Soil Fertility Stewardship Project (PAGRIS)

General

The Projet d’Appui pour une Gestion Responsable et Intégrée des Sols (PAGRIS) is a four-year project (March 2020 – February 2024) funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Burundi. PAGRIS seeks to achieve ecologically sustainable land management in Burundi and will work at three levels: plot, slope, and institutional. PAGRIS aims to reach 100,000 family farms and establish ecologically sustainable management on 14,000 ha of land by scaling the Integrated Farming Plan (PIP) approach from IFDC’s Agricultural Productivity Support Project in Burundi (PAPAB), which ran from 2015 to 2020.

Objectives

At the plot level, PAGRIS will co-create (using local and scientific knowledge) and implement farm-based strategies for improved yield, incomes, and soil fertility. The targeted beneficiaries are farming households with all household members participating. At the slope level, PAGRIS aims to improve land management of slopes through collective community action, based on Participatory Learning and Action. All family farms on a slope will be supported to design a slope management plan to tackle soil erosion, reach stewardship agreements, and implement integrated practices that eventually benefit the whole community. At the institutional level, PAGRIS will contribute to a favorable institutional environment that improves the availability, access, and utilization of context-specific fertilizer products and techniques. It will do so by building capacity at agricultural knowledge institutes, identifying and assisting in cost-effective organo-mineral fertilizer blends, and supporting the national fertilizer subsidy program. PAGRIS is led by IFDC and implemented together with Wageningen Environmental Research (WEnR – formerly Alterra) and with Twitezimbere as a national partner.