Smallholder multi-strata coffee/banana farm

management under pressure: Contributions from

resilience analysisCharles Staver,.Pablo Siles, German Calberto

2

Bananas in coffee fields (ha)

Mexico 75000

Guatemala 43000

El Salvador 30000

Honduras 84000

Nicaragua 35000

Costa Rica 7000

TOTAL 255,000

Bananas in coffee with trees in Mesoamerica

Other countries LAC and Africa: Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia,

Venezuela, Republica Dominicana, Haiti, Peru, Cameroon, Tanzania,

Guinea Conakry, Ghana, Uganda

Farmer technology

Rapid shade

Easy to manage

Food feed

Crop residue

Soil cover

Regular monthly income

4

5

Farmers and scientists prototype agroecological intensification

7

8

9

10

Better prices for banana – farmer initiativesNow Before

Volume 2,206 356 sacos

Sale price 28 70

Gross Income 61,768 24,951

Marketing Costs 22,060 12,104

Net Income 39,708 12,847

Increased income 3 veces

Before

Now

Steps:

- Reconnaissance of possible markets

by farmer commission;

- ID of promising options grower group

- Feasibility study of alternative options

- Pilot marketing and expansion

- Trends and unpredictability influencing farms

Resilience framework:

Possible contributions to research for

smallholder multi-stata farm management

- Framework at farm household level - SES

Trends - climate change

Implications for coffee, trees: critical high temperatures

**

Trends – regulations and standards

Implications farm – admin time, skills, technology

Certifications???

Regulations???

EnvironmentLabor Safety

Implications for coffee, trees, bananas, food crops, etc

Unpredictability - Weather

Unpredictability - Weather

Implications for coffee, trees, bananas, food crops, etc

Unpredictability: Pest and disease outbreaks

Coffee rust

in 2013

?????????

Levels previous years?

Weather data?

Who escaped?

Unpredictability: Prices – coffee, inputs, food

0

30

60

90

120

150

180

80 82 84 86 88 90 92 94 96 98

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Unpredictability: Prices – inputs, food ????

Unpredictability: WHAT COMBINATIONS?

Frameworks at farm household level - SES

Moderate/extreme events

•RESIST

•ABSORB (bend/not break)

•RECOVER

System resilience

•REDUNDANCIES

•MODULARITY

•FEEDBACK LOOPS

RESEARCH DIMENSIONS:

Tree strata: from static to dynamic

Crop cultivars, associations and mgmt

Water for resistance, bend/not break, recovery

Household decisionmaking – feedback loops

More than any tree for climate change???

Species, associations, mgmt:

- phenology and microenvironment

- relative water use coffee

- nutrient cycling, N fixation

- response to pruning

- Fruit, timber, fodder etc

Dynamic mgmt – thinning, replanting, pruning

Understory crops – redundancy / modularity?

Species, associations, mgmt:

Coffee cultivars:

tolerance/quality

Shade tolerant food crops

Crops for Gaps

in coffee canopy

Edge

planting

Water for resistance, recovery, resilience?

Issues:

- seasonality

- year to year

- quality, quantity

- where on-farm

- local watersheds

multi-farm

Examples:

- household domestic use

- coffee processing

- banana post-harvest

- nurseries

- supplementary irrigation

- maximum infiltration

soil storage, soil protection

- drainage, excess

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FEEDBACK LOOPS: Primary herbivores

Management team: Agroecological intensification:

- Agroecological reasoning

- Routine data taking, observation linked to decision making

- Cost accounting and marginal returns

- Social capital linked to landscape, megadata analysis

- Planning for the next generation

Transformation: “continual improvement”

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