Agroforestry World
Keith Shepherd
Keith D. Shepherd is Principal Soil Scientist and Leader of the Science Domain on Land Health Decisions at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Nairobi, Kenya; and co-leads Information Systems in the Research Programme on Water, Land & Ecosystems of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)
Portuguese explorers began mapping the African coastline in the 15th century in an effort to dominate the international spice trade. Those early maps, though crude, had a profound effect on Africa’s history and the wellbeing of her people....
Global food and development policies are increasingly being supported by crop models, but current modelling approaches are unfit for this purpose. The models in use, many of which were developed in the 1970s and 1980s for high-input monoculture...
Research in agriculture seeks to generate new approaches or technologies that can be used to make a difference in farmers’ lives, and for the broader society. Well-designed technologies can have major positive impacts, as well as providing evidence...
Soil is the foundation of agriculture and food production. It is essential to the healthy functioning of ecosystems; storing and filtering water, providing resilience to drought and storing carbon. Yet soil degradation is widespread across the globe, occurring...
Never in the history of humankind has so much data been available; from research and surveillance data to crowd-sourced and citizen data, a staggering and growing number of digital datasets are available, often free online. But according to...
It is true that the functions that soils provide and their degradation are not very visible to the public – what is happening to the soil underfoot is not as visible as say smog due to atmospheric pollution, or algal blooms caused by excess nutrients entering our water bodies.
A healthy soil is one that can deliver the benefits, or ecosystem services, that we all depend on. Until recently, limited knowledge about soil health and degradation has been standing in the way of effective policies and interventions....
Authors: Eike Luedeling, Lutz Göhring, Keith Shepherd Big decisions with limited information Deciding on big issues without enough information has just gotten a little bit easier. This step forward is facilitated by the release of the decisionSupport R...
By Keith Shepherd A big, risky decision for smallholder farmers is what type and how much fertilizer to apply to their crops. There is lot of uncertainty about how the crops will respond, with a risk that the...
More than 400 participants from 38 countries are gathered in Malawi’s capital Lilongwe on the opening day of the Beating Famine Southern Africa conference, a four-day event that is tackling the region’s widespread crisis of land degradation. “What...
By Keith Shepherd The United Nations (UN) General Assembly has proclaimed 2015 as both the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (IYL 2015) and the International Year of Soils (IYS). The UN has also recognized December 5th,...
A gathering of experts organized by the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment: Rapid Assessment argues that the management and amount of carbon in soils is critical to our wellbeing Carbon stored in soil in the form...
Co-written by Todd Rosenstock and Kate Tully. Supplementing soils in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with nitrogen (N), an essential plant nutrient, through inorganic or organic fertilizers is essential for maintaining and increasing crop production, which is directly linked to...
World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) scientist Bertin Takoutsing has been nominated to an advisory board of the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS). He will serve on the board of the union’s commission on pedometrics. Bertin, an engineering graduate...