Logic Sithole is food security and livelihoods manager at Nutrition Action Zimbabwe. She is managing the REDAA-supported project 'Community-led adaptation of ‘Farming with alternative pollinators’ as an approach for ecosystem restoration, improved household nutrition outcomes and climate resilience' in Zimbabwe.
The project title talks about ‘alternative’ pollinators. What are the usual pollinators and why are these alternative?
Normally you find that bees are the most common pollinators – honey bees specifically – and farmers are keen to try beekeeping because they know they will get honey alongside pollination benefits. But now there are not enough honey bees to pollinate all the crops – there’s a reduction in bee numbers and other pollinators because of unsustainable farming practices and the effects of climate change.
To counter this, we want to promote wild ‘alternative’ pollinators: not only honey bees but different types of bee – mining bees, carpenter bees (found in wood and logs), the sweat bee and the leafcutter bee – and beetles, flies, ants, butterflies, moths and wasps.
Farmers treat some of these wild pollinators as enemies, so their existence is threatened. Our programme wants to change that.
You say that low agricultural production and the impacts of climate change are leading smallholder farmers towards unsustainable practices, such as deforestation. Are they doing that to increase the land they can plant?
Yes, that’s the main reason. There is an increase in population so farmers are expanding agricultural land to plant crops; other factors include the issue of fuel where wood is the main resource for cooking in communal areas. And smallholder farmers are experiencing low production and productivity because of climate change and poor soils, so are thinking ‘I get two bags of maize from this land, if I plant more land, maybe I’ll get more’. But this doesn’t address the main productivity issue – what is causing the low yield per unit area. We need to promote sustainable practices to ensure more yield is realised on the same amount of land.
What kind of pollinator-attracting plants do you plant? And are plants enough or do you need trees as well?
We need plants and trees. We plant crops that rely on pollinators – crops that cannot self-pollinate and require animal pollination.
When we implemented the pilot on Farming with alternative pollinators, we had the main crop and other crops planted around the main crop. For example, the farmers planted crops such as tomatoes, which require animal pollination, and then planted other crops that attract pollinators around the tomatoes – these are referred to as Marketable Habitat Enhancement Plants (MHEPs). They can attract pollinators and can be sold for extra income. An example of MHEPs might be herbs and spices. Coriander, for instance, is very good at attracting many pollinators.
Other examples would be pumpkins, watermelons, cucumber, okra, sunflower, butternut, mustard rape and fruit such as plums, apples, strawberries, fodder crops like moringa, white and red clover and flowers such as lilies and marigolds.
In this REDAA-funded project, we are trying to help farmers to adapt this concept to suit their needs and context. Encouraging them to let wild fruits and flowering plants grow around their fields and not to remove them, thinking they are weeds.
How does better crop pollination lead to better crop produce and quality?
Many crops rely on pollinators to carry the male part of plants (pollen) to the female part of the plant (ovary). So if there’s not enough pollination, it may result in deformed fruits and vegetables or aborted fruits. For example, deformed cucumbers rather than smooth cucumbers, which are not attractive to sell or eat.
The quality of crop pollination affects taste, smoothness, colour and shelf life.
Can you tell me more about how technical skills building is helping ecosystem restoration? Or is it more about building climate resilience?
It’s both. We are promoting good agricultural practices and soil and water conservation. Promoting reforestation, increased plant and tree diversity and discouraging the use of inorganic fertilisers, which threaten the survival of pollinators and other organisms.
Good agricultural practices contribute to pollinator survival and ecosystem restoration; promoting the survival of soil organisms, and animals and improving biodiversity in crop and tree production. This improves the ecosystem services for humans.
Water conservation and water harvesting techniques being implemented are helping to recharge the water table.
Soil conservation – trying to reduce soil loss through run-off and being washed away to rivers – is contributing to less soil erosion and less siltation of rivers and dams. We’re also trying to reduce water flow, to prevent gullies forming – that’s environmental reclamation.
Farmers are experiencing the negative effects of climate change, so we are trying to strengthen their resilience so that if there is drought, they will have something even if some crops are affected. That’s where water harvesting is vital. There will always be some level of water supply. Crops equal income, equals food security and better nutrition.
Additionally, we are also encouraging carbon sequestration when we reforest, which overall, reduces agriculture’s contribution to climate change.
How long will it take to make a significant difference to the landscape using this approach? And do you have to convince the communities that this approach is better than using fertiliser and cutting down trees?
Local stakeholders and communities fully support this approach as they realise its benefits. If we look at agroecology, our traditional practices supported that. It’s the new ways that are destructive.
We had focus group discussions with communities at the beginning to understand the poor environmental and agricultural practices. We wanted to see the reasons for the challenges, and for people to see for themselves that some of the practices they use are causing the problems.
Now we are talking about pollination, preserving pollinators, biodiversity and the environment in general and communities are enthusiastic to do as much as possible. We’re seeing others outside the project copying what the project participants are doing. They are learning by sharing and seeing.
We’re hoping to assess how long it takes to make a difference through the three-year REDAA project.
Is this approach being used anywhere else in Zimbabwe?
It’s a new approach in Zimbabwe, the pilot was only in 2022-2023. Now we are doing it again under the REDAA project. We are in three districts – the two pilot districts plus the one additional district covered in the current project – and we are working as much as possible to document the experience. We’ll produce learning papers, and we’re already lining up district and national level conferences because we want to disseminate the learning as much as possible.
We’re involving the government in coordinating across local communities and we want them to disseminate the information across the country at every level. We may be able to influence policy change and the curriculum of colleges for agricultural extension workers.