Assessing Indigenous Knowledge for Evaluation, Propagation and Conservation of Indigenous Multipurpo

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Assessing Indigenous Knowledge for Evaluation,
Propagation and Conservation of Indigenous
Multipurpose Fodder Trees towards Enhancing
Climate Change Adaptation in Northern Ethiopia
By Mulubrhan Balehegn and Edem Eniang
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Presentation Outline

• Introduction
• Climatic change (drought)in Ethiopia
• Materials and Methods
• Results and Discussions
• Conclusion and Recommendations
• Photo tour on the research activities

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1. INTRODUCTION

• Climate Change in northern Ethiopia
• Repeated droughts that lead to famine
• last two decades 1983/84, 1991/92, 1995/96,
  1999/2001, 2004/2005
• Why do droughts lead to famine in Ethiopia?
• Rain fed cultivation (a paradox)
• Oxen plowing
• Drought?shortage of food and feed ? death of oxen
  ? in ability to cultivate in a subsequent year
  (even when the rains are back)
• Impact of Drought

• Ecological History of Northern Ethiopia
• Records of
• James Bruce-Late 18th Century
• Nathanaiel Pearce- 1820s
• Hagay Erlic- 1890s and early 19th
• Existing facts
• Reserved forests in and around Coptic churches
• Remnant forests in north west (but under risk)
• Current Archeological and ecological studies
• All witness that Northern Ethiopia was area of
  deep and stable forest ecosystem

James Bruce in the region of the Tigrayan town of
Adwa (located at about 50 km from the study
area), farmers grew three crops a year without
the benefits manure, and they presented rich
appearance to the visitor
Nathanaiel Pearce reported seeing a great many
elephants in the depth of the forest near Adwa
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• What went wrong?
• Civil war
• Only 9 years of peaceful time
• Population pressure
• 77 million (169 million by 2050)
• Misuse of forest resources
• Deforestation, burning, clearing cultivation,
  uncontrolled settlement expansion
• Climatic change
• Increased re-occurrence of drought
• Farmers are confused , most believe it is a
  curse of God

• What is being done?
• International humanitarian aid (will it bring
  change?)
• New national policies
• villegization, agricultural intensification,
  water harvesting, reforestation etc.
• Indigenous (traditional) adaptation
• Peoples own strategies of adaptation
• Changing patterns of resource preference,
  utilization and conservation of natural resources

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1.1. Objectives

• General Objective
• To investigate indigenous strategies of selection
  and evaluation of indigenous fodder trees towards
  enhancing adaptation to climatic change.
• Specific Objectives
• To assess farmers perception and knowledge of
  indigenous fodder trees
• To assess farmers traditional practices of
  feeding indigenous fodder trees
• To identify farmers indigenous criteria for
  selection and evaluation of adaptable indigenous
  fodder trees
• To identify farmers adaptable indigenous fodder
  choices

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2. Materials and Methods

• 2.1. THE STUDY AREA

• Location-14 700 to 143830 North and 38
  560 East
• Altitude 1400-3200 masl
• Mean annual rainfall 350-650mm
• Human population-215,054
• Livestock Population
• 93,381 cattle
• 108,956 small ruminants
• 10,865 Equines
• 859 Camels
• Land use
• Cultivable 25434ha
• Natural Forest 15821ha
• Areaclosure 5637ha
• Grazing land 17389ha
• Waste land 18823ha

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• 2.2. Methods
• Socio Economic Surveys
• Structured and semi structured questionnaire
• 120 randomly selected farmers
• Group discussions
• local animal production and forest experts
• development agents,
• administrators and selected farmers
• Descriptive statistics was used to analyze data

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3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

• 3.1. Indigenous Vs. BoARD strategies
• Farmers choose what is adaptable
• BoARD provides farmers-
• Universally acceptable
• High nutritive value species
• Leucaena leucocephala
• Susbania suesban
• Cystices poliferus
• What do farmers prefer and plant and why?
• Indigenous species (F. thonningii)
• because they use diverse criteria for selection
  and evaluation
• Drought tolerance
• Multipurpose values and services
• Higher biomass
• Higher growth rate
• Ease of propagation
• No or minimum allelopathic effect

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• Current Status of F.thonningii propagation and
  use
• Increasingly planted
• old (50-200 years)-12.3,
• middle aged (5-50 years)- 36 and
• young (lt5 years)- 51.7
• Main use
• Feed for cattle
• Supplementary feed
• Feed for Goat, sheep, equines and camel
• basal feed,
• Season of Intensive Feeding of F. thonningii
• Feed reserves exhausted
• Labor bottleneck season
• Feb-Sept

• Source of F. thonningii for feeding LS

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• Effects of Feeding F. thonningii to animals
• Positive effects
• Smoothening of skin
• Wet dung
• Some farmers also indicated increased milk yield

Some Negative Effects and Indigenous Solutions
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• 3.1.2. Multipurpose Values of F. thonningii
• Feed
• Timber
• Higher browsable biomass production
• Fencing (live)
• Soil and Water Conservation
• Drought tolerance
• Ever greenness
• Highly decomposable foliages (adds nutrients to
  soil)
• no allelophatic effect (to the Gesho Rhamnus
  prinoides and other cereal crops)

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• Relative Importance of Multipurpose Values

Rank 1 is best and rank 9 is least
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• Qualities as a fodder plant
• High palatability and acceptability (CP11-18)
• Tolerates lopping and cutting
• Easy to propagate
• Little or no negative side effects to animals
• Higher water content,
• Ever greenness (ever ready)
• Higher browsabel biomass (DM)50.36 kg for old,
  5.96Kg for medium, and 0.914Kg for young

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Multipurpose merits of F. thonningii relative to
other indigenous trees
(Score 10 is maximum and score 1 is minimum)
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• 3.1.3. Indigenous Practices of Propagation of
  F.thonningii
• 5-10 cuttings/HH/Year with increasing trend
• Indigenous protocol for successful propagation
  prepared
• Sources of cuttings for planting
• Common sites where F. thonningii is planted
• Back yard woodlots
• Homestead fences
• Communal wastelands
• Village footpath boundaries
• Farm boundaries
• Conservation structures (around terraces and
  trenches)
• Traditional meeting places

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• Indigenous Protocol for Successful Propagation of
  Ficus thonningii

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4. Conclusions and Recommendations

• 4.1. Conclusions
• In the study area, Sefeo, Central Tigray,
  Ethiopia,
• Farmers have developed their own criteria for
  selection and evaluation of adaptable fodder
  trees
• Selection criteria include feed value,
  multipurpose values and services, drought
  tolerance, impact on other plants
• Ficus thonningii fulfills most of the selection
  criteria set by farmers
• Higher feed value (acceptable and palatable)
• Drought tolerance (available even at the driest
  year)
• Higher biomass production
• Easy to propagate
• Diverse multipurpose values and services
• As a result,
• There is intensified use of Ficus thonningii for
  livestock feeding and other multipurpose values
• F. thonningii is being planted and propagated by
  farmers (average of 5-10 cuttings planted per
  farmer per year)

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• 4.2. Recommendations
• 1. Within Ethiopia, official recognition should
  be granted to Ficus thonningii
• Large scale planting should be practiced in waste
  lands and area closures which are becoming common
  practices in Tigray region.
• 2. Attention to the species by research
  institutions such as International Center for
  Agro-forestry Research (ICRAF) and International
  Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
• 3. Increased focus on indigenous communities and
  their knowledge in adaptation to climatic change
  and drought for more and better options of
  adaptation
• 4. Indigenous people of werada Ahferom should be
  targeted in future carbon trading compensations
  and payments for their ingenious conservation
  strategy that is worthy of emulation by other
  Nationalities.
• 5. Research focused on the nutritive analysis of
  the species, its impact on soil and thus related
  under story crops

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• Photo Tour of Research Activities

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• Community Involvement

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• Sampling Soil and Plant for Analysis

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• Studying the Tree (browsable biomass estimation)

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• Modeling Browsable Biomass Production

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• No for Deforestation!- the motto of my
  enthusiastic research team from Ethiopia

THANK YOU!!!