Frédéric Baudron is a Senior Scientist working for the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (Cirad), based in Montpellier, France. Prior to this, he was a Principal Scientist working for the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) based first in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (from 2011 to 2016) and later in Harare, Zimbabwe (from 2016 to 2023).
Trained as a tropical agronomist in France, he specialized as a livestock scientist and started his career with a focus on the interface between people (mainly farmers) and wildlife in Zimbabwe (and neighboring countries). He then carried his PhD on plant production systems at the University of Wageningen (The Netherlands).
He has been involved in a number of research projects in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe. He has 23 years of experience developing solutions with and for smallholders in East and Southern Africa.
PhD in Production Ecology and Resource Conservation, 2011
Wageningen University, The Netherlands
Diploma of Specialized Agronomy (Master of Science) in Livestock Science, 2001
AgroParisTech, France
Diploma of General Agronomy, 2000
SupAgro Montpellier, France
90%
70%
60%
30%
30%
70%
70%
80%
50%
The project ‘Harnessing Appropriate-scale Farm mechanization In Zimbabwe’ (HAFIZ) aims to support investments by the Government and by the private sector in appropriate-scale farm mechanization in Zimbabwe, particularly around mechanized Pfumvudza, and transfer learnings to South Africa.
The Republic of Congo envisions to diversify its economy by developing environmentally friendly farming, to contribute to food self-sufficiency and to improve the living standards of the population. Fulfilling this objective requires guidance for the spatial allocation of agricultural activities, conservation areas and infrastructures, in order to minimize trade-offs between productivity, economic profitability, biodiversity conservation, and other sectors of activity such as mining, forestry, while acknowledging the economic development goal of Congo, requiring new roads, industries transformation, and social infrastructure.
The Driving agroecological transitions in the humid tropics of Central and Eastern Africa through traNsdisciplinary Agroecology Living LabS (CANALLS) project, funded by the European Union (2022-2026), aims at driving agroecological transitions in the humid tropics of Central and Eastern Africa via 8 ‘Agroecology Living Labs’ located in DRC, Burundi, Cameroon and Rwanda.
Agroecology is an approach to food production that harnesses nature’s goods and services whilst minimizing adverse environmental impacts, and improves farmer-consumer connectivity, knowledge co-creation and inclusive relationships among food system actors.
With an estimated 15% of all agricultural soils in Africa being affected, soil acidity is a major constraint to (current and future) crop production on the continent. As a response, several governments in East Africa - including Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda - have initiated strategic plans toward substantial public investments for the rehabilitation of acid soils.
The objectives of the project ‘Addressing malnutrition with biofortified maize in Zimbabwe; from crop management to policy and consumers’ are 1) to evaluate the new pro-vitamin A (PVA) lines in Zimbabwe under different agronomic practices to gain knowledge on the combination of bio + agronomic fortification, 2) to determine the actual nutrient content of the new PVA lines in farmers' fields with different fertility status, and 3) to predict the dietary mineral supply at regional level with and without bio + agronomic fortification.
The objective of the ‘LIvestock Production System’ (LIPS) project is to improve productivity and climate relevance of livestock-based production systems in Zimbabwe’s agro-ecological regions IV and V through increased adoption of climate relevant innovations in livestock-based production systems, and increased capacity to implement surveillance and control of productivity diseases.
The ‘Sustainable Intensification of Smallholder Farming Systems’ (SIFAZ) project aims at sustainably intensifying current smallholder farming systems affected by soil degradation, fertility decline and climate change with improved technologies and scaling approaches to increase productivity, income and facilitate commercial orientation of smallholder farmers while maintaining environmental resilience of the natural resource base for sustainable production in the targeted production systems.
The goal of the project ‘Validating Agro-ecological Control Options for Fall Armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda J.E. Smith) in Zimbabwe’ is to reduce the negative impact of fall armyworm on food security and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe, by giving them more control options, based on the principles of agro-ecological management.
The ‘Programme on Growth & Resilience’ (PROGRESS) was implemented from 2017 to 2020 in Eastern Zimbabwe. It used a multi-tiered approach to address key causes of rural household vulnerability, improving the absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacities of at least 20,000 households in Nyanga and Beitbridge Districts.
The objective of the ‘Enhancing Smallholder Wheat Productivity through Sustainable Intensification of Wheat-based Farming Systems in Rwanda and Zambia’ (SWPSI) project is to establish the potential of smallholder wheat production to increase food security and reduce wheat import bills in Rwanda and Zambia, and to draw lessons to inform wheat sector development for scaling-up of initiatives to increase wheat farm productivity.
The aim of the ‘The New Agrarian Change’ project, implemented from 2014 to 2016, was to use an integrated landscape approach to explore the livelihood and food security implications of land-use change and agrarian change processes in multi-functional landscapes, focusing on the experiences of six landscapes that exhibit various combinations of agricultural modification, productivity, changing forest cover or forest use, and integration with global commodity markets.
The aim of the ‘Farm Mechanisation and Conservation Agriculture for Sustainable Intensification’ (FACASI) project, implemented from 2013 to 2017 in Kenya and in Tanzania, and from 2014 to 2019 in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, was to identify appropriate small-scale machines (in particular two-wheel tractors and their ancillary equipment) to improve farming practices (in particular crop establishment through direct seeding), and the commercial mechanisms needed to deliver these to smallholder farmers.
The aim of the ‘Improving Sustainable Productivity in Farming Systems and Enhanced Livelihoods through Adoption of Evergreen Agriculture in Eastern Africa’ (Trees4Food) project, implemented from 2012 to 2017, was to enhance food security for resource-poor rural people in Eastern Africa through research that underpins national programmes to scale up the use of trees within farming systems in Ethiopia and Rwanda and then scale out successes to relevant agro-ecological zones in Uganda and Burundi.
The aim of the project ‘Enhancing total farm productivity in smallholder conservation agriculture based systems in eastern Africa.’ (FACASI) project, implemented from 2010 to 2014 in Ethiopia and Kenya, was to develop sustainable systems and reduce the competition for crop residues between livestock and soil quality.
Background. Evidence of the effectiveness of biofortified maize with higher provitamin A (PVA) to address vitamin A deficiency in rural Africa remains scant. Objectives: This study projects the impact of adopting PVA maize for a diversity of households in an area typical of rural Zimbabwe and models the cost and composition of diets adequate in vitamin A. Methods. Household-level weighed food records were generated from 30 rural households during a week in April and November 2021. Weekly household intakes were calculated, as well as indicative costs of diets using data from market surveys. The impact of PVA maize adoption was modeled assuming all maize products contained observed vitamin A concentrations. The composition and cost of the least expensive indicative diets adequate in vitamin A were calculated using linear programming. Results. Very few households would reach adequate intake of vitamin A with the consumption of PVA maize. However, from a current situation of 33%, 50%–70% of households were projected to reach =< 50% of their requirements (the target of PVA), even with the modest vitamin A concentrations achieved on-farm (mean of 28.3 μg RAE per 100 g). This proportion would increase if higher concentrations recorded on-station were achieved. The estimated daily costs of current diets (mean +/- standard deviation) were USD 1.43 +/- 0.59 in the wet season and USD 0.96 +/- 0.40 in the dry season. By comparison, optimization models suggest that diets adequate in vitamin A could be achieved at daily costs of USD 0.97 and USD 0.79 in the wet and dry seasons, respectively. Conclusions. The adoption of PVA maize would bring a substantial improvement in vitamin A intake in rural Zimbabwe but should be combined with other interventions (e.g., diet diversification) to fully address vitamin A deficiency.
Can farmers in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) boost crop yields and improve food availability without using more mineral fertilizer? This question has been at the center of lively debates among the civil society, policy-makers, and in academic editorials. Proponents of the “yes” answer have put forward the “input reduction” principle of agroecology, i.e. by relying on agrobiodiversity, recycling and better efficiency, agroecological practices such as the use of legumes and manure can increase crop productivity without the need for more mineral fertilizer. We reviewed decades of scientific literature on nutrient balances in SSA, biological nitrogen fixation of tropical legumes, manure production and use in smallholder farming systems, and the environmental impact of mineral fertilizer. Our analyses show that more mineral fertilizer is needed in SSA for five reasons; (i) the starting point in SSA is that agricultural production is “agroecological” by default, that is, very low mineral fertilizer use, widespread mixed crop-livestock systems and large crop diversity including legumes, but leading to poor soil fertility as a result of widespread soil nutrient mining, (ii) the nitrogen needs of crops cannot be adequately met solely through biological nitrogen fixation by legumes and recycling of animal manure, (iii) other nutrients like phosphorus and potassium need to be replaced continuously, (iv) mineral fertilizers, if used appropriately, cause little harm to the environment, and (v) reducing the use of mineral fertilizers would hamper productivity gains and contribute indirectly to agricultural expansion and to deforestation. Yet, the agroecological principles directly related to soil fertility—recycling, efficiency, diversity—remain key in improving soil health and nutrient-use efficiency, and are critical to sustaining crop productivity in the long run. We argue for a nuanced position that acknowledges the critical need for more mineral fertilizers in SSA, in combination with the use of agroecological practices and adequate policy support.
Farm typologies are often used to reduce the complexity in categorising diverse farming systems, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The resulting typologies can then be used in multiple ways including designing efficient sampling schemes that capture the diversity in smallholder farms, prescribing the selection of certain farm types to which interventions can be targeted or upscaled, or to give context into derived relationships. However, the construction of farm typologies consists of many subjective decisions that are not always obvious or evident to the end-user. By developing a generalized framework for constructing farm typologies, we clarify where these subjective decisions are and quantify the impact they have on the resulting typologies. Further, this framework has been encapsulated in the open source RShiny App: TypologyGenerator to enable users to focus on the decisions and not the underlying implementation.
There is an urgent need for agricultural development strategies that reconcile agricultural production and biodiversity conservation. This is especially true in the Global South where population growth is rapid and much of the world’s remaining biodiversity is located. Combining conceptual thoughts with empirical insights from case studies in Indonesia and Ethiopia, we argue that such strategies will have to pay more attention to agri- cultural labour dynamics. Farmers have a strong motivation to reduce the heavy toil associated with farming by adopting technologies that save labour but can negatively affect biodiversity. Labour constraints can also prevent farmers from adopting technologies that improve biodiversity but increase labour intensity. Without explicitly accounting for labour issues, conservation efforts can hardly be successful. We hence highlight the need for biodiversity-smart agriculture, that is farming practices or systems that reconcile biodiversity with land and labour productivity. Our empirical insights suggest that technological and institutional options to reconcile farmers' socio-economic goals and biodiversity conservation exist but that more needs to be done to implement such options at scale.