Tackling food insecurity in DR Congo and Ethiopia

About 70% of Congolese people live in rural areas and directly or indirectly depend on agriculture for their income. Farmers in the Katanga region, for example, face many challenges: they often do not have access to mineral or organic fertilisers, the fertility of the soil continues to degrade, and they do not have the financial means to counter these problems, with a sometimes disastrous impact on agricultural production.

“Food security is the basis of development in DR Congo.” When Robert-Prince Mukobo tells us about his motivation to work on food security in his home country, he does not beat around the bush. “The productivity of Congolese people in all areas of life depends on their ability to be food secure.” The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations confirms that being food secure is important, as food insecurity impacts a country negatively in many ways, resulting, for example, in lower economic growth and productivity and a higher prevalence of disease.

As an agronomist, Mukobo is well-placed to function as the go-between for Congolese farmers and crop researchers. Reviewing research findings, he helps recommend food production solutions to local farmers. During his quest to improve food security in DR Congo, he has also participated in two VLIR-UOS research projects, during one of which he completed his PhD.

In 2015, Mukobo joined forces with Geert Haesaert from Ghent University as part of a VLIR-UOS TEAM project to increase farmers’ production of corn and vegetables in the Katanga and Lubumbashi region by improving soil quality. The soils in the hinterland of these regions are low in nitrogen and phosphorus, two essential nutrients for plants. Phosphorus makes the plant mature faster and is particularly important in promoting root growth. Nitrogen is even more vital to crops as it is key to plant growth, development and reproduction.

Mukobo and Haesaert aimed to increase the productivity of corn and vegetable (green beans and onion) crops by using arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) as biofertiliser.

AMF penetrate the crop plant’s roots, creating a symbiotic association that stimulates the plant’s uptake of nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen, improves the acquisition of water and increases a plant’s resistance to pathogens. The use of this fertiliser is also sustainable in the long term, as it is affordable for local farmers and they only have to apply it to the soil once to have the mycorrhiza sustain themselves afterwards. “With very small interventions, we managed to increase crop yields by 10 to 20%,” says Haesaert. “Families can produce more food, go to the market and create financial added value for their families.”

In Ethiopia, droughts and floods are a real threat to people’s food production. Farmers’ agricultural systems are rain-fed, which make harvests extremely vulnerable to changes in the frequency and intensity of droughts.

Farmland is also vulnerable to degradation. “Degradation happens when a landscape’s natural resources, such as soil, water or vegetation, decrease in quality, e.g. due to an increasing population pressure. In North Ethiopia, large-scale efforts have been able to curb this trend, but in the Southern Rift Valley there still is a lot of land degradation”, explains Karen Vancampenhout from KU Leuven. “If climate extremes such as droughts strike in healthy landscapes, they do not necessarily have a negative impact. If, however, the land and agricultural system is already degraded, an extreme drought can turn into a disaster.”

When analysing the bacterial wilt disease threatening Enset, the VLIR-UOS TEAM project researchers mainly looked at the farmers’ management practices, the properties of the soil and the agro-ecological conditions, concluding that the disease seemed to be linked to altitude and probably also to soil management. “We looked for ways to optimise the farming system so that bacterial wilt could do less damage to the harvests,” says Vancampenhout.

Addisu Fekadu clarifies how they went about tackling the other research focus: post-harvest processing.

“Traditionally, if you wanted to get food from Enset, you had to wait a minimum of two months. We succeeded in reducing the fermentation time to a few days, depending on the altitude of the area.” To optimise the fermentation process, researchers made use of so-called ‘Sauerkraut jars’ and starter cultures. ‘Good’ bacteria (the starter cultures) are deliberately added to the harvested product in airtight jars to start a fermentation process, resulting in a more homogeneous final product that could be produced more consistently. Additionally, the end product is tastier, healthier and provides more food than before, as it avoids waste of fermented Enset.