Impacts of seasonal climate communication strategies on farm management and livelihoods in Wote, Kenya

This study was undertaken in Wote division, Makueni district, Eastern province, Kenya, to test the effectiveness of different methods of communicating downscaled seasonal climate forecast information, and to assess its impact on management and productivity of smallholder farms. The communication methods tested include training workshops aimed at helping farmers understand downscaled probabilistic climate forecast information, agro-advisories that combined forecast information with advice on potential management options, and a combination of training and agro-advisory workshops. The study was conducted with about 120 farmers, 10 from each of 12 villages selected randomly from the villages that are within a 5 km radius from Kampi Ya Mawe research station for which long-term climate records are available, during the 2011-2012 short rain season. Three surveys, implemented during the pre-, mid- and end-season periods, captured changes in management, productivity, and attitudes, associated with the provision of climate information. Relative to the control sample, farmers with access to enhanced climate information reduced their cropped area, invested in more intensive crop management, and achieved higher yields with attractive returns on investment relative to farmers in control villages. Farmers from treatment villages also demonstrated appreciation of the role of climate information in planning and managing farm activities, higher satisfaction with the season, and strong interest in receiving climate information on a regular basis. This interest was demonstrated by their willingness to pay a modest amount for the service if required. The evaluation was disaggregated by gender. Gender influenced adjustments to crop mix in response to climate information, with women preferring short-duration legumes. Gender did not appear to affect the subjective value put on climate information, or willingness to pay. The study findings suggest that both of the workshop-based approaches to communicating climate information improved farers’ ability to manage risks. However the sample size was not sufficient to provide conclusive evidence of the impact on yields, investments or livelihoods. It is therefore suggested that similar assessments with a much larger sample in different agro-ecologies, and more comprehensive baseline data collection, be planned to make a more conclusive assessment of farmers’ ability to understand, utilize and benefit from seasonal climate forecast information. Such a study should aim to develop and refine training 3 modules that can help farmers and their support agents better understand climate variability, probabilistic forecasts and their application, and appropriate communication systems aimed at providing timely access to required climate information

Farmer training workshops on understanding probabilistic seasonal forecasts: Wote, Kenya, 14-16 and 20-23 September 2011

This report presents the work done during farmer training workshops on probabilistic seasonal forecasting and forecast-based advisories, in Wote, Makueni County, Kenya. This activity took into consideration the fact that farmers in Mahueni County in semi-arid eastern Kenya mainly rely on rainfall for their agricultural production. The rainfall is, however, highly variable in amounts and distribution both seasonally and annually making farming in the region a risky business. The goal of the project was therefore, to train farmers in the identified areas of Makueni to better understand the climate of their location and explore how they can manage the effects of the variability in rainfall in order to improve their farm production. The area was selected due to previous as well as on-going studies implemented by ICRISAT, KALRO and other collaborators. The aim of the training was to empower farmers with knowledge on the use of forecast information and to enable them make better use of this knowledge in their farm planning for improved household food security. The trainings were conducted on the 14-16 and 20-23 September 2011, before the onset of the short rain (October-December) season. It was part of a study that covered twelve villages in Wote Division, Makueni County. Ten farmer participants were selected per village giving a total of 120 farmers. These workshops were sponsored by the Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) project under the Theme “Adaptation through Managing Climate Risk,” and implemented in collaboration with International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid-Tropics (ICRISAT), Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), Kenya Meteorological Services (KMS), the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), and International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI)

The influence of current and future climate-induced risk on the agricultural sector in East and Central Africa: Sensitizing the ASARECA strategic plan to climate change

Rainfed agriculture is and will remain the dominant source of staple food production for the majority of the rural poor in Eastern and Central Africa (ECA). It is clear that larger investments in agriculture by a broad range of stakeholders will be required if this sector is to meet the food security requirements of tomorrow’s Africa. Many factors contribute to the current low levels of investment, but production uncertainty associated with between- and within-season rainfall variability remains a fundamental constraint to many investors who often overestimate the impact of climate induced uncertainty. The climate of Africa is warmer than it was 100 years ago. Model-based predictions of future greenhouse gas-induced climate change for the continent clearly suggest that this warming will continue and, in most scenarios, accelerate. The projections for rainfall are less uniform; large regional differences exist in rainfall variability. However, there is likely to be an increase in annual mean precipitation in East Africa

GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS FOR ASSESSMENT OF CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTS ON TEFF IN ETHIOPIA

The value of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for assessing climate change impacts on crop productivity cannot be over-emphasised. This study evaluated a GIS based methodology for teff (Eragrostis tef) production in Ethiopia. We examined the spatial implications of climate change on areas suitable for teff, and estimated the effects of altered environments on teff\u2019s productivity. There was a non-linear relationship between suitability indices, the output of spatial analysis and teff yield data collected from diverse ecological zones. This served as the basis for country-wide crop yield analysis for both current and future climate scenarios. To complement this effort, a socio-economic survey was carried with a thrust of understanding the agricultural activities in the study area. With the current climatic conditions, 87.7% of Ethiopia is suitable for teff. On the other hand, approximately 67.7% of Ethiopia is expected to be suitable for teff production by 2050. Suitability index (SI) and the actual crop yield data showed a strong positive correlation (r = 74%). There is a predicted severe drop in teff yield (-0.46 t ha-1) by the year 2050. Based on the current area under teff in Ethiopia, this equals an overall reduction in national production of about 1,190,784.12 t, equivalent to a loss of US$ 651 million to farmers. The results indicate that crop yield varied significantly as a function of climatic variation and that the model is applicable in assessing the impact of climate change on crop productivity at various levels taking into consideration spatial variability of climate.On ne saurait trop insister sur la valeur des Syst\ue8mes d\u2019Information G\ue9ographiques (SIG) pour l\u2019\ue9valuation d\u2019impacts des changements climatiques sur les rendements des cultures. Cette \ue9tude a \ue9t\ue9 men\ue9e pour \ue9valuer en utilisant le SIG la production du teff (Eragrostis tef) en Ethiopie. L\u2019investigation a port\ue9 sur les implications spatiales du changement climatique sur les zones favorables \ue0 la culture du teff en Ethiopie et l\u2019estimation des effets des changements environementaux sur la productivit\ue9 du teff. L\u2019\ue9tude a r\ue9v\ue9l\ue9 une relation non lin\ue9aire entre les indices de convenance et les r\ue9sultats de l\u2019analyse spatiale et des rendements de la culture de teff dans diff\ue9rentes zones agro-\ue9cologiques. Ceci a servi de base \ue0 l\u2019analyse des rendements des cultures dans tout le pays pour le pr\ue9sent et les futurs scenarios de changement climatique. En compl\ue9ment \ue0 cet effort, une enqu\ueate socio\ue9conomique \ue9tait conduite pour comprendre le d\ue9roulement des activit\ue9s agricoles dans la zone d\u2019\ue9tude. Sous les conditions climatiques actuelles, 87.7% de l\u2019Ethiopie convient pour le teff. D\u2019autre part, il est pr\ue9dit qu\u2019environ 67.7% de l\u2019Ethiopie seront encore faborable \ue0 la culture du teff en 2050. L\u2019indice de convenance et les donn\ue9es de rendements actuels ont montr\ue9 une forte corr\ue9lation positive (r = 74%). Par ailleurs, une diminution sensible de rendement du teff (-0.46 t ha-1) a \ue9t\ue9 pr\ue9dite pour l\u2019an 2050. Sur base de la superficie actuelle sous culture de teff en Ethiopie, cette chute de rendement correspond \ue0 une r\ue9duction de la production nationale d\u2019environ 1.190.784,12 t \ue9quivalents \ue0 une perte de 651 millions de dollars pour les producteurs. Ces r\ue9sultats indiquent que les rendements des cultures ont vari\ue9 significativement en fonction de la variation climatique et que le mod\ue8le est applicable dans le cas de l\u2019\ue9valuation de l\u2019impact du changement climatique sur la productivit\ue9 des cultures \ue0 diff\ue9rents niveaux consid\ue9rant les variabilit\ue9s spatiales du climat

Delivering climate risk information to farmers at scale: the Intelligent agricultural Systems Advisory Tool (ISAT)

One of the strategies for helping smallholder farmers cope with climate variability and change is the provision of climate services that better decision making around the planning and management of agricultural systems. However, providing such services with location specific timely and actionable information to millions of farmers operating across diverse conditions requires innovative solutions. ICRISAT and its partners have developed and piloted one such system called “Intelligent agricultural Systems Advisory Tool – ISAT” capable of generating and disseminating data driven location specific advisories that assist farmers in anticipating and responding to the emerging conditions through the season. Using a decision tree approach, a structured and systematic approach to decision making was devised that considers the insights obtained from the analysis of historical climatic conditions, climate and weather forecasts and prevailing environmental conditions. Microsoft India developed a platform to access real time data from various ‘public’ sources, perform the data analytics, implement the decision tree and generate and disseminate messages to farmers and associated actors. The ISAT generated advisories are designed to support both pre-season planning and in-season management. During the 2017 monsoon, ISAT was piloted with 417 farmers across four different locations. The messaging system worked extremely well in picking appropriate location specific message from the database and delivering the same to the mobiles of the registered farmers. Mid and end season surveys revealed that more than 80% of the farmers from all villages were satisfied with the frequency, relevance and understandability of the messages delivered. About 58% of the farmers rated the messages are reliable by being correct more than 75% of the times and helped them in managing their farms better by conducting farm operations timely with reduced risk. Compared to farmers in the control villages, groundnut yields of farmers in 5 treatment villages are higher by ~ 16% but this results varied between -7.7 to 56.2%. This study has demonstrated the opportunities available to harness the untapped power of digital technologies to provide actionable advisories timely to smallholder farmers using appropriate data analytics and information dissemination systems

Agricultural innovation platform as a tool for development oriented research: Lessons and challenges in the formation and operationalization

The emergence of Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D) presents an opportunity to address any development problem. It involves innovative principles and an integrated research agenda while recognizing the need for greater organizational capacities among stakeholders in agriculture. Operationalization of IAR4D revolves around successful establishment and operation of an Agricultural Innovation Platform (AIP). Agricultural Innovation Platforms are being implemented in Lake Kivu Pilot Learning Site (LKPLS) of the Sub-Saharan Africa Challenge Programme, covering three countries (Uganda, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo) with widely differing social political environments to address agricultural development challenges. This paper presents the processes, general guidelines lessons and experiences pertaining to “good practices” for organising and forming AIPs in the LKPLS. The life of AIPs covers three phases, namely; pre-formation, formation and post formation. The lessons and experiences are shared across 6 stages of AIP formation, namely; Identification of a research and developmental challenge(s), Site selection, Consultative and scoping study, Visioning and Stakeholder analysis, Development of action plans and Implementation of the action plans. Emerging lessons highlight AIPs as grounds and pillars for multi-level, multi-stakeholder interactions to identify, understand and address a complex challenge, concomitant emerging issues and learning towards achieving the agreed vision. Agricultural Innovation Platform formation is a dynamic, highly context specific process that incorporates all essential ingredients for successful innovation at once and provides an opportunity for local innovations to bear while at the same time nourishing on introduced innovations. In AIP formation, the recognition and value of indigenous knowledge and capitalization on prevailing policy, institutional setting and involvement of local leadership is vital. The form, nature and time taken by AIP formation process depends on both the conceptual and local context, quality of facilitation, socio-economic, culture, biophysical, political environment in which a common challenge and/or opportunity is identified and on the capacity of stakeholders to comprehend the Innovation Systems Approach (ISA). The process of AIP formation was faster in creating win-wins when market led. Strong leadership, strategic partnership, information flow, interactions and dealing with recurrent challenges during the AIP formation process are critical in fostering innovations. The major challenges included capacitating the stakeholders in requisite skills and dealing with persistent “handout-syndrome”

Institutional Innovations for Building Impact-oriented Agricultural Research, Knowledge and Development Institutions

The central development question in African agriculture is how to catalyze a more competitive, equitable and sustainable agricultural growth within the context of smallholder production systems, inefficient agricultural marketing, inefficient investments by private sector amidst degradation prone natural resources base (Lynam and Blackie, 1994; IAC, 2004; World bank, 2006 ). Concerted scholarly analyses of Science and Technology (S&T) strategies have given birth to Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D) an organizing concept of the Innovation Systems Approach (ISA) as the promise holder. It is hypothesized that the generation, diffusion and application of impactful innovations critically depend on systemic integration of knowledge systems that promote communication, interaction and cooperation between agricultural research, education, extension, farmers, private sector and policy regulatory systems. This paper examines how the different institutional innovations arising from various permutations of linkages and interactions of ARD organizations (national, international advanced agricultural research centres and universities) influenced the different outcomes in addressing identified ARD problems. A multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary phased Participatory Action Research approach was used to pool knowledge to address outstanding and emerging challenges in three countries (DRC, Rwanda and Uganda) with 2, 16 and 24 years out of conflict, respectively) of the Lake Kivu Pilot Learning Site. A landmark institutional innovation was the participatory establishment of twelve (12) Innovation Platforms as tools for pooling knowledge across the agricultural business, education, research and extension systems. The knowledge “pool” was to generate, diffuse and apply innovations to reduce transactions costs and create value chain based “win-win” situations. A number of innovations (e.g. International Public Goods-IPGs, market binding contracts, registered brands and/or certification processes, diversity, density and quality of networks/collective action, bulking centres, ICT application and depth of knowledge pools) were initiated. There were major breakthroughs which included bringing on board non-traditional private sector and policy maker partners, overcoming the predominant “farmer handout syndrome”, building consensus and addressing common interest challenge. Making markets work, bringing various stakeholders including universities to the community and vice-versa, appreciation of indigenous knowledge system, propelling collective soil and water conservation and demand/utilization of technologies hitherto on-shelf were other very significant breakthroughs. Sustainable operations of the Innovation Systems knowledge “pool” nurturing institutional learning were ensured through the availability of a “functional body”. The body undertook the social enterprise of organizing farmers and traders, facilitating/brokering ARD organization linkages by using multi-media to build social capital to overcome emergent knowledge, credit, market, technology and resource degradation challenges under different policy regulatory systems