Species Selection and Management Under Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration in Dodoma, Tanzania

Abstract

Farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR) is promoted as a cost-effective technique to restore degraded arable drylands. Evidence comes mainly from the West-African Sahel, where it is a traditional practice, and it is now being promoted across the African continent. In this study, we evaluated the role of the farmer affecting natural regeneration under farmer managed natural regeneration in the highly degraded Dodoma region in Tanzania. We systematically assessed the linkages between species selection, perceived benefits and management practices as reported by 57 farmers in 13 villages involved in FMNR. On average, farmers list 2.8 species to be promoted on their farms as part of the practice of FMNR. In total, a list of 69 species was promoted by the practice, of which most (51) were only mentioned by one or two farmers, indicating that FMNR may contribute substantially to on-farm regional diversity. Most species selected were associated with a range of benefits and the diversity of benefits, not any single benefit, explained species selection under FMNR. Management of FMNR species goes beyond pruning, a practice promoted within FMNR, and is characterized by 10 different practices that are differentially applied to the selected species and individuals. We conclude that species selection and management under FMNR is driven by farmers autonomous decisions, making FMNR both diverse and complex and complicates predicting the extent to which FMNR may successfully contribute to achieving specific restoration outcomes. Monitoring farms over extended periods may increase outcome prediction capacity.

Farmers’ perspectives and context are key for the success and sustainability of farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR) in northeastern Ghana

“…Since farmers in the agroforestry parklands of West Africa have for generations managed naturally regenerating trees and shrubs in ways that are similar to FMNR (Binam et al, 2017;Hansen et al, 2012), Chomba et al (2020) conclude that we need to learn more about FMNR adoption outside these countries-a position informing recent research in Tanzania (Moore et al, 2020). However, our results present a more complex picture, with some farmers indicating that they acquired no new knowledge from the intervention, describing traditional tree management techniques which can be classified as FMNR.…”

“…While FMNR was inspired by farmers' traditional field-level practices in the West African parklands, we found that long-term agroecological, social, cultural, political, economic, and land use change in the region narrowed the scope for FMNR as a land restoration approach. We also found that how and where farmers used FMNR was socially differentiated, which reflected the autonomy of farmer decision-making-something supported by the NGO and recognized as a fundamental principle of FMNR (Moore et al, 2020;Tougiani et al, 2009)-but also how gender, class, and generation influenced on-farm tree management. For instance, female participants in women-and youth-only focus groups more often underscored the importance of managing the regrowth of shea, specifically, confirming its relatively greater importance to the livelihoods of women in northern Ghana (Kent, 2018).…”

“…However, studies on farmer adoption of FMNR have mainly relied on quantitative data from household surveys (e.g. Binam et al, 2015, Iiyama et al, 2017, Moore et al, 2020, Kibru, Husseini, Birhane, Haggar, & Solomon, 2020. This has limited the ability of researchers to understand what motivates farmers who practice FMNR, which perhaps also explains the lack of attention to whether farmers might prefer resource management strategies different from those of NGOs.…”

Assessing Social Equity in Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) Interventions: Findings from Ghana

“…A second limitation is that our research was conducted in northeastern Ghana, part of the West African parklands, where FMNR on-farm shares similarities with traditional agroforestry practices (Hansen et al 2012, Binam et al 2017. As FMNR is scaled out across Africa and south Asia (Francis et al 2015), including in areas where components of FMNR might be less similar to the traditional practices of farmers (Moore et al 2020), there might be aspects of our findings that are less transferrable. However, we feel that our key conclusions, particularly regarding how preexisting, local-level resource hierarchies conditioned social equity of FMNR, are likely to be salient elsewhere, as research in other fields demonstrates the impact of history and politics on environmental and development project outcomes (Mansuri andRao 2012, Hajjar et al 2020).…”

“…As FMNR continues to be scaled out across Africa and south Asia (Moore et al 2020), implementing organizations must grapple with the socio-ecological, political, and historical complexities of intervention contexts, as well as consider whether FMNR aligns with local understandings of agroecological processes. Providing an empirical evidence base for why FMNR projects should grapple with these complexities is particularly important given that, at least to our knowledge, there have been no assessments of social equity of FMNR to date.…”