1. World Congress on Agroforestry 2014
– Side Events on EverGreen agriculture
Network
• Updates from Southern Africa on the
EverGreen Agriculture Network in Southern
Africa.
• BLEANSA - Building a Large EverGreen
Agriculture Network for Southern Africa.

2. The BLEANSA Project
• 2-year project funded by FICA
• Funding covers networking costs and some initial
seeding money for Research & Development
• Currently active membership drawn from Malawi,
Mozambique, Botswana and South Africa
• Members are Government (Dept. of Agric. and
Natural Resources R & D), NGOs, Universities
• We plan to expand to other countries (ZM,
Lesotho) as funding improves.

3. The BLEANSA Network Objectives
• To create a network of organisations for coordination of research
and development EverGreen Agriculture and Agroforestry.
• To review experiences gained from past research, refine and
optimize EverGreen Agriculture, distil the experiences into policy
recommendations, and share them widely.
• To sensitize policy makers to develop policies which facilitate the
wide-scale promotion and adoption of EverGreen Agriculture;
• To mobilize extension staff, farmers and other land users and scale-
up EverGreen Agriculture in southern Africa.
• To investigate and pilot alternative farm income streams from trees
to optimise the economic, environmental and social outcomes of
the various EverGreen Agriculture packages.
• To build the R&D capacity of the national institutions (including
tertiary institutions) in EverGreen Agriculture.

4. EverGreen Agriculture

5. Leaf or Pod Meal stored
in bags

6. Mopane worm Farming

7. Progress
• We have had 2 Project Steering Committee (PSC)
meetings; the last was in Maputo last month.
• Among the key outcomes of the 2nd PSC meeting
was to identify potentially fundable project
proposals on EverGreen Agriculture as part of the
fundraising strategy.
• The 1-page proposals will be ready by the end of
mid March 2003.
• The proposals will be on:-

8. Potentially fundable proposals under
development cover:
• Improving tree fodder production in drylands
• Developing principles and practices underpinning
Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) in
both Crop fields and range/grazing lands
• Improving tree establishment in dryland areas,
• Improving the availability of high quality planting
material for fruit trees to smallholder farmers
• Improving soil fertility to stabilize crop yields in
dryland areas.

9. Progress cont’d
• The website for the network was developed
and is now operational. The website address is
www.BLEANSA.Net. Further improvements to
the website will be made whenever
substantial suggestions are made by network
members.
• South Africa (Limpopo Province) successfully
established a National Evergreen Agriculture
Action Network (NEACNs).

10. The Challenge!
• How do we balance the needs and
expectations of the Network member
considering their diversity (especially in
resources)

11. Thank you!