The Development of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration

Aid Projects, Animal Forage, Plant Systems, Trees — by Tony Rinaudo September 24, 2008

Editor’s Note: Arguably one of the most successful land regeneration projects in the world, Farmer Managed Natural Regeneraton (FMNR), beginning in Niger during the 1980s, has revegetated three million hectares of arid land in that country alone – bringing back biodiversity in flora and fauna, increasing soil humus (and thus carbon) content, improving water retention and microclimates, and dramatically improving the health and viability of local communities. It is now practiced on over 30,000 km² of land in the Niger Republic as well as Chad, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Mali. It has been written about in many noteworthy publications (the NY Times, for example), and below we hear about its original development from the man who first discovered the ‘underground forest’. In short, trees have returned to Niger, and they’re bringing prosperity with them.

by Tony Rinaudo,
Natural Resource Management Advisor, Integration Team,
World Vision Australia. Originally published on Leisa

Children helping to source firewood Photo: Author

Conventional methods of reforestation in Africa have often failed. Even community-based projects with individual or community nurseries struggle to keep up the momentum once project funding ends. The obstacles working against reforestation are enormous. But a new method of reforestation called Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) could change this situation. It has already done so in the Republic of Niger, one of the world’s poorest nations, where more than 3 million hectares have been re-vegetated using this method. Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration involves selecting and pruning stems regenerating from stumps of previously felled, but still living trees. Sustainability is a key feature of the programme which requires very little investment by either government or NGOs to keep it going. The story in Niger can offer valuable insights and lessons for other nations.

The situation in Niger

The almost total destruction of trees and shrubs in the agricultural zone of Niger between the 1950s and 1980s had devastating consequences. Deforestation worsened the adverse effects of recurring drought, strong winds, high temperatures, infertile soils and pests and diseases on crops and livestock. Combined with rapid population growth and poverty, these problems contributed to chronic hunger and periodic acute famine. Back in 1981, the whole country was in a state of severe environmental degradation, an already harsh land turning to desert, and a people under stress.

More and more time was spent gathering poorer and poorer quality firewood and building materials. Women had to walk for miles for fuel such as small sticks and millet stalks. Cooking fuel was so scarce that cattle and even goat manure was used. This further reduced the amount of fodder available for livestock and manure being returned to the land. Under cover of dark, people would even dig up the roots of the few remaining protected trees. Without protection from trees, crops were hit by 60 – 70 km/hour winds, and were stressed by higher temperatures and lower humidity. Sand blasting and burial during wind storms damaged crops. Farmers often had to replant crops up to eight times in a single season. Insect attack on crops was extreme. Natural pest predators such as insect eating birds, reptiles, amphibians and beneficial insects had disappeared along with the trees.

Conventional approaches

The severe famine of the mid 1970s led to a global response. Stopping desertification became a top priority. Conventional methods of raising exotic tree species in nurseries were used: planting out, watering, protecting and weeding. However, despite investing millions of dollars and thousands of hours labour, there was little overall impact. Conventional approaches to reforestation faced insurmountable problems, being costly and labour intensive. Even in the nursery, frogs, locusts, termites and birds destroyed seedlings. Once planted out, drought, sand blasting, pests, competition from weeds and destruction by people and animals negated efforts. Low levels of community ownership and the lack of individual or village level replicability meant that no spontaneous, indigenous re-vegetation movement arose out of these intense efforts. Meanwhile, established indigenous trees continued to disappear at an alarming rate. National forestry laws took tree ownership and responsibility for care of trees out of the hands of the people. Even though ineffective and uneconomic, reforestation through conventional tree planting seemed to be the only way to address desertification at the time.

Discovering Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration

In 1983, the typical rural landscapes in the Maradi Department in the south of Niger, were still windswept and with few trees. It was apparent that even if the Maradi Integrated Development Project, which I managed, had a large budget, plenty of staff and time, the methods being employed would not make a significant impact on this problem. Then one day I understood that what appeared to be desert shrubs were actually trees which were re-sprouting from tree stumps, felled during land clearing. In that moment of inspiration I realised that there was a vast, underground forest present all along and that it was unnecessary to plant trees at all. All that was needed was to convince farmers to change the way they prepared their fields. The method of reforestation that developed is called Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR). Each year, live tree stumps sprout multiple shoots. In practising FMNR the farmer selects the stumps she wants to leave and decides how many shoots are wanted per stump. Excess shoots are then cut and side branches trimmed to half way up the stems. A good farmer will return regularly for touch up prunings and thereby stimulate faster growth rates.

The method is not new, it is simply a form of coppicing and pollarding, which has a history of over 1000 years in Europe. It was new, however, to many farmers in Niger who traditionally viewed trees on farmland as “weeds” which needed to be eliminated because they compete with food crops. There is no set system or hard and fast rules. Farmers are given guidelines but are free to choose the number of shoots per stump and the number of stumps per hectare that they leave, the time span between subsequent pruning and harvest of stems, and the method of pruning.

Acceptance of this method was slow at first. A few people tried it but were ridiculed. Wood was a scarce and valuable commodity so their trees were stolen. A breakthrough came in 1984, when radio coverage of an international conference on deforestation in Maradi helped to increase awareness of the link between deforestation and the climate. This was followed by a Niger-wide severe drought and famine which reinforced this link in peoples’ minds. Through a “Food for Work” programme in Maradi Department, people in 95 villages were encouraged to give the method a try. For the first time ever, people in a whole district were leaving trees on their farms. Many were surprised that their crops grew better amongst the trees. All benefited from having extra wood for home use and for sale. Sadly, once the programme ended, over two thirds of the 500 000 trees protected in 1984 – 1985 were chopped down! However, district-wide exposure to the benefits of FMNR over a 12-month period was sufficient to introduce the concept and put to rest some fears about growing trees with crops. Gradually more and more farmers started protecting trees, and word spread from farmer to farmer until it became a standard practice. Over a twenty-year period, this new approach spread largely by word of mouth, until today three million hectares across Niger’s agricultural zone have been re-vegetated. This is a significant achievement by the people of Niger. The fact that this happened in one of the world’s poorest countries, with little investment in the forestry sector by either the government or NGOs, makes it doubly significant for countries facing similar problems.

Reasons for the rapid spread

Aside from simplicity, early returns and low cost, other factors contributed to the rapid spread of FMNR. Introducing the method on a district-wide basis with a “Food for Work” programme eliminated much of the peer pressure that early innovators would normally have to endure. As villagers experimented, project staff who lived in the villages were supportive, teaching, encouraging and standing alongside farmers when disputes or theft of trees occurred. This support was crucial, particularly in the early days when there was much opposition to FMNR. As trees began to colonise the land again, excited government forestry agents nominated lead farmers and even project staff for regional and national awards. Often these nominees won prizes, lifting the profile of FMNR. As news began to spread, national and international NGOs, church and mission groups received training and began promoting the method across Niger.

 
During the development of farmer-managed natural regeneration, farmers did not own the trees on their own land. There was no incentive to protect trees and much of the destruction of that era was linked to this policy. After discussions with the head of the Maradi Forestry Department, project staff were able to give assurances that if farmers cared for the trees on their land they would be allowed to benefit without fear of being fined. These laws were only changed in 2004 after much negotiation by entities such as USAID. Farmers began to access markets without undue hassle. And as trees on farms switched from being nuisance weeds to becoming a cash crop in their own right, this was good motivation for farmers to cultivate them. Over time, locally agreed upon codes and rules with support from village and district chiefs were established. Without this consensus and support for the protection of private property, it is unlikely that FMNR could have spread as fast as it did.

The benefits of FMNR quickly became apparent and farmers themselves became the chief proponents as they talked amongst themselves. FMNR can directly alleviate poverty, rural migration, chronic hunger and even famine in a wide range of rural settings. FMNR contributes to stress reduction and nutrition of livestock, and contributes directly and indirectly to both the availability and quality of fodder. Crops benefit directly through modification of microclimate (greater organic matter build up, reduced wind speed, lower temperatures, higher humidity, and greater water infiltration into the soil), and indirectly through manuring by livestock which spend greater time in treed fields during the dry season. The environment in general benefits as bio-diversity increases and natural processes begin to function again. With appropriate promotion, FMNR can reduce tensions between competing interests for landbased resources. For example, as natural regeneration increases fodder availability (tree pods and leaves), farmers are in a better position to leave crop residues on their fields and are less likely to take offence when nomadic herders want to graze their livestock in the dry season.

Harvesting millet amongst the naturally regenerated trees in Niger Photo: Author

Since 2000, World Vision has been promoting this method in a number of other African countries. Malatin André, a Chadian farmer practising it for just two years reported: “Thanks to the new technique our life has changed. Food production has doubled and many people who were laughing at us, have also adopted the techniques for soil regeneration. As a result, there is always good production, the soil is protected from erosion and heat, and women can still get firewood. We have been using the same plot for more than 30 years and without such natural fertilizing possibility, we would soon stop getting food from it”. Khadidja Gangan, a 35 year old Chadian mother of six said: “This year is very exceptional for me because I have been able to get enough sorghum. I cultivated one hectare and harvested 15 bags of sorghum. Generally, I could get three to five bags when working this land in the past. This would have been impossible if I was not taught the new technique of land management”.

Conditions for success and future challenges

There are, however, still many gaps in our knowledge of natural regeneration. Farmers adapt it to their own personal needs and have different reasons for practising it. Further investigation is needed into various technical aspects, such as the most beneficial spacing, species mix, age to harvest, or type of harvesting, for specific purposes. In addition, legal and cultural considerations and historical relations between stakeholders need to be taken into account. For example, the major difficulties faced in Niger included:

• The tradition of free access to trees on anybody’s property and a code of silence protecting those who cut down trees. It was considered anti-social to expose anybody who had felled trees. This tradition was hard to break and those who left trees were often discouraged when their trees were taken by others. This situation was successfully addresses through advocacy, creation of local by-laws and support from village and district chiefs in administering justice. Gradually, people accepted that there was no difference between stealing from someone’s farm and stealing from within someone’s house.
• Fear that trees in fields would reduce yields of food crops. Field results put these fears to rest over time.
• Inappropriate government laws – if the farmer does not have the right to harvest the trees she has protected, there will be little incentive for her to do so. Farmers feared that they would be fined for harvesting their own trees. By collaborating with the forestry service, we were able to stop this from happening.

Other factors also affected the spread of the technique, for example, where language may reflect deeply held attitudes. In Hausa the word for tree (itce) is the same as the word for firewood, and therefore trees were seen to have little value of their own, apart from for firewood. Cultural factors may also work against adoption. Traditionally, Fulani cattle herders saw their lifestyle as the best in the world. Initially they found it humiliating to consider harvesting and selling wood, the way sedentary farmers did.

In addition, the practice of FMNR depends on having living tree stumps in the fields to start with. However, in many cases, farmers can successfully broadcast seeds of desirable species which, once established, become the basis of a FMNR system. The number of trees to be left in a field will depend on the number of stumps present and the farmer’s preferences. Some left over 200 trees per hectare, others not even the recommended 40. The “correct” number of trees to be left will be a balance between farmers’ needs for wood and other products, optimal environmental protection and minimal negative effect on crop yields. In areas of low rainfall, growth rates will be slower, and harvest or cutting regime should be reduced accordingly. Also, in low rainfall areas, establishment of direct sown seeds will take longer and be more difficult than in higher rainfall areas.

In areas where existing species are predominately thorny, or they compete heavily with crop plants, farmers may have second thoughts about FMNR. Where existing tree species are palatable to livestock, the increased effort required to herd animals or protect trees is beyond the reach of many farmers. In many cases however, the species are not palatable and there is no need to exclude animals from the field during the dry season.

Conclusion

What most entities working in reforestation have failed to recognise is that vast areas of cleared agricultural land in Africa retain an “underground forest” of living stumps and roots. By simply changing agricultural practices, this underground forest can re-sprout, at little cost, very rapidly and with great beneficial impact. In other words, in many instances the costly, time consuming and inefficient methods of raising seedlings, planting them out and protecting them is not even necessary for successful reforestation. Presumably, the same principle would apply anywhere in the world where tree and shrub species have the ability to re-sprout after being harvested.

Farmer managed natural regeneration is a cheap and rapid method of re-vegetation, which can be applied over large areas of land and can be adapted to a range of land use systems. It is simple and can be adapted to each individual farmer’s unique requirements, providing multiple benefits to people, livestock, crops and the environment, including physical, economic and social benefits to humans. Through managing natural regeneration, farmers can control their own resources without depending on externally funded projects or needing to buy expensive inputs (seed, fertilizers, nursery supplies) from suppliers. Its beauty lies in its simplicity and accessibility to even the poorest farmers, and once it has been accepted, it takes on a life of its own, spreading from farmer to farmer, by word of mouth.

Tony Rinaudo. Natural Resource Management Specialist, World Vision Australia. G.P.O. Box 399C, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

6 Comments »

• On our dryland artisan-farm, we rely on tree fodder for our animals during the summer drought. This fodder may be in the form of suckers, or re-sprout from felled trees or simply the product of summer pruning. This has meant that when the perennial grasses are dormant, the trees provide food for our grazing animals. It also means that we can extend the carbon sequestation process and solar energy flow throughout the year, as when the trees are dormant the perennial grasses are green.

  Aspen Edge
  http://www.holisticdecisions.com

  Comment by Aspen Edge — October 5, 2008 @ 12:12 am

• I think it is a mistake to consider FMNR in place of conventional methods – as I understand it in places like Ethiopia, the desertification has, for all intense and purposes, negated the usefulness of the soil BECAUSE there is nothing left living in it… I could be mistaken as I am not an expert; but my understanding of the process of desertification in most parts of Africa is that in it’s final and more permanent stages the topsoil that contains these roots and the earliest generation of forest is exposed over a short amount of time and, after only a few rainy seasons, completely washed away. (See http://www.edenprojects.org/media video “How to Plant a Forest”). FMNR seems a viable option, but it seems to me that in conjunction with traditional nurseries reforestation could be even more efficient.
  Also, conventional reforestation doesn’t have to be expensive or difficult – Eden Reforestation Projects does it for 10¢ a seedling which also provides a potential market opportunity for those trying to “offset their carbon footprint.” With the popularity of “going green”, I imagine support is not difficult to drum up for either of these projects.

  Comment by Danica — October 7, 2008 @ 2:52 pm

• I have only just read Danica’s comment. I agree. Tree planting and FMNR go hand in hand. The emphasis of the article is to promote FMNR as a first option because of its simplicity, low (no) cost and rapid spread. Since this article was written, FMNR has spread to over 5,000,000 hectares with an estimated 200 million trees in Niger and it has now been introduced in Senegal, Mali, Chad, Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia and Myanma. Even at 10 cents/ tree it would be very costly to match this rate of reforestation (250,000 hectares/ year over 20 years). What should not be missed in the Niger case is that Niger is the poorest country in the world, the reforestation zone is on the edge of the Sahara desert, and all this reforestation occured with very little NGO or government investment in the forestry sector. Having said that, I also believe tree planting is important. In some situations there simply aren’t any root, tree or seed material in the soil (as you stated) and in some cases, the particular species which a community may want may need to be introduced. Anyhow, thankyou for your comment.

  Comment by Tony Rinaudo — July 1, 2010 @ 4:36 pm

• It seems that permaculture applies to large areas only. Can we apply it to small farms like hundreds of square meters only?

  Comment by Ed Macose — July 16, 2010 @ 12:00 pm

• La question de la régénration naturelles demeure importante pour les pays en proie à la désertification galopante et donc demeure d’actualité.Cependant,est vrai que l’objectif premier qui est l’appropriation par les principaux acteurs est largement acquise dans de nombreuses localités sans que la diffusion de cette technique ne soit généralisée. La question qui nous semble essentielle est comment aller resolument de l’avant. Comment assurer une adoption plus rapide pour amplifier l’impact de cette technologie. Quels sont les principaux acteurs acteurs qui peuvent jouer un rôle catalyseur, comment pourront-ils jouer ce rôle. Je m’en tiendrai à deux principaux acteurs

  Les gouvernements des pays concernés sont conscient du problème de la désertification, mais leur capacités à évaluer la dynamique est limitée, de même que leurs capacités à évaluer les impacts réels des mesures correctives. Or sans ces outils d’appréciation il serait difficile pour les techniciens d’inciter les etats à accroitre leurs efforts de mobilisation social et d’investissement dans le domaine. Je pense que la suite à donner à cette problématique se situe à ce niveau.

  Comment by YAYE MANOU — November 5, 2010 @ 3:57 am

• Is this still up and running? Can one visit and help?

  Comment by Ben Falk — November 23, 2010 @ 10:11 am

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