Green Intelligence (GI) is focused on shifting smallholder farmers to an agroforestry way of farming. Currently most farmers in the mid hills of Nepal (1000-1800m altitude) engage in growing monocultural crops like corn on terraces. Shifting to polyculture cropping (mix of species vegetation), through planting productive trees in combination with agricultural species has various advantages. The shift enhances carbon storage (stored within the woody biomass itself, above- and below-ground), soil health, biodiversity, resilience and economic opportunities for local communities.
The mix of species is selected based on the farmer’s needs, the specific location (soil, altitude, sunlight amongst others) and the marketability for the produce. This allows the farmers to generate income from the trees whilst conserving biodiversity, striving towards humans and nature in harmony. Shifting to polyculture cropping also translates into more climate resilient landscapes, increasingly important due to the changing weather patterns. Through a mobile application, GI applies technology to the planting intervention in order to increase tree survival rates (a major challenge in tree plantation projects globally). This includes making use of geo-tagging (tree and land picture with GPS coordinates) to enhance accountability and quality, providing tree advisory services and financial rewards for farmers that plant and take care of the trees.
During the project various activities are conducted, such as: species research, soil tests, farmers group formation, tree plantation training, GI Growing Trees mobile app training and monitoring activities. More specifically plantation training is provided to smallholder farmers, educating farmers on how to plant and maintain trees. Additionally, training is provided towards technology adaptation (GI mobile app training).
About the Removers
To date, trees have been planted by 43 smallholder farmers in Nepal. Of these farmers 27 are located in the Dhulikhel municipality in Nepal and 16 in Sunkhani. Over 7000 trees have been planted across 10 hectares by the farmers. The local tree species that have been planted are: Coffee, Avocado, Macadamia nut, Lemon, Timur (Nepali Szechuan pepper) and Tejpat (Bay Leaf). The agroforestry model is adopted by planting these fruit trees in a distance of 3*3m (except for coffee 2*2m) between other agricultural crops (e.g. maize, mustard, turmeric, ginger).
About Green Intelligence
Green Intelligence was co-founded in 2020 by Matthijs van Rijn as a Dutch-Nepali social enterprise, with the goal to increase biodiversity and provide a more sustainable way of land use with the vision to make it financially viable on the long term. Green Intelligence enables smallholder farmers to make the switch to agroforestry. The Green Intelligence team is located in Europe (Netherlands), Kenya (Africa) and Asia (Nepal).
See documentation:
https://oncra.org/TGI-L-001/