An Maria Omer Notenbaert

An Maria Omer Notenbaert is trained as an agricultural engineer with a specialisation in land use planning and a minor in soil science. An started her career in 1995 as a GIS analyst but moved, during her 25+ years of experience in Africa, gradually from spatial analysis towards multi-disciplinary system analysis. In the process, she has built up a deep understanding of the variety of crop and livestock production systems in Africa. She has a passion for interdisciplinary and participatory research ensuring evidence-based development of sustainable food systems.

Joining the Tropical Forages Program in 2013 allowed her to develop a thorough understanding of the multiple roles forage crops can play in food systems. While her current role as team leader of the Africa-based Tropical Forages team focuses mostly on the design, resource mobilization, and management of a variety of innovative research for development projects dealing with sustainable multi-functional livestock production systems.

Her main technical contributions to the research for development field include designing and applying multi-disciplinary approaches for generating evidence about sustainable agricultural production systems. Examples include (i) a generic framework for priority setting, describing a step-wise approach to include modeling and ex-ante assessments in policy and investment decisions that can provide food and nutrition to a growing population while at the same time safeguarding the environment, and (ii) a user-friendly tool (CLEANED) for assessing potential environmental and income impacts of farm level livestock intensification interventions. The application of these tools, in combination with findings of on-farm trials, has demonstrated the multiple benefits that can be associated with improved soil-crop-tree-livestock integration and more specifically the integration of improved forages in smallholder livestock production systems.