Enabling Resilience and Enhancing Assets: Famine Mitigation from a Seeds and Tools Perspective

Excerpts from the Preface: In this paper we have presented the principles, successful strategies and issues you need to examine in your agroecosystem analysis. We hope you can explore all the strategies and issues we include here. If not, at least remember two basic consistencies across famine-prone regions of sub-Saharan Africa. 1. Smallholder assets determine a households susceptibility to famine. Aspects to be considered include: how much food is in storage, what is the quality of soils, are healthy, productive perennials growing in the compound, are water catchment structures in good repair, are livestock healthy and integrated with crops, are needed seed available and viable, and are hand tools available and in good repair? 2. The best single means of increasing these assets is through seed and shoots. A wide variety of seed must be available to match the variability in rainfall and soil conditions. These must be locally adapted seed varieties and include lines which provide forage, improve soils and provide soil cover. The best way to accomplish this is through partnerships between individual NGOs and private seed enterprises and companies to distribute and multiply such seed and shoots in each famine-prone area. Local food storage, water catchment and soil improvement can work with seed interventions to increase the resilience of local coping strategies. The goal of this paper is to help improve the design of sustainable famine mitigation interventions. We've provided as many references as possible so that readers can explore any of the key issues. .