland areas. Pastoralists play an important, though often underappreciated, role in safeguarding animal genetic resources and indigenous breeds. In caring for their animals, pastoralists have a unique ability to utilize vast remote, droughtprone areas by regularly moving their herds to the best grazing areas. In fact, East Africa’s most celebrated large conservation areas exist today partly because of pastoralists’ capacity to traverse and defend grazing areas, which helped create buffer areas of reduced encroachment by agriculturalists.

To better understand the migratory aspect of the pastoralist’s life, it is helpful to be aware of the terms “nomadism” and “transhumance” used to describe the primary forms of pastoralism. Nomads do not create permanent settlements but move to or carry temporary structures with them; their migratory pattern can change from year to year. East African pastoralists are “semi-nomadic,” having a permanent home base where some of the family stays while others are out with the herds. The diet of nomadic pastoralists is based largely on livestock and food gathered from the wild. During the dry season and droughts, animals are sold to buy staple food.

Farmer-Centered Climate Change Mitigation - 2020/12/14

ECHO recognizes climate change as a profound reality faced by small-scale farmers. Many of our publications have focused on helping farmers cope with related challenges such as heat and drought.Increasing farmer resilience and minimizing risk have been key elements of the practices we have written about over the years.  We encourage “no regret” strategies, approaches that steward the land well and improve livelihoods, regardless of whether or not farmers face immediate changes to climate. However, we also view farmers as having an integral role in mitigating some of the driving forces of climate change.

Best Practices in Improving Degraded Land - 2012/11/14

The UNCCD estimates that over 250 million people are affected by land degradation, and about 1 billion people in over 100 countries are at risk. According to the WMO, 33% of the world’s land surface is vulnerable to land degradation. Degraded lands lead to overall reduced productivity and reduced crop yields which directly impact population health.

Degraded lands are typically a more significant problem in areas with fragile ecosystems (deserts, semi-arid, volcanic islands, rainforests, etc) and in places with heavy population loads where people are forced to over-use the same land with no alternatives. Degraded lands are also associated with areas where the land is the main resource for everything: human food, animal food, building materials, fuel, income generation, etc. These pressures create constant “withdrawals” that, if not reversed, lead to exhaustion of the land resource. 

This ECHO Best Practice Note details the problem of land degradation, and provides priciples and best practices for improving degraded land.