Market-friendly agriculture development: Implications for seeds and smallholders in Sub-Saharan Africa

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, efforts to produce and supply the agricultural technologies that are expected to intensify smallholder agricultural production are strongly market-oriented. Here, the case of maize seeds in Malawi provides new insights into some of the implications of this orientation. Malawi presents a context where market liberalization coupled with a national input subsidy programme has led to the growth of corporate power within the formal maize seed system and a strong reliance upon commercial providers to breed, multiply and diffuse new cultivars. At both the local and national levels, facets of this market-orientation mean that poverty reduction and climate change adaptation goals may not be met. In order to address these potential shortcomings, multiple measures are required. Institutions are needed to oversee the coordination of appropriate breeding and marketing efforts by corporate actors within the formal seed system; research programmes are required which can enhance understandings of genetic evolution within farmer-saved varieties and its implications for climate resilience; and policies must be carefully implemented which can support market participation by the poorest

The exposure of a fresh fruit and vegetable supply chain to global water-related risks

We have combined estimates of the UK’s supply of fresh fruit and vegetables (1996 – 2015) with estimates of water requirements and water scarcity in producing countries, to identify where the supply is exposed to physical, regulatory and reputational water risks and how this has changed over time. Some 76% of the freshwater consumed in the supply of fresh fruit and vegetables to the UK is withdrawn overseas. The supply chain is particularly exposed to water risks in Spain, Egypt, South Africa, Chile, Morocco, Israel and Peru. Exposure has increased over time

Supporting climate change adaptation using historical climate analysis

Climate change and variability presents a major challenge for rural communities in developing countries. Bridging organisations have a role in helping align top-down and local perspectives, mediating the communication messages that ultimately shape the effectiveness of adaptation responses. We argue that for any coping or adaptation project a first step should be to determine the nature of the climate norms within the project area in order to ascertain the efficacy of current coping strategies. This paper explores the degree to which development organisations in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania used analysis of local historical climate information in project aims, planning and design. Sixty seven participants, managing 102 community-level climate-related agricultural projects, and three NGO case studies were included. Most projects focused on low-regret options. The majority of respondents’ projects included enhancing farmers’ awareness of climate change and variability as an aim, but only seven percent had used any historical climate information during planning. Instead projects relied on general knowledge or farmers’ perceptions, which can sometimes differ from analysed historical climate information, thus potentially leading to a cycle of reinforcement of perceptions. It is vital that bridging organisations and policy makers be aware of the value of using analysed historical climate information to determine the climate norms (including variability) and to identify what the data shows regarding how the climate is changing. This is essential for planning, consideration with stakeholders, and for example to determine suitability of alternative crops and cultivars or to ensure other relevant environmental factors influencing agricultural production are considered

Adoption of improved maize cultivars for climate vulnerability reduction in Malawi

The projected negative impacts of climate change threaten to endanger smallholder rain-fed maize production and therefore food security across Sub-Saharan Africa. It is widely advocated that the provision of improved, climate-tolerant maize seeds will overcome this problem by enabling agricultural adaptation to changing weather conditions. However, attempts to launch new agricultural technologies in Africa have rarely successfully transformed prospects for the most vulnerable, and historical uptake of improved maize has remained low in some countries, including Malawi, despite a strong political legacy of modern input promotion. This thesis investigates how social dimensions (such as asset ownership, cultural preferences and perceptions of climate risk) affect the potential for cultivar adoption to enable equitable adaptation to climate change amongst smallholder maize farmers in Malawi. National strategies for the diffusion of maize cultivars are explored and analysed with reference to agricultural innovation theory. Adoption outcomes are then assessed using household data from two case study areas selected on the basis of their contrasting climate vulnerability characteristics and productive potentials for maize. Lastly, perceptions of climate change amongst research participants are explored and considered in relation to a statistical analysis of historical rainfall and temperature data within the two research areas, Kasungu and Ngabu. The empirical findings reveal that whilst Malawi’s maize seed industry is modernising, changes do not necessarily benefit smallholders, and access to cultivars and information about them remains unequal. State agricultural policies lack regional contextual specificity and have contributed to heightened vulnerability in Ngabu (the less productive case study area). Stakeholders’ perceptions and attitudes about current and future climate change reveal incongruities and misconceptions. Widespread beliefs that seasons are shortening are driving preferences for short season hybrid cultivars, which increasingly flood the seed market, but statistical analysis of historical seasonal rainfall data reveals no clear seasonal trend in this direction. New diffusion strategies, increasing policy sensitivity for dealing with climate vulnerability in marginal areas, and better understanding and communication about climate variability and change will all be required if cultivar adoption is to enable successful and equitable adaptation for Malawian smallholders. These goals could be better supported if vulnerability reduction, rather than corporate growth, was made central to the development of Malawi’s agricultural innovation system. Practical methods by which this change might be achieved are discussed

Managing irrigation under pressure: how supply chain demands and environmental objectives drive imbalance in agricultural resilience to water shortages

Food production systems worldwide are increasingly exposed to water shortage shocks. Social-ecological resilience theory provides insights into the qualities which confer production systems with the capacity to absorb shocks and persist, undertake adaptations and ultimately achieve desirable transformations. Combining findings from the analysis of a set of 15 semi-structured interviews and 92 survey responses from growers in the UK, this paper uses resilience theory to explore the factors affecting exposure to the risk of water shortages, and management responses, within outdoor field vegetable production systems that depend on supplemental irrigation. The findings confirm that growers predominantly aim to build resilience by seeking to maintain a buffer or ‘headroom’ in their water resources to minimise the possibility that a shortage will disrupt their output of marketable produce and/ or lead to financial loss. This buffering strategy confers robustness by increasing system redundancy (availability of spare resources). But building-in redundancy conflicts with regulatory and supply chain pressures to maximise water and production efficiency respectively. Whilst stability of supply to consumers is, for the most-part, achieved, the discrepant pursuits of robustness and efficiency lock agricultural systems into increasingly rigid production and sales pathways, limiting capacities for adaptation and transformation - dimensions of resilience which permit successful system evolution in the context of more extreme shocks and stresse

‘I think this is where this lovely word “sustainability” comes in’: Fruit and vegetable growers' narratives concerning the regulation of environmental water use for food production

This article concerns UK commercial fruit and vegetable growers’ narratives regarding the sustainability of water use for food production. In it we explore their perspectives on efforts by regulators to limit agricultural withdrawals of water from the natural environment in line with EU Water Framework Directive objectives, alongside their views on retailer sustainability commitments. Discourse analysis is used to investigate how the growers contested restrictive regulation, constructed their identities, portrayed other supply chain stakeholders, and conveyed their social relations with them. Using Erving Goffman's theory of frontstage and backstage performances, the implications for the growers’ water management decisions and their internalisation of sustainability agendas for water are examined. Whilst the growers gave accounts of purposely misrepresenting their water withdrawal practices and their discourse illustrated significant polarisation between environmental and agricultural interests, their underlying commitment to environmental sustainability was ambivalent, with both anti and pro-environmental attitudes expressed. The growers also frequently gave critiques of superficial sustainability in fresh produce supply chains. We argue that, given contemporary shifting definitions of agricultural identities, settings in which their construction is negotiated can provide windows of opportunity for conventional growers to engage in genuine pro-environmental performances that may deepen their assimilation of environmental goals and commitment to sustainable water use.Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC): BB/N020499/1. ESRC; NERC; Scottish Governmen

Resilience of primary food production to a changing climate: on-farm responses to water-related risks

Water is a fundamental component in primary food production, whether it be rainfall, irrigation used to water crops, or for supplying drinking water for animals, while the amount of water in the soil determines it capacity to support machinery and animals. We identify that UK agriculture is exposed to five main water-related risks: agricultural drought, scarcity of water resources, restrictions on the right to abstract water, excess soil water, and inundation. Projected milder, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers by the end of the century will change the frequency, persistence, or severity of each of these risks. This paper critically reviews and synthesizes the scientific literature on the impact of these risks on primary food production and the technological and managerial strategies employed to build resilience to these changing risks. At the farm scale, the emphasis has been on strategies to build robustness to reduce the impact of a water-related risk. However, collaborative partnerships allow for a more optimal allocation of water during times of scarcity. Enhancing cross-scale interactions, learning opportunities, and catchment-scale autonomy will be key to ensuring the agricultural system can build adaptive and transformational capacit

Synergies and trade-offs in drought resilience within a multi-level UK food supply chain

Weather extremes are the biggest challenge for supply chains worldwide, with food supply chains particularly exposed due to agriculture’s sensitivity to weather conditions. Whilst attention has been paid to farm-level impacts from, and adaptation to, weather extremes, there remains a need to better understand how different actors along the supply chain suffer, react and adapt to these natural hazards and how their resilience-building strategies affect other actors’ and the whole system’s resilience. Taking the UK potato supply chain as a case study, this paper analyses the synergies and trade-offs in drought resilience in a multi-level food supply chain. Data from an online survey (87) and interviews with key informants (27) representing potato supply-chain actors (growers, packers, processors, retailers) were used to analyse drought risk perceptions, impacts and coping strategies, long-term resilience measures and further actions to build system resilience. Results suggest that the potato supply chain has increased its resilience to weather extremes due to retailers and packers having a wider geographical spread of supply, an increasing reliance on forward contracts and favouring growers with water security. However, a conceptual framework of resilience-building strategies adopted by supply chain actors shows that these measures are largely designed to reduce their own risk without considering implications for other parts of the chain and the system as a whole. A more integrated approach to promote drought resilience in complex food supply chains that enables improved vertical collaboration and trust between actors is therefore needed

Which factors determine adaptation to drought amongst farmers in Northern Thailand? Investigating farmers’ appraisals of risk and adaptation and their exposure to drought information communications as determinants of their adaptive responses

Drought communications constitute an important source of learning about climate risks and responses that can assist adaptation decision-making amongst those whose livelihoods are threatened by drought. This paper applies Protection Motivation Theory to explore associations between drought communications and attitudes towards drought risk and adaptation amongst farmers in Northern Thailand. The analysis reveals links between drought communications, farmers’ adaptation appraisal, and their adaptation decisions, whilst links with risk appraisal are minimal. The results highlight positive feedbacks between adaptation experience and appraisal and reveal a weak negative relationship between risk appraisal and adaptation appraisal. The findings imply benefits to framing drought communications in terms of the efficacy and attainability of suitable adaptations, rather than simply highlighting drought risks or providing drought warnings, to best enable farmers to build drought resilience

3D printed biomimetic cochleae and machine learning co-modelling provides clinical informatics for cochlear implant patients.

Cochlear implants restore hearing in patients with severe to profound deafness by delivering electrical stimuli inside the cochlea. Understanding stimulus current spread, and how it correlates to patient-dependent factors, is hampered by the poor accessibility of the inner ear and by the lack of clinically-relevant in vitro, in vivo or in silico models. Here, we present 3D printing-neural network co-modelling for interpreting electric field imaging profiles of cochlear implant patients. With tuneable electro-anatomy, the 3D printed cochleae can replicate clinical scenarios of electric field imaging profiles at the off-stimuli positions. The co-modelling framework demonstrated autonomous and robust predictions of patient profiles or cochlear geometry, unfolded the electro-anatomical factors causing current spread, assisted on-demand printing for implant testing, and inferred patients' in vivo cochlear tissue resistivity (estimated mean = 6.6 kΩcm). We anticipate our framework will facilitate physical modelling and digital twin innovations for neuromodulation implants