Climate smart agriculture (CSA)

Climate change fundamentally shifts the agricultural development agenda. Changing temperature and precipitation, sea level rise, and the rising frequency of extreme climate events will significantly reduce global food production in this century unless action is taken. Major investments, private and public, will be needed.! Adapting agriculture to climate change is necessary to achieve food security, and agricultural mitigation can also reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and slow climate change itself. There are many drivers of change affecting agricultural sectors around the world, including population growth, changes in consumer demand and market integration. Climate Smart Agriculture is an integrated approach to achieve food security in the face of climate change, while also mitigating climate change and contribute to other development goals

The value of climate-resilient seeds for smallholder adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa

Climate change is threatening food security in many tropical countries, where a large proportion of food is produced by vulnerable smallholder farmers. Interventions are available to offset many of the negative impacts of climate change on agriculture, and they can be tailored to local conditions often through relative modest investments. However, little quantitative information is available to guide investment or policy choices at a time when countries and development agencies are under pressure to implement policies that can help achieve Sustainable Development Goals while coping with climate change. Among smallholder adaptation options, developing seeds resilient to current and future climate shocks expected locally is one of the most important actions available now. In this paper, we used national and local data to estimate the costs of climate change to smallholder farmers in Malawi and Tanzania. We found that the benefits from adopting resilient seeds ranged between 984 million and 2.1 billion USD during 2020–2050. Our analysis demonstrates the benefits of establishing and maintaining a flexible national seed sector with participation by communities in the breeding, delivery, and adoption cycle. © 2020, The Author(s)

"Nōgyō hisonyashinaigusa" by Yoshitake Tokuyama, 1826 - Reprinting by Original Text

Rapid changes in land use, food systems, and livelihoods require social–ecological systems that keep multiple options open and prepare for future unpredictability. Sustainagility refers to the properties and assets of a system that sustain the ability (agility) of agents to adapt and meet their needs in new ways. In contrast, sustainability tends to invoke persistence along current trajectories, and the resilience to return to current baselines. With three examples, the use and conservation of agrobiodiversity is explored along temporal, spatial, and human institutional scales for its role in sustainagility: first, farmers’ seed systems; second, complex pollination systems; and third, wildlife conservation in agricultural areas with high poverty. Incentives are necessary if agrobiodiversity is to provide benefits to future generation

Climate-smart agriculture global research agenda: Scientific basis for action

Background: Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) addresses the challenge of meeting the growing demand for food, fibre and fuel, despite the changing climate and fewer opportunities for agricultural expansion on additional lands. CSA focuses on contributing to economic development, poverty reduction and food security; maintaining and enhancing the productivity and resilience of natural and agricultural ecosystem functions, thus building natural capital; and reducing trade-offs involved in meeting these goals. Current gaps in knowledge, work within CSA, and agendas for interdisciplinary research and science-based actions identified at the 2013 Global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture (Davis, CA, USA) are described here within three themes: (1) farm and food systems, (2) landscape and regional issues and (3) institutional and policy aspects. The first two themes comprise crop physiology and genetics, mitigation and adaptation for livestock and agriculture, barriers to adoption of CSA practices, climate risk management and energy and biofuels (theme 1); and modelling adaptation and uncertainty, achieving multifunctionality, food and fishery systems, forest biodiversity and ecosystem services, rural migration from climate change and metrics (theme 2). Theme 3 comprises designing research that bridges disciplines, integrating stakeholder input to directly link science, action and governance. Outcomes: In addition to interdisciplinary research among these themes, imperatives include developing (1) models that include adaptation and transformation at either the farm or landscape level; (2) capacity approaches to examine multifunctional solutions for agronomic, ecological and socioeconomic challenges; (3) scenarios that are validated by direct evidence and metrics to support behaviours that foster resilience and natural capital; (4) reductions in the risk that can present formidable barriers for farmers during adoption of new technology and practices; and (5) an understanding of how climate affects the rural labour force, land tenure and cultural integrity, and thus the stability of food production. Effective work in CSA will involve stakeholders, address governance issues, examine uncertainties, incorporate social benefits with technological change, and establish climate finance within a green development framework. Here, the socioecological approach is intended to reduce development controversies associated with CSA and to identify technologies, policies and approaches leading to sustainable food production and consumption patterns in a changing climate

Prospective open-label study of add-on and monotherapy topiramate in civilians with chronic nonhallucinatory posttraumatic stress disorder

BACKGROUND: In order to confirm therapeutic effects of topiramate on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) observed in a prior study, a new prospective, open-label study was conducted to examine acute responses in chronic, nonhallucinatory PTSD. METHODS: Thirty-three consecutive newly recruited civilian adult outpatients (mean age 46 years, 85% female) with DSM-IV-diagnosed chronic PTSD, excluding those with concurrent auditory or visual hallucinations, received topiramate either as monotherapy (n = 5) or augmentation (n = 28). The primary measure was a change in the PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C) score from baseline to 4 weeks, with response defined as a ≥ 30% reduction of PTSD symptoms. RESULTS: For those taking the PCL-C at both baseline and week 4 (n = 30), total symptoms declined by 49% at week 4 (paired t-test, P < 0.001) with similar subscale reductions for reexperiencing, avoidance/numbing, and hyperarousal symptoms. The response rate at week 4 was 77%. Age, sex, bipolar comorbidity, age at onset of PTSD, duration of symptoms, severity of baseline PCL-C score, and monotherapy versus add-on medication administration did not predict reduction in PTSD symptoms. Median time to full response was 9 days and median dosage was 50 mg/day. CONCLUSIONS: Promising open-label findings in a new sample converge with findings of a previous study. The use of topiramate for treatment of chronic PTSD, at least in civilians, warrants controlled clinical trials

Critical reflection on knowledge and narratives of conservation agriculture

In the context of contemporary concerns about climate change and food security, Conservation Agriculture (CA) has emerged as a well-supported and central component of the agricultural sector development strategy across sub-Saharan Africa, including in Zambia, which is the focus of this paper. A variety of narratives about the benefits of CA over conventional agricultural systems underpin endeavours towards ‘scaling up’ CA and increasing rates of adoption amongst smallholder farmers nationwide. However, there is a knowledge politics underlying the translation of a weak evidence base around CA into persuasive narratives and financial and political support. In this paper, we trace the evolution of five narratives around CA in Zambia in relation to changing political agendas and the involvement of new public and private sector actors, and review the development of evidence bases and knowledge that support and challenge each of these narratives. We discuss the potential to open up space within this knowledge politics to alternative narratives and the contestation of the pervasive CA scaling up agenda. Critical reflection is essential to ensure that national and local evidence is more effectively used to guide national climate and agricultural policy developments and international donor initiatives

The adaptive capacity of maize-based conservation agriculture systems to climate stress in tropical and subtropical environments: A meta-regression of yields

Conservation agriculture is widely promoted across sub-Saharan Africa as a sustainable farming practice that enhances adaptive capacity to climate change. The interactions between climate stress, management, and soil are critical to understanding the adaptive capacity of conservation agriculture. Yet conservation agriculture syntheses to date have largely neglected climate, especially the effects of extreme heat. For the sub-tropics and tropics, we use meta-regression, in combination with global soil and climate datasets, to test four hypotheses: (1) that relative yield performance of conservation agriculture improves with increasing drought and temperature stress; (2) that the effects of moisture and temperature stress exposure interact; (3) that the effects of moisture and temperature stress are modified by soil texture; and (4) that crop diversification, fertilizer application rate, or the time since no-till implementation will enhance conservation agriculture performance under climate stress. Our results support the hypothesis that the relative maize yield performance of conservation agriculture improves with increasing drought severity or exposure to high temperatures. Further, there is an interaction of moisture and heat stress on conservation agriculture performance and their combined effect is both non-additive and modified by soil clay content, supporting our second and third hypotheses. Finally, we found only limited support for our fourth hypothesis as (1) increasing nitrogen application rates did not improve the relative performance of conservation agriculture under high heat stress; (2) crop diversification did not notably improve conservation agriculture performance, but did increase its stability with heat stress; and (3) a statistically robust effect of the time since no-till implementation was not evident. Our meta-regression supports the narrative that conservation agriculture enhances the adaptive capacity of maize production in sub-Saharan Africa under drought and/or heat stress. However, in very wet seasons and on clay-rich soils, conservation agriculture yields less compared to conventional practices

What Is the Evidence Base for Climate-Smart Agriculture in East and Southern Africa? A Systematic Map

More than 500 million USD will soon be invested in climate-smart agriculture (CSA) programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. Improving smallholder farm management is the core of most of these programmes. However, there has been no comprehensive information available to evaluate how changing agricultural practices increases food production, improves resilience of farming systems and livelihoods, and mitigates climate change—the goals of CSA. Here, we present a systematic map—an overview of the availability of scientific evidence—for CSA in five African countries: Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia. We conducted a systematic literature search of the effects of 102 technologies, including farm management practices (e.g., leguminous intercropped agroforestry, increased protein content of livestock diets, etc.), on 57 indicators consistent with CSA goals (e.g., yield, water use efficiency, carbon sequestration, etc.) as part of an effort called the "CSA Compendium". Our search of peer-reviewed articles in Web of Science and Scopus produced 150,567 candidate papers across developing countries in the global tropics. We screened titles, abstracts and full texts against predetermined inclusion criteria, for example that the investigation took place in a tropical developing country and contains primary data on how both a CSA practice and non-CSA control affect a preselected indicator. More than 1500 papers met these criteria from Africa, of which, 153 contained data collected in one of the five countries. Mapping the studies shows geographic and topical clustering in a few locations, around relatively few measures of CSA and for a limited number of commodities, indicating potential for skewed results and highlighting gaps in the evidence. This study sets the baseline for the availability of evidence to support CSA programming in the five countries

A Queueing Theoretic Approach to Decoupling Inventory

This paper investigates the performance of different hybrid push-pull systems with a decoupling inventory at the semi-finished products and reordering thresholds. Raw materials are ‘pushed’ into the semi-finished product inventory and customers ‘pull’ products by placing orders. Furthermore, production of semi-finished products starts when the inventory goes below a certain level, referred to as the threshold value and stops when the inventory attains stock capacity. As performance of the decoupling stock is critical to the overall cost and performance of manufacturing systems, this paper introduces a Markovian model for hybrid push-pull systems. In particular, we focus on a queueing model with two buffers, thereby accounting for both the decoupling stock as well as for possible backlog of orders. By means of numerical examples, we assess the impact of different reordering policies, irregular order arrivals, the set-up time distribution and the order processing time distribution on the performance of hybrid push-pull systems

A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to assess the efficacy of topiramate in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Topiramate might be effective in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because of its antikindling effect and its action in both inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmitters. Open-label studies and few controlled trials have suggested that this anticonvulsant may have therapeutic potential in PTSD. This 12-week randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial will compare the efficacy of topiramate with placebo and study the tolerability of topiramate in the treatment of PTSD.</p> <p>Methods and design</p> <p>Seventy-two adult outpatients with DSM-IV-diagnosed PTSD will be recruited from the violence program of Federal University of São Paulo Hospital (UNIFESP). After informed consent, screening, and a one week period of wash out, subjects will be randomized to either placebo or topiramate for 12 weeks. The primary efficacy endpoint will be the change in the Clinician-administered PTSD scale (CAPS) total score from baseline to the final visit at 12 weeks.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>The development of treatments for PTSD is challenging due to the complexity of the symptoms and psychiatric comorbidities. The selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are the mainstream treatment for PTSD, but many patients do not have a satisfactory response to antidepressants. Although there are limited clinical studies available to assess the efficacy of topiramate for PTSD, the findings of prior trials suggest this anticonvulsant may be promising in the management of these patients.</p> <p>Trial Registration</p> <p>NCT 00725920</p