FOOD SECURITY - Science for Agriculture and Rural Development in Low-income Countries - page 48

Sub-Saharan Africa
In many parts, low yields, low land productivity and low labour productivity are
common. This is because of poor soils, low and erratic rainfall and the poverty that
undermines the purchasing power of many potential consumers.
Low and declining soil fertility is one of the major causes of poor yields and the
loss of fertile topsoil as a result of erosion and desertification has seriously reduced
the production potential of previously fertile lands. Opportunities to reverse soil
mining, raise yields and increase land and labour productivity through improved soil
management and water conservation are likely to rely heavily on the use of external
(yield-increasing) inputs. Box 2 gives an overview of collaborative soil fertility
research projects with substantial Wageningen participation - conducted during the
last 20 years in Kenya.

Box 2. Research on nutrient management in Kenya (from project FURP to NUTMON, NUTSAL
and INMASP)

A long-term strategic research alliance, established in the 1970s, between Wageningen UR
and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) eventually resulted in a nation-wide
soil fertility project to generate an empirical database on yield response of maize and other
major food crops to inorganic fertilizer and manure in all suitable agro-ecological zones of
Kenya: This Fertilizer Use Recommendation Project (FURP), sponsored by GTZ (German
Agency for Technical Cooperation) and the EU, was launched in 1985. Following a careful
inventory of agro-ecological information and results of earlier fertilizer trials (Smaling et al.
1992), agronomic experiments (both, on-station and on-farm) were conducted at 70 sites
from 1987 to 1992. The resulting comprehensive database was used to calibrate and refine
research tools of the 'Wageningen School', such as QUEFTS for the assessment of soil
fertility of tropical soils, and WOFOST for the simulation of growth and yield of tropical crops
(Smaling 1993; Roetter 1993; Roetter and Van Keulen 1997). The generated yield response
data were further tested and disseminated via district-wise fertilizer verification trials and
recommendations were disseminated through different national media (including the
newspaper 'Daily Nation'). By the time the recommendations became available to gain
national impact, however, fertilizer subsidies had largely been abandoned, the political
situation in Kenya had become much more unstable, and investors/donors were shifting
their interests to other regions (such as Eastern Europe). Despite these constraints, the
valuable database inspired a large number of follow-up projects, related to quantification of
nutrient balances for Kenya, and for Africa as a whole - and follow-up research to better
quantify and monitor nutrient flows at farm and village level in different agro-ecological
zones (Smaling 1998). This further evolved into participatory and interdisciplinary research
on integrated nutrient management, applying the Farmer Field School approach as in the
INMASP project (Onduru et al. 2003; Van Beek et al. 2004).

maling

Interestingly, in the mid-1990s, this combination of experimental research and

quantification/modelling of nutrient balances and yield response inspired the work and was
successfully carried to guide nutrient management research in the intensive rice eco-
systems in South-east Asia (Dobermann et al. 2000, 2004).