Bioversity scientist Charles Staver shares lessons learned from multi-strata coffee and banana management in Central America. Find out more about our work on agroforestry: www.bioversityinternational.org/research-portfolio/

1. Smallholder multi-strata coffee/banana farm
management under pressure: Contributions from
resilience analysis
Charles Staver,.Pablo Siles, German Calberto

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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

3. Farmer technology
Rapid shade
Easy to manage
Food feed
Crop residue
Soil cover
Regular monthly income

4. 4

5. 5
Farmers and scientists prototype agroecological intensification

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Better prices for banana – farmer initiatives
Now 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

11. - Trends and unpredictability influencing farms
Resilience framework:
Possible contributions to research for
smallholder multi-stata farm management
- Framework at farm household level - SES

12. Trends - climate change
Implications for coffee, trees: critical high temperatures
**

13. Trends – regulations and standards
Implications farm – admin time, skills, technology
Certifications???
Regulations???
EnvironmentLabor Safety

14. Implications for coffee, trees, bananas, food crops, etc
Unpredictability - Weather

15. Unpredictability - Weather
Implications for coffee, trees, bananas, food crops, etc

16. Unpredictability: Pest and disease outbreaks
Coffee rust
in 2013
?????????
Levels previous years?
Weather data?
Who escaped?

17. 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?

18. 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

19. 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

20. Understory crops – redundancy / modularity?
Species, associations, mgmt:
Coffee cultivars:
tolerance/quality
Shade tolerant
food crops
Crops for Gaps
in coffee canopy
Edge
planting

21. 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”

24. www.bioversityinternational.org
Thank you
Merci beaucoup
Muchas gracias