Katalysis: helping Andean farmers adapt to climate change

Recent studies of global climate change paint a bleak picture for the Andes. Researchers have proposed expert-led solutions, such as improved climatic modelling and forecasting, and the breeding of drought-tolerant crop varieties. In this article, the authors argue that farmers need to shape the research agenda according to local priorities, and that smallholders and researchers should learn together. The Katalysis approach to climate change adaptation is on enhancing local knowledge of climate change and creating opportunities for coping with it. Katalysis aims at helping rural people to creatively manage their own resources in response to the growing threat of climate change. Katalysis builds on Farmer Field Schools ‘discovery learning’ tradition and other flexible, knowledge based approaches for improving agriculture through farmer participation in group problem-solving. The approach requires strong facilitators with flexible programmes and funding to support open-ended learning-action. Donor and development agencies must hand over more trust and responsibility to communities to design and implement their own agendas. Local people and outsiders need to be free to learn from each other, and to learn as they go along

Learning from Carchi: agricultural modernisation and the production of decline

Provided its natural endowments, generally educated rural population, infrastructure and market access to two countries, the Province of Carchi, located in the northernmost highlands of Ecuador, is potentially one of the most productive agriculture regions in the Andes. In the 1960s development experts and the government targeted the region as a model for agricultural modernisation. Following land reform and rapid organisation around industrial era technologies, potato farming in Carchi boomed during the 1970s, evolving to dominate the landscape and become the major source of livelihoods in the province. By the early 1980s, Carchi came to produce nearly half the national potato harvest on less than a quarter of the country’s area dedicated to the crop. In the early1990s, however, production and productivity began to fall off, leading a growing number of rural families in Carchi to fall into debt and abandon potato farming. The research reported here is the outcome of the author’s ten years of research and development practice in Carchi with the International Potato Center, the FAO’s Global IPM Facility, and World Neighbors. It reflects unfolding experience with different phases of hope, discovery, and ambition. Many aspects of the experience have been published elsewhere (see Appendix A). The resulting dissertation is not a case study in the sense of a case that tests a hypothesis. It is a monograph that attempts to produce a single coherent story over seemingly unrelated events, focusing on a second-generation problem: despite a decade of highly rigorous, scientific research on the pathologies of Carchi and multiple public demonstrations of feasible alternatives, little significant change was achieved

Climate Change in the High Andes:implications and adaptation strategies for small-scale farmers

Abstract: Global climate change represents a major threat to sustainable farming in the Andes. Farmers have used local ecological knowledge and intricate production systems to cope, adapt and reorganize to meet climate uncertainty and risk, which have always been a fact of life. Those traditional systems are generally highly resilient, but the predicted effects, rates and variability of climate change may push them beyond their range of adaptability. This article examines the extent of actual and potential impacts of climate variability and change on small-scale farmers in the highland Andes of Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. It describes how climate change impacts agriculture through deglaciation, changes in hydrology, soil and pest and disease populations. The article highlights some promising adaptive strategies currently in use by or possible for producers, rural communities and local institutions to mitigate climate change effects while preserving the livelihoods and environmental and social sustainability of the regio

Erosion of Farmer Field Schools in Ecuador: Politics of Agricultural Science and Development Practice

The recognition that innovation occurs in networks of heterogeneous actors and requires broad systemic support beyond knowledge brokering has resulted in a changing landscape of the intermediary domain in an increasingly market-driven agricultural sector in developing countries. This paper presents findings of an explorative case study that looked at 22 organisations identified as fulfilling an intermediary role in the Kenyan agricultural sector. The results show that these organisations fulfill functions that are not limited to distribution of knowledge and putting it into use. The functions also include fostering integration and interaction among the diverse actors engaged in innovation networks and working on technological, organisational and institutional innovation. Further, the study identified various organisational arrangements of innovation intermediaries with some organisations fulfilling a specialised innovation brokering role, even as other intermediaries take on brokering as a side activity, while still substantively contributing to the innovation process. Based on these findings we identify a typology of 4 innovation intermediation arrangements, including technology brokers, systemic brokers, enterprise development support and input access support. The results indicate that innovation brokering is a pervasive task in supporting innovation and will require policy support to embed it in innovation support arrangements. The paper is not normative about these arrangements

Carotid Intima-Media Thickness Progression as Surrogate Marker for Cardiovascular Risk Meta-Analysis of 119 Clinical Trials Involving 100 667 Patients

Background: To quantify the association between effects of interventions on carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) progression and their effects on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. Methods: We systematically collated data from randomized, controlled trials. cIMT was assessed as the mean value at the common-carotid-artery; if unavailable, the maximum value at the common-carotid-artery or other cIMT measures were used. The primary outcome was a combined CVD end point defined as myocardial infarction, stroke, revascularization procedures, or fatal CVD. We estimated intervention effects on cIMT progression and incident CVD for each trial, before relating the 2 using a Bayesian meta-regression approach. Results: We analyzed data of 119 randomized, controlled trials involving 100 667 patients (mean age 62 years, 42% female). Over an average follow-up of 3.7 years, 12 038 patients developed the combined CVD end point. Across all interventions, each 10 μm/y reduction of cIMT progression resulted in a relative risk for CVD of 0.91 (95% Credible Interval, 0.87–0.94), with an additional relative risk for CVD of 0.92 (0.87–0.97) being achieved independent of cIMT progression. Taken together, we estimated that interventions reducing cIMT progression by 10, 20, 30, or 40 μm/y would yield relative risks of 0.84 (0.75–0.93), 0.76 (0.67–0.85), 0.69 (0.59–0.79), or 0.63 (0.52–0.74), respectively. Results were similar when grouping trials by type of intervention, time of conduct, time to ultrasound follow-up, availability of individual-participant data, primary versus secondary prevention trials, type of cIMT measurement, and proportion of female patients. Conclusions: The extent of intervention effects on cIMT progression predicted the degree of CVD risk reduction. This provides a missing link supporting the usefulness of cIMT progression as a surrogate marker for CVD risk in clinical trials

The performance of the jet trigger for the ATLAS detector during 2011 data taking

The performance of the jet trigger for the ATLAS detector at the LHC during the 2011 data taking period is described. During 2011 the LHC provided proton–proton collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and heavy ion collisions with a 2.76 TeV per nucleon–nucleon collision energy. The ATLAS trigger is a three level system designed to reduce the rate of events from the 40 MHz nominal maximum bunch crossing rate to the approximate 400 Hz which can be written to offline storage. The ATLAS jet trigger is the primary means for the online selection of events containing jets. Events are accepted by the trigger if they contain one or more jets above some transverse energy threshold. During 2011 data taking the jet trigger was fully efficient for jets with transverse energy above 25 GeV for triggers seeded randomly at Level 1. For triggers which require a jet to be identified at each of the three trigger levels, full efficiency is reached for offline jets with transverse energy above 60 GeV. Jets reconstructed in the final trigger level and corresponding to offline jets with transverse energy greater than 60 GeV, are reconstructed with a resolution in transverse energy with respect to offline jets, of better than 4 % in the central region and better than 2.5 % in the forward direction