NOEL - Nurseries of Excellence for Aceh

This project will provide smallholder farmers with the skills necessary to establish and operate agroforestry tree nurseries, ensuring they have access to high quality planting materials. As well as improving the livelihoods of dryland farming communities, the project hopes to result in further rehabilitation of degraded areas in Aceh.

Aceh's dryland agriculture, such as tree and annual crops and small livestock production, is prevented from becoming more profitable because of numerous external factors, many of which are poorly understood.

The first step in this project will be to provide training and technical support so that ‘action research' can be carried out on a range of interrelated issues. Such issues include access to planting materials, product quality and standards, transportation, processing, marketing, potential new products and potential export markets.

Members of dryland farming communities will undertake the training, where possible working with local government staff, and supported by ICRAF and partners.

The second step is to establish agroforestry tree Nurseries of Excellence (Noel). At least six district-level nurseries will be established among three participating district (Kabupaten) governments. At the community-level, 20 nurseries will be established using Islamic Community Education Centers (dayahs) as an entry point.

In addition to providing high quality planting material, both the district and community nurseries will be used for training.

District nurseries will be centres for training farmer leaders, local government extension staff and some local NGO extension staff in nursery techniques. The training is also likely to incorporate agroforestry techniques and a train-the-trainer component.

At community nurseries, the skills gained at the district level will be transferred to local farmers using the Farmer Field School approach. Past experience has shown that many farmers who participate in Nursery Farmer Field Schools go on to establish their own nurseries, some of which become commercial enterprises.

An Agroforestry Farmer Support Network will be established amongst those involved to encourage continual knowledge sharing between farmers, local governments and other organisations.

World Agroforestry Centre
ICRAF Southeast Asia Regional Office
Jl. CIFOR, Situ Gede
Sindang Barang, Bogor 16115
PO Box 161 Bogor 16001, Indonesia
Ph: +62 251 8625415, fax: +62 251 8625416
Email: icraf-indonesia@cgiar.org
For addresses of our offices in
Thailand, Philippines, China and Vietnam, see:
www.worldagroforestrycentre.org/sea