Climate-smart push-pull: a conservation agriculture technology for food security and environmental sustainability in Africa

This chapter describes the push-pull technological innovation developed by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) in the UK and partners in East Africa, which addresses smallholder agricultural constraints, food insecurity, and environmental degradation and has the potential to equip farmers with the resilience and adaptability they need to deal with climate change. The push-pull technology fits conservation agriculture (CA) principles of minimum soil disturbance in its minimum soil tillage agronomic management, continuous soil cover with a perennial cover crop and plant residue, as well as a diversified cereal-legume-fodder intercropping strategy. The perennial intercrop provides live mulching, thus improving above-ground and below-ground arthropod abundance, agrobiodiveristy and the food web of natural enemies of stem borers, thus effectively controlling major insect pests of cereals. The field implementation of this technological innovation in Africa is discussed, as well as its various benefits.