Understanding Greenhouse Growers’ Willingness to Use Municipal Recycled Water on Food Crops: The Need for Tailored Outreach Coupled with Deep Engagement to Increase Adoption

Increasing demand on agricultural water resources have caused a greater need for the use of municipal recycled wastewater (MRW) globally. However, in the United States, greenhouse growers have been slow to use it in their greenhouse operations. In this study, we seek to understand the factors that motivate and limit use of MRW among US growers. Using national survey data from 2019 through 2020, we developed a logistic regression model to understand the many factors influencing growers’ willingness to use MRW on food crops. We find that MRW quality is a primary concern and that growers’ willingness to use MRW is shaped by their direct and indirect knowledge of MRW, garnered from their own and others’ experiences using it. Given these findings, improving adoption of MRW requires collective experiential learning opportunities that gather target audiences with educators, policymakers, end users, and local authorities to simultaneously provide hands-on experience tailored to growers’ particular knowledge and concerns with feedback from peers

Investigating the Conceptual Plurality of Empowerment through Community Concept Drawing: Case Studies from Senegal, Kenya, and Nepal

Women’s empowerment is a driving concept in gender and development scholarship. This scholarship often engages quantitative indices of evaluation that are unable to account for culturally specific meaning and nuance that shape local understandings of empowerment. Recent efforts within the field of international development are attempting to create methodological mechanisms for capturing this nuance. This study employs one such method, Community Concept Drawing (CCD), in rural villages within Kenya, Senegal, and Nepal. Findings indicate significant differences between the field sites in the local conceptualization of empowerment. Cross-examination of site-specific data yields an understanding of how cultural norms and values shape local perceptions of empowerment in ways that are critical for research that engages gendered understandings. Furthermore, such analysis is critical to a more accurate understanding of the locally specific context of gender inequity

Reaching the end goal: Do interventions to improve climate information services lead to greater food security?

Climate change is projected to have profound effects on nutritional outcomes, particularly among children under five in developing countries, where small-scale, subsistence farming and livestock production supports a majority of livelihoods. An underlying mechanism by which climate change will negatively affect nutrition is through increased food insecurity, as both crop and livestock production are threatened by changing patterns of rainfall and temperature. Climate information services (CIS) provide short and long-term weather and climate forecasts through a variety of means with the aim of increasing smallholder farmers’ ability to cope and adapt to a changing environment. CIS can be used to increase climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices, which in turn can increase agricultural productivity and farmer resilience, while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Through household surveys, focus group activities, and participant observation, this research investigates linkages between CIS, uptake of CSA practices, and household food security through investigation of four research sites, two in Senegal and two in Kenya. The research sites were selected based on their various levels of engagement in CIS programs sponsored by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS) at the time research was conducted. The role of gender dynamics in the relationship between CIS, CSA, and food security is also explored through 1) sex-disaggregated quantitative from household surveys, and 2) sex-disaggregated qualitative data focus groups, which focuses in part on conceptualization of women’s empowerment. Findings indicate that farmers are receiving CIS and are using that information to make changes in farming practices, without major differences between men and women. This research suggests that CCAFS-CIS interventions may be leading to adoption of CSA practices; however, no direct correlation between receipt of CIS and use of CSA practices was found, nor was a relationship established between use of CSAs and food security. These findings are inconclusive, however, given the near complete coverage of CIS and widespread food insecurity across sites. Importantly, participants did not ascribe their knowledge of CSA practices to CIS, and the important role of social and informal networks as a source of climate information emerges as an important area of additional exploitation for increased uptake of CSA for improved food security

Developing decision-relevant climate information and supporting its appropriate application

In the Sahel thousands of farmers and pastoralists suffer from poor advisory services, including access to climate information to effectively support livelihood decision-making. Strengthening resilience to climate extremes and disasters through improving the reliability, relevance and communication of climate information is one of the four core aims of the BRACED consortium project