Alternative Livelihoods Component

Poverty and land degradation feed on one another in a vicious cycle. Farmers need means of growing their way out of poverty by improving their lands. This component identifies and develops more remunerative livelihood options for these poor.

The Alternative Livelihoods component:

• Fosters the use of soil-building inputs, including more efficient procurement, distribution and marketing of inputs;

• Examines ways to add value to the outputs from the farm;

• Fosters new crop product micro-enterprises;

• Increases awareness and use of indigenous dryland products;

• Improves processing and marketing strategies;

• Develops markets for non-timber forest products and other dryland products; and

• Implements pilot trials with alternative crop technologies that have proven successful.

Major recent events associated with this Component include on-the-job training in tree grafting and the African Market Garden system for four DMP partners from Kenya during 2004; and a workshop on agroforestry technologies organized by ICRAF in Mali in 2003.