Sustainable Intensification of 
Mixed Farming Systems Initiative: 
Outlier observations
Gerrie van de Ven1 and Mateete Bekunda2
1Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and 2International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA)
Initiative Planning and Inception Meeting
31 May – 2 June 2022, ILRI Campus, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
First thoughts
• Very nice presentations yesterday
• Well prepared project description
• Enthusiastic group with a lot of energy
• Topical subjects and comprehensive programme
• Very ambitious programme
(luckily the 1.5 million need not to be reached by 2024)
BUT.... 
www.cgiar.org
Second thoughts
• Can you really do all the work, time and money-wise, to achieve the ambitions?
• A 3-year programme is too short to realise all proposed changes/innovations in 
farming practice à anticipating longer time horizon? Where do you set the aim 
• Impression it starts from scratch
o Africa RISING
o CSISA achievements; which technologies promising?
o SIMLES
• Build on what is known already is mentioned in the proposal, but 
did not come out clearly yesterday à requires more explicit and 
specific attention, start with an analysis of the achievements so 
far - SIAF (Musumba et al.)
www.cgiar.org
Third thoughts
• Still formulated in very general and ‘jargon’ terms à simplify
(1.3 Living e-Atlas with affordable socio-technical entry points and gender-transformative approaches for 
equitable and inclusive SI of MFS published for implementation by partners, donors and policymakers) 
suggestion: develop case studies that address the processes
• Specifics of mixed crop-livestock systems do not come out yet
• So far only scientific staff; others should join a.s.a.p.
• DEED cycle was mentioned in the beginning, but not really worked out in WPs (De 
Scheemaeker et al., 2019, Exp. Agric.)
• How is the e-atlas going to be used?
www.cgiar.org
Thank you