Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM)
ISFM is a set of agricultural practices considered as a single unit consisting of the integrated application of mineral and organic fertilizers, use of improved resilient crop varieties and improved agricultural practices, and adapted to local conditions (Vanlauwe et al.,2010; 2015). This agricultural practice is being considered by the COINS project (Co-developing innovations for sustainable land management in West African smallholder farming systems) which is one of the 5 regional projects supported by the INTERFACES project (Supporting Pathways to Sustainable Land Management in Africa). The COINS project goal is to scale ISFM up in 3 districts (Savelugu, Tolon, and Mion) in Northern Ghana. COINS project defines ISFM in these 3 districts as the use of improved germplasms of maize and soybean, organic fertilizer, inorganic fertilizer, crop rotation, and minimum or zero tillage.
The Horticultural Science group at the University of Bonn will contribute to the INTERFACES project by creating an impact pathway and forecast the impact of ISFM in Northern Ghana. This will be done using the group's Decision analysis approach which will be based on holistic systems understanding to support decision-making on sustainable land management in Northern Ghana (Luedeling et al., 2023).
In this repository a holistic model will be developed, translating a conceptual model to a mathematical model. The model incorporates the benefits, the costs, and the risks related to ISFM on a maize-soybean rotation system. The benefits are associated with the 5 indicators of the Sustainable Intensification Assessment Framework (SIAF) which are productivity, economic, environmental, human condition, and social domains (Musumba et al., 2017). The productivity domain will look at the yield of the associated crops, the economic will focus on the monetary return of the system, the human domain will assess the impact on nutrition and food security, the social domain will focus on gender, while the environmental domain will assess the impact on soil fertility (Kihara et al., 2022).
** Conceptual model of cost-benefit analysis incorporating risk factors for ISFM in Northern Ghana. **
The conceptual model depicts an impact pathway of 5 ISFM components (from a few components toward complete ISFM with 5 components as adapted by Vanlauwe et al. (2010)). The numbers define the components.
** REFERENCES **
- Musumba, M., Grabowski, P., Palm, C., & Snapp, S. (2017). Guide for the Sustainable Intensification Assessment Framework (SSRN Scholarly Paper 3906994). https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3906994
- Luedeling, E., Goehring, L., Schiffers, K., Whitney, C., & Fernandez, E. (2023). decisionSupport: Quantitative Support of Decision Making under Uncertainty (1.113) [Computer software]. https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/decisionSupport/index.html
- Kihara, J., Manda, J., Kimaro, A., Swai, E., Mutungi, C., Kinyua, M., Okori, P., Fischer, G., Kizito, F., & Bekunda, M. (2022). Contributions of integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) to various sustainable intensification impact domains in Tanzania. Agricultural Systems, 203, 103496. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2022.103496
- Vanlauwe, B., Descheemaeker, K., Giller, K. E., Huising, J., Merckx, R., Nziguheba, G., Wendt, J., & Zingore, S. (2015). Integrated soil fertility management in sub-Saharan Africa: Unravelling local adaptation. SOIL, 1(1), 491–508. https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-1-491-2015