Climate services for agriculture in Rwanda: initial findings from PICSA monitoring and evaluation

Key messages * More than 2,600 farmers have been trained in the first year rolling out PICSA in Rwanda. * Farmers find the different elements of the PICSA approach useful and are using them in their decision-making processes, namely historical climate information, participatory budgets, and seasonal forecast. * As a result of the PICSA training and the information shared, the vast majority of those farmers are making changes in their crops, livestock, and/or livelihood enterprises. * Farmers are sharing the different PICSA tools and information with their peers

Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) Intermediary Training in Muhanga, Rwanda

The Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture project is a four-year initiative (2016-2019) that seeks to transform Rwanda’s rural farming communities and national economy through improved climate risk management. This report presents the outputs of a five-day training workshop in Muhanga, Rwanda on the use of the Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach to help farmers make climate informed decisions. This training brought together farmer promoters, Social Economic Development Officers (SEDOs), as well as Sector Agronomists from the four pilot districts in Rwanda. The training workshop aimed to initiate the process of PICSA implementation starting by training lead farmers who will train farmers in the use of the PICSA approach. The report includes the process of the training workshop, presentations, and the evaluation by participants

Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) Specialist Intermediary Training in Nyamata, Rwanda

The Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture project is a four-year initiative (2016-2019) that seeks to transform Rwanda’s rural farming communities and national economy through improved climate risk management. This report presents the outputs of a five-day training on the use of a Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach to help farmers make climate informed decisions. This training brought together key government agencies in Rwanda, research organizations, farmers’ representatives, development partners, non-governmental organizations, and media. The one week training workshop aimed to initiate the process to develop skills of staff to become a group of expert trainers in the PICSA approach. The report includes the proceeding of the training workshop as well as reflections on workshop outcomes and feedback by participants

Exploring pathways for gender-responsive climate services in Rwanda

A recent study suggests that women are significantly less aware of climate information than men in all provinces of Rwanda (Coulibaly et al., 2017). This gap may be associated with ownership of communication assets and participation in social groups as means of communication of the information where women are far behind men (Coulibaly et al., 2017). In Rwandan agriculture, women represent the highest proportion (90.8% by NISR, 2013), therefore increasing access and uptake of climate information among women will improve their planning and farm management decisions

Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) as part of Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture: Findings from quantitative evaluation of 2016/17 PICSA implementation

The Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture project aims to provide climate services across Rwanda. This report provides findings from the first year of implementation of the Participatory integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach. A core team of national experts in PICSA were trained before cascading the approach to farmer groups through the Twigiri Muhinzi system of Farmer Promoters. Training of the first groups of Farmer Promoters took place in 2016. This document reports on a quantitative survey of 215 randomly selected trained farmers. The quantitative evaluation took place in March 2017 after the season had finished and respondents had been able to harvest. Results from the quantitative survey show that almost all of the farmers were trained on the PICSA elements that are implemented ‘long before the season’. 97% of respondents were trained in the seasonal forecast and 86% received short term forecasts during the season. 93% of farmers had made changes in their farming or other livelihood activities as a result of PICSA training. More farmers made changes in crops (90% of respondents) than livestock (24%) and other livelihoods (17%). On average respondents each made 2 changes. However, a larger proportion of men made changes in crops and livelihood enterprises than women. The most popular types of changes made in crops were growing a new crop (34%), growing a new variety of a crop they already grow (26%); and changing the management of land (23%). The most popular change in livestock enterprises were starting a new enterprise (14%), followed by increasing the scale of a livestock enterprise (6%); and changing the management of a livestock enterprise (4%). Regarding other livelihoods 9% of respondents had started a new enterprise and 7% had changed management of livelihood enterprises. Regarding the effects of the changes farmers had made as a result of the PICSA training, 85% of farmers reported that the decisions they had taken had improved their household food security. 81% reported that they had improved household income, 84% that they had been better able to provide for family healthcare and 75% that they had found it easier to pay their children’s school fees. Respondents reported that as a result of the PICSA training and the effects of the changes they had made that they are more confident in planning and decision making (96%), better able to cope with bad years caused by the weather (93%) and had improved their social standing within their households (93%) and within their wider community (93%). The results of this evaluation show that the first implementation of PICSA in Rwanda has been effective at scale across the first four districts. As the project scales the approach over the remaining districts in Rwanda it is vital to maintain quality in training and implementation. This success is due to PICSA being an integrated approach that enables farmers to assess their own individual farming systems and to evaluate and plan appropriate options in the context of their local climate and weather

Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) as part of Rwanda climate services for agriculture: Findings from quantitative evaluation of 2017/18 PICSA implementation

Participatory integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) is being implemented in multiple districts across Rwanda as part of the Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture project. This report presents findings from the evaluation of PICSA implementation across ten districts in the third year of the project. PICSA training of Farmer Promoters took place in late 2017 ahead of implementation with farmer groups. This document reports on a quantitative survey of 502 randomly selected trained farmers. The quantitative evaluation took place in May 2018 after the season had finished and respondents had been able to harvest. Results from the quantitative survey show that most of the farmers were trained on the PICSA elements that are implemented ‘long before the season’. In addition, almost all respondents were trained in the seasonal forecast and two thirds received short term forecasts during the season. 98% of farmers had made changes in their farming or other livelihood activities as a result of PICSA training. More farmers made changes in crops (96% of respondents) than livestock (29%) and other livelihoods (6%). Men made an average of 2.4 changes per farmer and women 2.1. The most popular types of changes made in crops were changing the management of land (50%), changing the amount and / or type of inputs used (35%); changing planting date (27%); growing a new variety of a crop they already grow (25%); and growing a new crop (20%). The most popular change in livestock enterprises were starting a new enterprise (15%), followed by changing the management of a livestock enterprise (11%) and increasing the scale of a livestock enterprise (6%). Regarding other livelihoods 4% of respondents had started a new enterprise, 1% had increased scale and 1% had changed management of livelihood enterprises. Regarding the effects of the changes farmers had made as a result of the PICSA training, 92% of farmers reported that the decisions they had taken had improved their household food ii security. 86% reported that they had improved household income, 81% that they had been better able to provide for family healthcare and 74% that they had found it easier to pay their children’s school fees. Respondents reported that as a result of the PICSA training and the effects of the changes they had made that they are more confident in planning and decision making (93%), better able to cope with bad years caused by the weather (76%) and had improved their social standing within their households (92%) and within their wider community (91%). PICSA is an integrated approach that enables individual farmers and households to study their own resources and farming systems, the climatology of their area, identify, evaluate and plan appropriate options to cope with and adapt to climate variability and change. The results of this study show that this integrated approach has continued to stimulate innovation and change in farming communities as it has been scaled across Rwanda

Participatory integrated climate services for agriculture (PICSA) as part of Rwanda climate services for agriculture: findings from quantitative evaluation of 2016/17 PICSA implementation.

The Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture project aims to provide climate services across Rwanda. This report provides findings from the first year of implementation of the Participatory integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach. A core team of national experts in PICSA were trained before cascading the approach to farmer groups through the Twigire Muhinzi system of Farmer Promoters. Training of the first groups of Farmer Promoters took place in 2016. This document reports on a quantitative survey of 215 randomly selected trained farmers. These were selected from a sample of 2,631 farmers trained across four districts. The quantitative evaluation took place in March 2017 after the season had finished and respondents had been able to harvest. Results from the quantitative survey show that almost all of the farmers were trained on the PICSA elements that are implemented ‘long before the season’. 97% of respondents were trained in the seasonal forecast and 86% received short term forecasts during the season. 93% of farmers had made changes in their farming or other livelihood activities as a result of PICSA training. More farmers made changes in crops (90% of respondents) than livestock (24%) and other livelihoods (17%). On average respondents each made 2 changes. The most popular types of changes made in crops were growing a new crop (34%), growing a new variety of a crop they already grow (26%); and changing the management of land (23%). The most popular change in livestock enterprises were starting a new enterprise (14%), followed by increasing the scale of a livestock enterprise (6%); and changing the management of a livestock enterprise (4%). Regarding other livelihoods 9% of respondents had started a new enterprise and 7% had changed management of livelihood enterprises. Regarding the effects of the changes farmers had made as a result of the PICSA training, 85% of farmers reported that the decisions they had taken had improved their household food security. 81% reported that they had improved household income, 84% that they had been better able to provide for family healthcare and 75% that they had found it easier to pay ii their children’s school fees. Respondents reported that as a result of the PICSA training and the effects of the changes they had made that they are more confident in planning and decision making (96%), better able to cope with bad years caused by the weather (93%) and had improved their social standing within their households (93%) and within their wider community (93%). The results of this evaluation show that the first implementation of PICSA in Rwanda has been effective at scale across the first four districts. As the project scales the approach over the remaining districts in Rwanda it is vital to maintain quality in training and implementation. This success is due to PICSA being an integrated approach that enables farmers to assess their own individual farming systems and to evaluate and plan appropriate options in the context of their local climate and weather

Climate Risk Management in Agricultural Extension

A two-week training of trainers (ToT) workshop was implemented from June 7-18, 2021, in Adama, Ethiopia by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) of the Columbia Climate School and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) in East Africa. The workshop, which was organized as part of the World Bank’s Accelerating the Impact of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) project and in close collaboration with the Adapting Agriculture to Climate Today, for Tomorrow (ACToday) Columbia World Project, brought together various professionals from the Ministry of Agriculture, Agricultural Technical and Vocational Education and Training (ATVET) colleges, the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), and the National Meteorological Agency (NMA) to pilot a four-module curriculum aimed at improving climate risk management in agricultural extension

Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture: Qualitative Evaluation through a Gender Lens

This report presents results from a qualitative evaluation of the Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture project, carried out in October of 2019. The project focused on enhancing smallholder farmer resilience and ability to cope with climate variability through interventions such as Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) and Radio Listeners’ Clubs (RLC). Recognizing that gender-related factors influence farmers’ capacities to access, use, and benefit from climate information, the evaluation critically analyzed differences and trends in women’s and men’s access to weather and climate information, use of the information in their farm and non-farm livelihood decision-making, and benefit from their climate-informed decisions made. The project also sought to reach increasing numbers of farmers over the course of its duration, starting with pilot districts and extending interventions into additional areas over its four years. Consequently, the evaluation took into account a farmer’s length of exposure to one or multiple project interventions, sampling farmers representing “treatment categories” of participation in: i) PICSA in 2016, ii) PICSA in 2018, iii) PICSA and participating in a RLC, and iv) not having participated in either intervention

Stimulating small-scale farmer innovation and adaptation with Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA): lessons from successful implementation in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and South Asia

How to cope with climate variability and adapt to climate change are key challenges for smallholder farmers globally. In low-income countries, farmers have typically received little, if any locally relevant weather or climate information. Although climate services have contributed to increased availability and accessibility of climate information, this has rarely achieved the desired impacts for farmers’ decision-making, adaptation and resilience to climate variability and change. This has been attributed to a lack of engagement with intended users of climate information and a top-down approach to development and delivery of climate services that fails to adequately consider and account for farmers’ context-specific requirements. Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) is an approach that was developed to support and empower farmers in their decision-making processes. More than 200,000 farmers have been trained in 23 countries and this paper presents evidence from evaluations in 7 countries including that most (87%; n = 4,299) have made beneficial changes in their crops, livestock and/or livelihood enterprises. The approach has strengthened key institutions that support farmers through deliberative scoping, tailoring, and capacity-building activities with extension and meteorological services. It has been well received by those that use it and is being integrated into policy and training curricula. Key reasons for the success of the approach include the importance of supporting farmers as decision makers and empowering them to relate relatively complex weather and climate information to their own contexts. Key considerations for the future include ensuring sustainability and further scaling as well as maintaining quality