Training on Climate-Smart Agriculture for Sunflower Value Chain in Tanzania

Tanzania is the major sunflower producer in the East Africa region. It has a market dominance of 78%, followed by Uganda (21%). It is an important cash crop in Tanzania and has been attributed to the low cost of production relative to other oilseeds. Moreover, sunflower accounts for 35% of oilseeds produced in the United Republic of Tanzania. Sunflower variety grown in Tanzania has been characterized as resistant to drought conditions and low susceptibility to diseases and pests. Sunflower grows well in semi-arid central plateau regions (Singida, Iringa, Dodoma, Njombe and Rukwa), lake region (Mwanza, Kigoma, Mara, Kagera, Geita, Shinyanga, Simiyu), and eastern region (Mtwara, Lindi, Morogoro) of Tanzania. For instance, sunflower is the second most popular crop after maize in Dodoma and Singida, and the latter region produces about 20% of the cash crop. In addition, commercial sunflower is produced by 75% of the households in Singida, and the land allocated is estimated to be 23,4149 hectares. Central regions like Dodoma, Njombe and Rukwa have collectively allocated more than 84,000 hectare

State of Index-Based Crop Insurance Interventions for Smallholder Farmers and Agribusinesses in East Africa

This review of index-based agricultural insurance for the Climate Resilient Agribusiness for Tomorrow—CRAFT (https://crafteastafrica.org/) project was part of a wider effort to strengthen understanding in the enabling environment for scaling in CRAFT interventions. The findings can be used to design an appropriate agricultural insurance intervention in future. Climate-smart crop insurance is one of the interventions that was proposed in the project. Smallholder farmers and agribusinesses (SMEs and cooperatives) often lack access to financial services such as insurance, which could help them to prepare, invest, safeguard, and adapt. Opportunities for tailored index-based insurances to cover climate-related crop losses are still underdeveloped in eastern Africa. Further, there is a possibility of the risk or likelihood or prospect of climate change to raise insurance prices. Hence the urgent need to help climate-proof the CRAFT project value chains through financial services such as insurance. In the wider CRAFT enabling environment, there were opportunities for access to insurance services that were either not yet developed (such as tailored index-based insurances to cover for climate-related crop losses) or did not experience sufficient incentives due to high risks and uncertainties, including those related to climate change. East African governments need support in facilitating access to these financial services for agribusinesses and entrepreneurial farmer

Training on Climate-Smart Agriculture to Strengthen the Capacity of ASARECA-Member National Agricultural Research Institutes

ASARECA is implementing the AICCRA project that has synergy with a project titled “Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme ex-pillar IV (CAADP-XP4)”. Implementation of this 5-year CAADP-XP4 project started in 2019 and is part of the European Union’s (EU) Development Smart Innovation through Research in Agriculture (DeSIRA) initiative. The project is expected to deliver five (5) key outputs namely: (i) Strengthened capacities of ASARECA and partner organizations in competencies required for successful implementation of the CAADP-XP4 project; (ii) Multistakeholder partnerships for innovation established and in operation; (iii) Policies in support of climate-relevant agriculture and food systems transformation formulated, investments increased, advocacy and market linkages strengthened; (iv) Knowledge management and communication systems for decision-making and sharing of innovation and for advocacy related to climate-relevant agriculture transformation established; and (v) Enhanced planning, coordination, monitoring, evaluation, learning, and reporting. The training in CSA were organized under the auspices of ASARECA’s AICCRA and CAADP-XP4 projects. The training contributed to AICCRA activity 2.3.3 on Building capacity of public and private sector next users to support implementation of CSA technology packages in focus countries. The CSA training also contributed to CAADP-XP4 project activity area 1.1 that focuses on Strengthening the internal capacities of ASARECA and its regional and country level partners

Transforming agricultural extension service delivery through innovative bottom–up climate-resilient agribusiness farmer field schools

Conventional approaches to agricultural extension based on top–down technology transfer and information dissemination models are inadequate to help smallholder farmers tackle increasingly complex agroclimatic adversities. Innovative service delivery alternatives, such as field schools, exist but are mostly implemented in isolationistic silos with little effort to integrate them for cost reduction and greater technical effectiveness. This article presents a proof-of-concept effort to develop an innovative, climate-resilient field school methodology, integrating the attributes of Farmers’ Field School, Climate Field School, Climate-Smart Agriculture and indigenous technical knowledge of weather indicators in one package to address the gaps, while sensitizing actors on implications for policy advocacy. Some 661 local facilitators, 32% of them women and 54% youth, were trained on the innovation across East Africa. The initiative has reached 36 agribusiness champions working with 237,250 smallholder farmers in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Initial results show that the innovation is strengthening adaptation behaviour of agribusiness champions, farmers and supply chain actors, and reducing training costs. Preliminary findings indicate that the process is rapidly shaping group adaptive thinking. The integrated approach offers lessons to transform extension and to improve food security and resilience. The approach bundles the costs of previously separate processes into the cost of one joint, simultaneous process, while also strengthening technical service delivery through bundled messaging. Experience from this initiative can be leveraged to develop scalable participatory extension and training models, especially scaling out through farmer-to-farmer replication and scaling up through farmer group networks

Adoption of complementary climate-smart agricultural technologies: lessons from Lushoto in Tanzania

Background: Agriculture is important for economic growth and development in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Tanzania. However, agricultural production and productivity remain relatively low, with significant yield gaps attributed to factors such as limited access to and low adoption of appropriate agricultural technologies, and climate-related risks resulting from climate variability and change. This paper explores the drivers of adoption of climate-smart agricultural (CSA) technologies and practices, taking into account the complementarity among agricultural technologies and heterogeneity of the farm households, using data from Lushoto in Tanzania. Methods: We use a Multivariate Probit analysis of cross-sectional data collected from 264 smallholder farmers in Lushoto—a climate hotspot in Tanzania—to understand the drivers of household decisions to adopt CSA technologies and practices. The technologies included diversification of multiple stress (drought, floods, pests, diseases)-tolerant crop varieties, use of fertilizers, and application of herbicides and pesticides. The Multivariate Probit model was preferred as it takes into account the inter-relationships of the technologies as well as heterogeneity of the smallholder farmers for more robust estimates. The independent variables used in the analysis included household socio-economic factors such as the relative importance of crop and livestock enterprises, household land size, social capital, access to agricultural credit and weather information, previous experience with fertilizer use and household characteristics (age, education and gender of household head, and household size). Results: About 63% of the households diversified their crop enterprises, shifting to improved resilient crops and crop varieties. Another 37% adopted fertilizers, while 38% applied pesticides and herbicides. Conditional on the unobservable heterogeneity effects, the results show that household adoption decisions on diversification of multiple stresstolerant crops and crop varieties, fertilizer, and pesticides and herbicides are complementary. In addition, the results confirm existence of unobserved heterogeneity effects leading to varying impact of the explanatory variables on adoption decisions among farmers with similar observable characteristics. Conclusions: The findings indicate that any effective CSA technology adoption and diffusion strategies and policies should take into account the complementarity of the technologies and heterogeneity of the smallholder farmers. Therefore, inter-related technologies should be promoted as a package or bundled while taking into consideration household and farm-level constraints to adoption

Cassava Production Efficiency in Southern Ethiopia: The Parametric Model Analysis

Due to capital constraints and land scarcity in developing countries, introducing new technology to boost productivity is difficult. As a result, working to improve cassava production efficiency is the best option available. Cassava is increasingly being used as a food source as well as an industrial raw material in the production of economic goods. This study estimates cassava production efficiency and investigates the causes of inefficiency in southern Ethiopia. Cross-sectional data from 158 households were collected using a systematic questionnaire. The Cobb-Douglas (CDs) stochastic frontier production model was used to calculate production efficiency levels. The computed mean result showed technical efficiency (TE), allocative efficiency (AE), and economic efficiency (EE) levels of 74, 90, and 66%, respectively. This demonstrated that existing farm resources could increase average production efficiency by 26, 10, and 34%, respectively. The study found that land size, urea fertilizer application, and cassava planting cut all had a positive and significant effect on cassava production. It was discovered that TE was more important than AE as a source of benefit for EE. Inefficiency effects modeled using the two-limit Tobit model revealed that household head age, level of education, cassava variety, extension contact, rural credit, off-farm activities involvement to generate income, and farm size were the most important factors for improving TE, AE, and EE efficiencies. As a result, policymakers in government should consider these factors when addressing inefficiencies in cassava production. It is especially important to provide appropriate agricultural knowledge through short-term training, to provide farmers with access to formal education, to access improved cassava varieties, and to support agricultural extension services