Building transformative change in Africa’s smallholder food systems: Contributions from climate-smart agriculture and agroecology (original) (raw)
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Increasing resilience of smallholder farmers to climate change through multiple adoption of proven climate-smart agriculture innovations. Lessons from Southern Africa The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) believes that open access contributes to its mission of reducing hunger and poverty, and improving human nutrition in the tropics through research aimed at increasing the eco-efficiency of agriculture. CIAT is committed to creating and sharing knowledge and information openly and globally. We do this through collaborative research as well as through the open sharing of our data, tools, and publications.
Evaluating Climate-Smart Agriculture as Route to Building Climate Resilience in African Food Systems
Sustainability
Efforts to meet the growing demand for food across Africa have led to unsustainable land management practices that weaken the resilience of African Food Systems. Soil health is key to building more climate-resilient agricultural systems and can be improved through Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices that also enhance soil carbon storage. Many CSA practices are being implemented by African farmers, whereas others are being actively promoted but adoption remains low due to multiple factors including weak policy integration, limited institutional support, and inadequate agricultural extension advice. This Short Communications paper presents overview findings from trans-disciplinary research projects from Southern, East, and West Africa to evaluate the potential importance of integrated participatory soil health studies designed to inform context-specific recommendations and policies for resilient African food systems. The use of soil health indicators to measure the effectiveness...
The social problem of food insecurity and the challenge for farmers in adapting successfully to climate change in West African societies build the framework and scope of our research for development (R4D). It is addressed through a project called Syprobio, operating in Mali, Burkina Faso and Benin. Elected farmers, representing 2000-3000 organic farmers, are conducting on-farm research and cooperating with 40-50 researchers and technicians in testing 27 innovative practices by forming innovation platforms. Soil fertility, seed improvement, pest management, agronomy and socioeconomics are the main themes. The innovations being tested are meant to improve food security and climate change adaptation. The main R4D methods used are transdisciplinarity, actor-network theory (Latour 2005), focus-group discussions and decentralised action-research hubs. The innovation, the testing farmers and the researcher build an actor network. After two years, all ten circles of concerted actors (CAC) are productive and, in 2013, they started the second round of testing their selected innovations. The main concern of the farmers is the low soil fertility. Both farmers and researchers learn mutually, as well as the technicians from the farmer organisations. The creativity, determination and curiosity of the self-organised farmer groups, embedded in a supportive research network and exciting value chains, allow fast and effective identification of innovations to be tested and implemented. It is recommended to further invest in better alignment at national level of farmer needs, research methods of national agricultural research institutes and universities, and policies in order to create functional institutions.
Climate
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) as a credible alternative to tackle food insecurity under the changing climate is gaining wide acceptance. However, many developing countries have realized that concepts that have been recommended as solutions to existing problems are not suitable in their contexts. This paper synthesizes a subset of literature on CSA in the context of small-scale agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa as it relates to the need for CSA, factors influencing CSA adoption, and the challenges involved in understanding and scaling up CSA. Findings from the literature reveal that age, farm size, the nature of farming, and access to extension services influence CSA adoption. Many investments in climate adaptation projects have found little success because of the sole focus on the technology-oriented approach whereby innovations are transferred to farmers whose understanding of the local farming circumstances are limited. Climate-smart agriculture faces the additional challenge of...
Transforming Africa’s food systems: a smallholder farmers’ perspective
Global Social Challenges Journal
The 2021 UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) awakened the world to the critical need for food systems transformation. Several commitments were made during the summit, with the UN Secretary-General reiterating the need to support national mechanisms that develop and implement national pathways to 2030 that are inclusive and consistent with countries’ climate commitments, building upon the national food systems dialogues. Much of the discussion in the post-summit era has mostly been high level and focused on how countries can be supported to transform pathways into strategies and to design and operationalise investment plans aimed at fostering sustainable and inclusive food systems transformation. However, what has been missing in these discussions is what the envisaged transformation means for the smallholder farmer, and what it takes for smallholder farmers to embrace the transformative agenda and transition to more sustainable methods of production. In this article, reference is made to...
2013
The social problem of food insecurity and the challenge for farmers on adapting successfully to climate change in West African societies build the framework and scope of our research for development. It is addressed through a project called Syprobio and operating in the three countries of Mali, Burkina Faso and Benin. Elected farmers, representing 2-3,000 organic farmers are conducting on-farm research and cooperating with 40-50 researchers and technicians in testing 27 innovative practices by forming innovation platforms. Soil fertility, seed improvement, pest management, agronomy and socio-economics are the main themes. The innovations to be tested
Making agriculture in Africa climate-smart From continental policies to local practices
2015
streaming efforts, “climate” and “agriculture” are treated in silos. There is also a disconnect between policies and frameworks at the global, continental, regional, national and local levels. A multistakeholder, bottom-up, intersectorial approach can overcome these challenges. At the same time, top-down frameworks such as the United Nations (UN) climate debates should give “agriculture” its deserved priority, given its relevance as “victim and vector” of climate change. Investing in climate-sensitive agriculture is an opportunity for the private sector to make sustainable profits. But governments and financial partners should create an enabling environment and provide financial incentives to mitigate risks especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). SMEs can better address opportunities in local markets and can better adapt climatesmart technologies to local markets. There are various approaches to make agriculture “climate smart”. These can be complementary, and it i...
The potential of agroecology to build climate-resilient livelihoods and food systems
2020
Climate change has severe negative impacts on livelihoods and food systems worldwide. Our future climate according to latest scenarios seriously undermine current efforts to improve the state of food security and nutrition, especially in sub-Sahara Africa. To address this to its full extent, there is an urgent need for transformational change of our food systems towards more sustainability and resilience. Agroecology could play a vital role here. As a response to FAO’s governing bodies’ call for increased evidence-based work on agroecology, this study aims to elaborate on existing links between agroecology and climate change. It provides evidence on the technical and policy potential of agroecology to build resilient food systems. Inspired by the idea that transformation will only happen through a coordinated approach among all levels, this study was jointly developed by a broad set of actors from UN agencies (FAO), research institutes (FIBL, Bioversity, ISRA) and CSOs (Biovision, E...
Sustainability
The agricultural sector contributes approximately 10–20% of the total anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions. Consequently, climate change can negatively affect crop yields and livestock production thus threatening food security, especially in a vulnerable continent like Africa. This review provides an overview of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices and their impacts on smallholder farmers in five African countries (Algeria, Senegal, Benin, Nigeria and Zambia). A total of 164 published articles on CSA practices were reviewed. Analysis of extracted data showed that CSA practices are classified as follows: agricultural practices, restoration practices of degraded lands, forest and cropland regeneration practices, practices in the livestock sub-sector, water resources and use of weather and climate information services. Moreover, climate change effects differed alongside strategies adapted from one country to another. Adoption of these strategies was often influenced by fi...