Mission: crop production in balance with nature

“The rains are late. We should have started planting a few weeks ago”, she says.

 When we talk, over Zoom, it’s over 30℃ and very sunny in Zimbabwe. In Uppsala it’s -10℃ and lots of snow.

Chloe MacLaren is a postdoc at the Department of Crop Production Ecology at SLU, but she is stationed for two years in the savanna ecosystem of Zimbabwe and Zambia with dry woodlands and grasslands. She is originally from New Zealand.

“I will come to Uppsala a few times during these two years. I try to minimize my carbon footprint though by not flying so often”, she says.

Chloe is working in a network of “on farm” trials established by the International Centre for Maize and Wheat Improvement, CIMMYT. The team is composed of local and international scientists.

In Zimbabwe and Zambia the farmers grow a lot of maize. They grow small amounts of legumes and other crops as well but usually separated from the maize fields.

We ask Chloe MacLaren three questions

What is your project about?

“The project is about understanding the best crop diversification options for smallholder families in southern Africa, depending on their situation and context. We know that crop diversification is generally a good thing, leading to more productivity, resource use efficiency, benefits from biodiversity as well as potentially human health benefits through a more diverse diet.

Despite those benefits it is possible to get diversification wrong. Farmers can combine crops in ways that actually reduce the productivity. Sometimes the combinations do not suit the farmers’ situation considering the tools and resources they have.

The specific type of diversification I currently study is the integration of legumes in the typical maize based systems. It is about using crop rotation or different styles of intercropping to build up soil fertility without sacrificing the maize productivity.

The farmers who manage these trials get the opportunity to try something new without losing anything, since they are compensated for their time and get the inputs that they need.

I think crop diversification is the starting point for farmers to work in balance with nature instead of against nature.”

What is your background?

“I have studied ecology in New Zealand, Germany and Ecuador, with a special interest in biodiversity conservation within farmed landscapes. I am quite concerned about climate changes and decided to do a PhD in agriculture because of the huge contributions that agriculture makes to greenhouse gas emissions.

I did my PhD in sustainable weed management, in the UK and South Africa, focusing on South African agricultural systems. Then I did a postdoc, between the UK and Kenya, looking at crop diversification through different lenses of farmer household surveys, intercropping experiments, and analysis of long-term experiments.”

What do you do when you are not doing research?

"On holidays I am a big fan of hiking. Depending on where I am in the world I have some other hobbies as well, for example rock climbing, windsurfing and mountain biking. I also play a little bit of guitar and I do some knitting at home."