Abstract
Food and nutrition security (FNS) rests on five pillars: availability, access, utilization, stability, and sovereignty. We assessed the potentials of local agroforestry practices (AFPs) for enabling FNS for smallholders in the Yayu Biosphere Reserve (southwestern Ethiopia). Data was collected from 300 households in a stratified random sampling scheme through semi-structured interviews and farm inventory. Utility, edibility, and marketability value were the key parameters used to determine the potential of plants in the AFPs. Descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and correlation analysis were employed to determine the form, variation, and association of local AFP attributes. Homegarden, multistorey-coffee-system, and multipurpose-trees-on-farmlands are the predominant AFPs in Yayu. Multipurpose-trees-on-farmlands are used mainly for food production, multistorey-coffee-system for income-generation, and homegarden for both. The 127 useful plant species identified represent 10 major plant utility groups, with seven (food, fodder, fuel, coffee-shade, timber, non-timber-forest-products, and medicinal uses) found in all three AFPs. In total, 80 edible species were identified across all AFPs, with 55 being primarily cultivated for household food supply. Generally, household income emanates from four major sources, multistorey-coffee-system (60%), homegarden (18%), multipurpose-trees-on-farmlands (13%), and off-farm activities (11%). Given this variation in form, purpose, and extracted benefits, existing AFPs in Yayu support the FNS of smallholders in multiple ways.
Highlights
In the last four decades, agroforestry has been promoted as an option to address poverty and food insecurity, as well as to enhance the adaptability of small-scale farmers to social-ecological hazards [1,2,3,4,5]
The area was registered by UNESCO in 2010 as a environmental conservation makes the system one of the best performing traditional agroforestry biosphere the in situ conservation of wild
The three major agroforestry practices (AFPs), i.e., HG, MCS, and MTF, have their own primary production purposes and specific management, which enable smallholder farm households to diversify their production across the year
Summary
In the last four decades, agroforestry has been promoted as an option to address poverty and food insecurity, as well as to enhance the adaptability of small-scale farmers to social-ecological hazards [1,2,3,4,5]. For the former, its potential relies on its contribution to the strengthening of the five pillars of food and nutrition security (FNS): availability, access, utilization, stability, and sovereignty (Figure 1). Examples in local contexts are: (i) the presence of perennial staple food species in the system, like Ensete ventricosum, Musa spp., Moringa stenopetala, or Manihot esculenta, which ensure the availability of food [6,7,8,9]; (ii) the presence of species that secure cash to farming households, which directly enhance their access to market-based foods, as is the case of Coffea arabica or Theobroma cacao [10,11]; (iii) the utilization of dimension often enhanced via a diversity of species that offer scarce
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