AusAID, together with UniQuest and the University of Queensland (UQ), is helping to improve skills for dryland farming in Ethiopia, Djibouti, Uganda, Burkina Faso and Tunisia.
Food production on dryland in African countries is particularly important to ensure food security. However, despite efforts to introduce more sustainable and productive systems such as conservation farming and agroforestry, African farming is still governed by traditional slash and burn techniques.
In 2011, 22 participants attended a four-week dryland farming course in Brisbane to learn how Australian sustainable farming methods can help to improve food security.
The training program was designed to teach the fundamentals of dryland farming systems through practical activities, which allowed participants to improve their conservation agriculture practices. Participants learned how Australian land management principles could be adapted to their own particular climatic conditions, specifically how to reduce tillage (preparation of the soil by mechanical agitation), how to use water more efficiently, and how to avoid soil degradation. The courses also included excursions to the Darling Downs and Liverpool Plains to see these techniques at farm level.
By the conclusion of the course, participants said they understood that adapting to more productive and sustainable systems was possible, even for small-holder subsistence farmers.
Dr Gunnar Kirchhof from Think Soils, an organisation that brings together soil and landscape scientists from the Australasia region, Europe, North America and Africa, noticed that there were a range of benefits for the countries involved in the training. These included:
- an increased awareness of conservation farming practices
- strengthened inter-institutional relationships
- better relationships between participants and course trainers for ongoing training and potential research activities.
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The participants of the dryland farming course in Brisbane learned how Australian sustainable farming methods can help to improve food security. Photo: Paul Matthews.
Terms used in this story
Agroforestry–Growing trees and shrubs on farms for shelter, conservation and profit
Conservation farming–any farming system that aims to conserve soil and water
Dryland farming–rain fed (not irrigated) agriculture