Some 30 participants from 14 countries participated in a kick-off event that was held from January 30 to February 1 for the German-African COINS project. COINS (Co-developing innovations for sustainable land management in West African smallholder farming systems) has the goal of enabling, establishing, and supporting the sustainable intensification of food production in Africa.
Sub-Sahara Africa is at present subject to a variety of social, economic and ecological risks, and is not least faced with an uncertain future because of climate change. A fundamental goal for the region is food security, which is difficult to achieve under the conditions named above. In the various agri-ecological zones, different land management strategies and land use configurations have diverse effects that depend on the particular socio-economic context, and they often limit crop yields. However, given the scenario of a rapidly growing population, it is essential to increase crop yields instead. This is often realized by expanding the amount of land devoted to agriculture, which reduces natural assets.
This is the place where the COINS project comes in. Instead of continuing to expand agricultural areas, the project focuses on achieving their sustainable intensification, in other words, increasing productivity without expanding the area under cultivation. Such methods are already being employed and their basic effectiveness is known. However, they have only been implemented to a limited extent because they often pay off only in the long term, and can accordingly mean additional uncertainty for farmers. Also, their effectiveness depends a great deal on the local context.
COINS brings together all stakeholders and parties involved in innovation laboratories in order to identify joint mechanisms and conditions under which sustainable intensification of agriculture can function. Also being investigated are the reasons why they have not yet been implemented to an adequate extent. The reasons are usually heterogenous socio-economic conditions like increased labour costs and limited access to capital. With the operationalisation of support mechanisms, including extensive risk management strategies and an incentive and monitoring programme, the preconditions will be created for sustainable land management. Great importance is also attributed to the development of a series of advisory services for farmers to implement sustainable intensification. DFD coordinates the project, develops new remote sensing data products to monitor and quantify the effects of the various measures to achieve sustainable intensification, as well as makes available modelling parameters to the project partners.
COINS is one of four regional projects in addition to an accompanying project within the Call, “Sustainable Land Management in Subsahara-Africa: Improving the basis for livelihood through on-site research” supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The Call is embedded in the BMBF strategy “Research for Sustainability” (FONA). The COINS consortium consists of six German and seven African partners from the research and industrial sectors. The regions being studied are in Ghana and Senegal.
