FAO in Madagascar, Comoros, Mauritius and Seychelles

Enhancing rural livelihoods and agriculture productivity through agroforestry development in Mauritius

FAO 2019, Mauritius
02/07/2019

Enhancing rural livelihoods and agriculture productivity through agroforestry development in Mauritius

A national action plan and programme for the upscaling agroforestry in underutilized / abandoned agricultural land will be developed and implemented

 

02 July 2019, Mauritius – An inception workshop is held today to introduce the new project on agroforestry to stakeholders in Mauritius, to identify and understand gaps and issues to support the project’s implementation, and to agree on activities to be undertaken and project deliverables, and time schedule in a consultative manner.

The Government of Mauritius has requested assistance from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) for promoting and developing agroforestry sector in the country, to which the FAO responded through provision of a Technical Cooperation Project (TCP). The project will raise awareness and build capacity for the promotion and adoption of agroforestry, build knowledge on the status of underutilised and abandoned agricultural land which could made available for agroforestry expansion, develop and demonstrate agroforestry technologies/options at various demonstration farm/sites, develop a National Action Plan and programme for the upscaling agroforestry in underutilised/abandoned agricultural land in the country.

 

Promote agroforestry enterprises

The project will explore opportunity of small growers and develop agroforestry value chain, whereby activities such as labelling of local/organic agroforestry products could be connected with market such as hotels, restaurants and local retailers.  Larger establishments and land owners may favorably see opportunity to invest directly in agroforestry production; this could be true in view of the limited land base. Hence, the project interventions could in some extent focus to high value agroforestry commodities that could be either exported or sold locally (such as passions fruits, vanilla, cloves, ylang-ylang, and others). 

At present some forms of Agro-forestry are present in Mauritius in the form of deer ranching within the forests, orchards on previous agricultural lands and some remnants of backyard groves, and the Ministry of Agro Industry and Food Security has been working to encourage different forms of gardening at household level with limited levels of success and very often the objectives have not been well defined and thus efforts have been short-lived.

 

It is expected that the proposed agroforestry development will contribute to food and nutritional security, sustains livelihoods, alleviates poverty, and promotes productive and resilient cropping environments. It will also contribute towards increasing biodiversity, protecting water resources reducing erosion and climate change resilience.

 

“Agroforestry is definitely an avenue which I invite not only the Government, but also the private sector to explore in order to innovate agriculture in Mauritius and increase production of high value crops and agricultural commodities”, said the Minister of agro-Industry and Food Security. Moreover, the Deputy FAO Representative highlighted that “emphasis on underutilized and abandoned land through real implementation or piloting of income generation on the ground, should improve land productivity and crop production.”