The communities Biowatch is engaged with are located in Umkhanyakude and Zululand District Municipalities in northern Kwazulu-Natal, in the south-east of South Africa.

The initiative is focused around smallholder family farmers, self-organised as local farmer groups. The farmers implement a number of inter-linked agroecological practices which build new knowledge on the basis of experimentation and traditional and indigenous knowledge of farming, seed and food.

The farmers practice agroecological principles :

• building soil fertility through various forms of composting and bio-fertilisation;

• water and soil conservation measures including mulching, swales (earth bunds) and soak pits;

• pest management through building soil health, repelling pests with strong smelling plants and teas and diversifying production systems by inter-cropping;

• saving and bulking seeds of traditional and indigenous African crops;

• advocating agroecology and farmer-led seed systems.

The main elements of the typical family farm blend traditional homestead planning with agroecological innovation: The household vegetable garden, Rain-fed field food plots with crop rotations, Dedicated seed plot, Household seed bank, Indigenous wild fruit and cultivated fruits, Forage for animals, Insect barriers and refuge for pest predators, Animal kraals.

At least 2,300 people in these farming households are directly benefiting from agroecology through increased food security and nutrition. The participating households have created a network of homesteads that demonstrate resilient agroecology-in-action that is constantly responding to the context, adapting and improving, providing firm evidence that agroecology works to improve livelihoods and the environment.

The farming systems of the participating farmers are more resilient because of the focus of agroecological practices on building healthy soil and conserving and recycling available resources including biomass and water. Healthy, mulched soils are porous and able to hold the scarce rain whilst also nurturing healthier plants that are better able to withstand climate shocks and pest outbreaks.

Some of the innovations that have been added to the traditional practices include: the addition of legumes in the inter-cropping system that provide extra biomass and nitrogen; accessible and locallyadaptable techniques for producing fermented biological soil amendments and pest protection; construction of swales and planting basins ; improvements in the harvesting, selection and storage of seed of well-adapted, open pollinated crop varieties.

This factsheet is produced within the framework of the Avaclim project, which aims to create the necessary conditions for the deployment of agroecology in drylands. The international solidarity association CARI coordinates the Avaclim project while Environmental Monitoring Group (EMG) is in charge of its implementation in South Africa.