Local tree knowledge can fast-track agroforestry recommendations for coffee smallholders along a climate gradient in Mount Elgon, Uganda

Gil Gram,Philippe Vaast,Laurence Jassogne,Just Van Der Wolf

doi:10.1007/s10457-017-0111-8

Abstract

Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica) is economically important for many smallholder farmers in the Mount Elgon region of East Uganda, but its production is increasingly threatened by climate change. However, ecosystem services (ES) provided by companion trees in coffee agroforestry systems (AFS) can help farmers adapt to climate change. The objectives of this research were to develop agroforestry species recommendations and tailor these to the farmers’ needs and local context, taking into consideration gender. Local knowledge of agroforestry species and ES preferences was collected through farmer interviews and rankings. Using the Bradley-Terry approach, analysis was done along an altitudinal gradient in order to study different climate change scenarios for coffee suitability. Farmers had different needs in terms of ES and tree species at different altitudes, e.g. at low altitude they need a relatively larger set of ES to sustain their coffee production and livelihood. Local knowledge is found to be gender blind as no differences were observed in the rankings of species and ES by men and women. Ranking species by ES and ranking ES by preference is a useful method to help scientists and extension agents to use local knowledge for the development of recommendations on companion trees in AFS for smallholder farmers.

Highlights

Coffee is one of the major cash crops for many smallholder farmers in the East African highlands
This analysis showed that only two significantly different groups of ranking estimates were identified for both WCSB and CLR, whereby Cordia africana, A. coriaria, and Ficus mucuso represented the first group, and all the others species were found in the second group
This means that except for these three highest ranked species, there was no consensus in the rankings of the other species for these two locally important P&D and confirms that local knowledge about specific companion tree species and their relationships to coffee P&D dynamics is scarce as explained by Liebig et al (2016)

Summary

Introduction

Coffee is one of the major cash crops for many smallholder farmers in the East African highlands. Drought and high temperatures are the major climatic limitations for Arabica coffee production in East Africa. These climatic conditions are expected to be more frequent with climate change, which already impacted Ugandan coffee sector, and is reducing the area suitable for coffee production (Bunn et al 2015b; Jaramillo et al 2011). With coffee-growing altitudes ranging from 1000 masl to over 2000 masl, the Mt. Elgon region can be used as a field laboratory to anticipate climate change and evaluate its impact on coffee, as suitable areas will shift upwards with time (Bunn et al 2015a, b; Laderach et al 2011)

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