CATALIST is committed to the promotion of agricultural intensification technologies that boost production for small-holder farmers.

About Us

IFDC

IFDC creates sustainable agricultural productivity around the world, alleviating hunger and poverty and helping to ensure global food security, environmental protection and economic growth. A public international organization, IFDC was established in 1974 in response to the twin crises of food insecurity and rising energy prices. These parallel crises threaten the world again.

For more than 35 years IFDC has focused on increasing and sustaining food and agricultural productivity in over 130 developing countries through the development and transfer of effective and environmentally sound crop nutrient technology and agribusiness expertise.

IFDC is governed by an international board of directors with representation from developed and developing nations. The organization’s collaborative partnerships combine cutting-edge research and development with on-site training and education. IFDC has contributed to the development of institutional capacity-building in 150 countries through nearly 1,000 training programs, primarily as part of IFDC’s long-term agricultural development projects.

Currently IFDC staff members are serving in more than 20 nations throughout Africa, the Near East and the Far East.

The CATALIST Project

Poverty, food insecurity and energy deficiency threaten human life in CAGLR more than elsewhere in Africa. Demands for both food and energy in the area are extremely high. The region continues to face perpetual crises of poverty, social instability, civil unrest and environmental degradation.

Extreme population pressure, continued population growth, extensive land use and limited alternatives for rural employment increase pressure on the natural resources base in Burundi, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda. Indeed, the region not only has the highest population density in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), but also the lowest use and implementation of agricultural intensification strategies (such as the use of fertilizer combined with other inputs, particularly improved seeds and planting material). The physical situation is deteriorating as deforestation intensifies and its soils are starved for nutrients.

The region is the watershed of the Nile and Congo, two of the world’s greatest rivers. A combination of deforestation and soil “mining” (depletion of nutrients vital to crops) have caused severe soil erosion and decreased the soil’s capacity to absorb and hold water. That, in turn, has decreased the stability of the rivers’ water flow downriver.

The region has the highest negative soil nutrient balance worldwide; soil nutrient depletion is estimated at almost 100 kg per year per hectare of cropland. Based upon present practices, such environmental degradation will continue unless it is addressed decisively. IFDC’s CATALIST and SEW projects will both contribute to solving agricultural and energy production issues by providing models for development to be further promoted and adopted by the local population.

The CATALIST project was launched in October 2006 by IFDC with funding from the Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Directorate-General for International Cooperation (DGIS). Project oversight is provided by the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Rwanda. The five-year project aims to increase food security, reduce poverty and improve regional collaboration to foster peace and security in the Great Lakes Region.

The CATALIST project is helping to maintain biodiversity, improve environmental management, intensify agricultural productivity and develop markets for both agricultural inputs (fertilizers, seeds and crop protection products) and the crops that smallholder farmers produce. CATALIST is establishing and/or strengthening the capacities of farmer and agro-input dealer organizations. IFDC staff is working with and through farmers’ organizations, several national and international NGOs, the private sector, donors and others to reach approximately 250,000 smallholder farmers in the three-country region.

CATALIST is reinforcing efforts that focus on high-value export commodities by intensifying the production of staple foods and livestock products for domestic and regional markets. The project is catalyzing the intensification process through the creation and/or facilitation of stakeholder platforms from the village to the national and regional levels.

CATALIST’s regional headquarters are in Kigali, Rwanda. Regional offices are located in Bujumbura, Burundi and Goma, DRC. CATALIST is also active in Tanzania and Uganda on issues related to regional trade and agricultural and environmental policies. The SEW regional office is co-located with the CATALIST office in Bujumbura.

The SEW Project

More than 90 percent of household energy in the CAGLR is currently derived from biomass. The production of energy and food are competing for the same land; this undermines the sustainability of production and rapidly degrades biodiversity in one of the world’s environmental hot spots.

The SEW project is also funded by DGIS, and has been added to the CATALIST project to speed up broad-scale agricultural intensification. SEW will benefit from the rapidly growing awareness that decreasing world food stocks and increasing food, energy and fertilizer prices are threatening stability and development while self-sufficiency for food and energy is becoming an urgent priority.

Setting up a wood product value chain for the supply of energy that is mutually beneficial to all stakeholders – including producers – will provide farmers with an incentive to boost production. Efficient value chains, designed with the support of SEW, will ensure improved availability and accessibility to wood products.

CATALIST and SEW combine intensive food crop production and production of energy-producing trees to provide long-term and sustainable solutions for a problem that is reaching alarming proportions. Indeed, because of shortages in energy sources, households find it more and more difficult to prepare sufficiently cooked meals, exposing them to various health issues and diseases linked to undercooked food.

In the three-nation region, about 85 percent of the population is rural, and farms average less than 1 hectare (ha). These farms have to feed families of five to six persons, on average. In addition, nearly 95 percent of household energy is derived from biomass (mainly wood and charcoal). Increasingly, however, energy is being derived from agricultural byproducts that would otherwise be “recycled” and returned to the soil as organic fertilizer. The decline of organic matter in the soil has drastic negative effects on nutrification and the soil’s ability to retain water. Therefore, agriculture and energy production through wood are in direct competition for land and its resources, light, nutrients and water.

Lack of public policy and/or inadequate or ineffective policies are causing a rapid decrease (more than five percent annually) of the woody cover in Burundi and Kivu (Eastern DRC). Trees are becoming rare on community land under traditional tenure. General poverty and limited law enforcement are key reasons for the anarchic exploitation of natural resources in general and forests in particular. Projects such as CATALIST and SEW will help decrease the pressure on protected land, therefore promoting conservation, while at the same time sustaining food and wood production.

In addition, success factors identified for plantations in SSA are the basis for the tree planting. These factors include the introduction of high-quality planting material, sound value chain development linking farmers to markets and successful public-private partnerships devoted to capacity-building and training. By planting 18,000 ha of trees throughout the region, this project will be a model for development that will contribute to an increased production of sustainable energy in the Albertine Rift Region.

Under proper management, combined with the implementation of adequate laws and policies, IFDC believes that tree planting will become sustainable through large-scale (well beyond 18,000 ha) planting of woodlots and/or introducing agroforestry practices that will drastically reduce the population pressure on the protected areas.

Tree planting, better use of available biomass energy and improved organization/management of the entire value chain would seem to be logical steps to end the deforestation that is occurring. All over SSA, plantations have been created since independence, often promoted and supported by international donors. Some of the many factors influencing the failure of plantations in most of SSA (including the CAGLR and the Albertine Rift area of CAGLR) are:

Dominance of the public sector without adequate policies, knowledge, experience and/or means for effective management and exploitation.
Low productivity and inherently low internal rate of return (IRR) caused by the use of unimproved germplasm, poor site selection and species/provenance matching (lack of respect for agro-ecological conditions), lack of knowledge and experience and lack of investment in maintenance and management.
Land tenure systems and property rights that are not conducive to investments in trees and land improvement.
Poorly developed and poorly functioning value chains.
Political and social unrest, leading to high transaction costs.
Poor infrastructure and high transport costs.

An element receiving rather limited attention in the above evaluation is the competition between energy production and agriculture. This goes far beyond the competition for space. When biomass is used for energy, both the organic matter and the nutrient balances of soils are directly threatened, undermining the sustainability of energy and agricultural production. The extreme slopes and high rainfall make the soils of the region very fragile. Erosion is an even larger contributor to the issues of negative organic matter and nutrient balances than the competition for space between wood and charcoal and agricultural crops. However, all are linked. Negative organic matter and nutrient balances cause decreasing soil cover and increasing erosion, while the competition for space leads to lower productivity of trees, crops and livestock.

Until alternative sources of energy are available or accessible, experiences elsewhere in the world point to only one solution: the use of added soil nutrients to increase the capacity of the land to grow more food.

The success factors identified by the evaluation of plantations in SSA are the basis of the proposed IFDC approach for tree planting. This approach will contribute to an increased production of sustainable energy in the Albertine Rift Region. Tree planting has a good chance to become sustainable.

The activities proposed by IFDC in this project will contribute to a sustainable, long-term solution to recurrent energy shortages that threaten human life as well as biodiversity in targeted areas. The private sector, starting with the farmer, will play a pivotal role as the driving force behind the program. Other stakeholders along the value chain, including public, private and civil society “players” will develop various levels of mutually beneficial partnerships in the process.

The overall objective of the project is: To improve the availability of and access to sustainable energy in the Albertine Rift that will benefit both the producer and the consumer.

To contribute to this overall objective, three specific project objectives have been formulated:

1. Increase fuel wood production through increased private investment in efficient on-farm woodlots and agroforestry;

2. Improve firewood and charcoal value chains;

3. Improve the environment to enable the development of the fuel wood sector.

The three project-specific objectives contribute to the overall objective of increased availability of and access to sustainable energy. However, the impact of this project will be broader and promote stability in a region prone to conflicts. It will also help protect the environment. As such, the development of more efficient wood production for energy will help protect the regional forests and biodiversity. It will also contribute to improved soil fertility by reducing erosion and by promoting the symbiosis between trees and crops within agroforestry systems. Finally, in combination with IFDC CATALIST, SEW helps eliminate the competition between energy and agricultural production. Demographic pressures and the overexploitation of natural resources are constant threats to social stability; this project will help achieve the objective of attaining long-term regional peace and stability.

For more information on IFDC, please visit www.ifdc.org.
For more information on the DGIS, please go to www.minbuza.nl.