Erika Styger will present her continuing work on scaling-up the agro-ecological methodology the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) in West Africa. This journey began with one farmer in Mali 12 years ago, and had grown to 50,000 farmers in 13 countries of West Africa by 2016. Styger and her collaborators plan to reach least 1.5 million farmers in the West Africa region in the medium-term future. She will describe how the process unfolded, discuss approaches that have proven   successful for scaling-up, and reflect on the challenges to implement such an ambitious program.   

Styger is the Associate Director of the Climate-Resilient Farming Systems Program at IP-CALS at Cornell. She has a PhD in Crop and Soils Science from Cornell University and a MSc in Agronomy from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ). Dr Styger has 30 years experience in the design, implementation and adaptation of agro-ecological approaches and practices in various ecozones across Africa, with focus on agroforestry, combating land degradation, agro-biodiversity conservation, and increasing agriculture productivity through integrated crop and soil management approaches. For the past 12 years, she has been working – at the global level with focus on West Africa - on the technical development and scaling-up of the System of Rice Intensification or SRI, a climate-resilient rice production method. 

Other than Cornell, she has worked with the World Agroforestry Centre, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation; for US consulting firms Chemonics Inc., Development Aiternatives Inc., Abt Associates Inc., with the NGOs Africare, Catholic Relief Services and the Millennium Development Goal Alliance, and with the World Bank, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, (FAO)  and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 

https://www.climateresilientfarmingsystems.org