Environmentally Sustainable Practices Make Good Business Sense

The world’s attention was recently focused on Copenhagen, where global leaders were discussing how to respond to environmental changes. One group has perhaps the biggest stake in climate change deliberations: smallholder farmers in developing countries.

Farmers are some of the most conservative of entrepreneurs. Tied to complex systems of soil chemistry, weather patterns and water cycles, experimentation and innovation seem impractical, if not impossible, to smallholder farmers. For those who grow just enough to feed their families, new ways of doing things pose risks many aren’t willing—or able—to take.

Yet for many farmers, change is inevitable. Families in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean and elsewhere face shifting seasons, more extreme weather patterns, changing growing conditions and a scarcity of natural resources that make farming for smallholders seem more and more uncertain. Under these circumstances, environmentally sustainable practices and innovations make good sense: They can present significant opportunities to increase smallholders’ incomes by improving productivity, lowering input costs and capitalizing on current market demand.

Since our beginning, ACDI/VOCA has worked with smallholder farmers to help them break out of the poverty cycle by using practical, results-oriented techniques that focus on long-term sustainability. A few examples of common-sense and environmentally beneficial approaches follow.

Natural resource management technologies like drip irrigation maximize scarce water resources and lead to larger yields. ACDI/VOCA has trained farmers in drip irrigation technologies in many countries with noted success, including Armenia, where farmers raise healthier plants using only a third of the water they used to need, and Cape Verde, which now has fresh fruits and vegetables—once scarce commodities—available year round. In the long term, the use of drip irrigation increases the availability of water for agricultural production during drought periods by improving infiltration of water into the soil and increasing the rate at which wells recharge. It also helps minimize soil erosion, preserving invaluable topsoil.

Agroforestry can both increase local livelihoods and promote forest conservation. Through its SUCCESS Alliance programs in countries like Vietnam, ACDI/VOCA has shown that tree crops like cocoa can be successfully grown under the forest canopy and intercropped with other trees. This both preserves forests and helps farmers diversify their crops and increase their incomes, sometimes by as much as three times. In Liberia, for example, ACDI/VOCA works to ensure that smallholders have a legal framework with which to secure their land rights and economic incentives to protect the forest rather than to clear cut it for agricultural cultivation.

Organic farming techniques can lead to improved productivity, lower input costs and new markets for smallholder farmers. For example, in Indonesia ACDI/VOCA and its partners introduced the cocoa pod chopper to produce fertilizer for trees. As a result, cocoa farmers are able to improve the health of the soil in a low-tech, cost-effective way, using material that formerly was considered waste. Elsewhere, ACDI/VOCA has worked to help smallholder farmers capitalize on the growing global demand for organic products by conducting trainings in organic farming, helping them get organic certification and connecting them to regional and international markets.

For more, read “Climate Change: Practical Responses to a Real Challenge” (PDF, 106 KB) in ACDI/VOCA’s recent issue of the World Report.