Adaptation and development pathways for different types of farmers

One of the greatest challenges humanity faces is feeding the world's human population in a sustainable, nutritious, equitable and ethical way under a changing climate. Urgent transformations are needed that allow farmers to adapt and develop while also being climate resilient and contributing minimal emissions. This paper identifies several illustrative adaptation and development pathways, recognising the variety of starting points of different types of farmers and the ways their activities intersect with global trends, such as population growth, climate change, rapid urbanisation dietary changes, competing land uses and the emergence of new technologies. The feasibility of some pathways depends on factors such as farm size and land consolidation. For other pathways, particular infrastructure, technology, access to credit and market access or collective action are required. The most viable pathway for some farmers may be to exit agriculture altogether, which itself requires careful management and planning. While technology offers hope and opportunity, as a disruptor, it also risks maladaptations and can create tradeoffs and exacerbate inequalities, especially in the context of an uncertain future. For both the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2015 Paris Agreement to be achieved, a mix of levers that combine policy, technology, education and awareness-raising, dietary shifts and financial/economic mechanisms is required, attending to multiple time dimensions, to assist farmers along different pathways. Vulnerable groups such as women and the youth must not be left behind. Overall, strong good governance is needed at multiple levels, combining top-down and bottom-up processes

Enhancing climate services design and implementation through gender-responsive evaluation

Assessing and responding to gender inequalities, and promoting women’s empowerment, can be critical to achieving the goals of climate services, such as improved climate resilience, productivity, food security and livelihoods. To this end, our paper seeks to provide guidance to rural climate service researchers, implementing organizations, and funders on gender-responsive evaluation of climate services, including key questions to be asked and appropriate methodology. We draw on case studies of rural climate services in Mali, Rwanda and Southeast Asia to illustrate how gender-responsive evaluations have framed and attempted to answer questions about climate information needs, access to information and support through group processes, and contribution of climate services to empowerment. Evaluation of how group participatory processes can enable women’s and men’s demand for weather and climate information can help close knowledge gaps on gender equity in access to climate services. Quantitative methods can rigorously identify changes in demand associated with varying interventions, but qualitative approaches may be necessary to help assess the nuances of participatory communication processes. Furthermore, evaluation of how women’s and men’s information needs differ according to their roles and responsibilities in distinct climate-sensitive decisions can help assess gender inequities in climate services use. Evaluation that critically considers the local normative and institutional environment influencing empowerment can help identify pathways for climate services to contribute to women’s empowerment. Qualitative and mixed method methodologies can be helpful for assessing the normative and institutional changes upon which empowerment depends. Although evaluations are often conducted too late to inform the design of time-bound projects, they can contribute to improvements to climate services if results are shared widely, if implementers and funders consistently factor evidence and insights from prior evaluations into the design of new initiatives, and if ongoing climate service initiatives conduct preliminary evaluations regularly to support mid-course adjustments

Evidence and perceptions of rainfall change in Malawi: Do maize cultivar choices enhance climate change adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa?

Getting farmers to adopt new cultivars with greater tolerance for coping with climatic extremes and variability is considered as one way of adapting agricultural production to climate change. However, for successful adaptation to occur, an accurate recognition and understanding of the climate signal by key stakeholders (farmers, seed suppliers and agricultural extension services) is an essential precursor. This paper presents evidence based on fieldwork with smallholder maize producers and national seed network stakeholders in Malawi from 2010 to 2011, assessing understandings of rainfall changes and decision-making about maize cultivar choices. Our findings show that preferences for short-season maize cultivars are increasing based on perceptions that season lengths are growing shorter due to climate change and the assumption that growing shorter-season crops represents a good strategy for adapting to drought. However, meteorological records for the two study areas present no evidence for shortening seasons (or any significant change to rainfall characteristics), suggesting that short-season cultivars may not be the most suitable adaptation option for these areas. This demonstrates the dangers of oversimplified climate information in guiding changes in farmer decision-making about cultivar choice

The implications of rural perceptions of water scarcity on differential adaptation behaviour in Rajasthan, India

Water scarcity is one of the most critical issues facing agriculture today. To understand how people manage the risk of water scarcity and growing pressures of increased climate variability, exploring perceptions of risk and how these perceptions feed into response behaviour and willingness to adapt is critical. This paper revisits existing frameworks that conceptualise perceptions of environmental risk and decision-making, and uses empirical evidence from an in-depth study conducted in Rajasthan, India, to emphasise how individual and collective memories, and experience of past extreme events shape current definitions and future expectations of climatic risks. In doing so, we demonstrate the value of recognising the role of local perceptions of water scarcity (and how they vary between and within households) in constructing social vulnerability. We also discuss the implications of these perceptions of risk when understanding and incentivising local adaptation pathways

When the “Strong Arms” Leave the Farms—Migration, Gender Roles and Risk Reduction in Vietnam

For many family farms, migration is one strategy for reducing poverty and vulnerability to both natural hazards and economic risk. While more men typically migrate to work, the implications of this on the household are inconclusive, especially for the women who remain on the farms. This study employs a gender lens to examine the effects of economically driven migration on household decision-making, farm labor and disaster risk reduction, focusing on two disaster-prone regions with high poverty rates in Vietnam: Dien Bien (Northwest) and Ha Tinh (North Central Coast) provinces. Surveys of 228 households with at least one migrant worker showed a new generation of young male and female migrants, and that men over 30 years of age migrated for longer periods and more frequently than their spouses. Intrahousehold impacts differed according to risk strategies. In areas with a lower-risk coping strategy (Dien Bien), seasonal jobs coincided with periods of less intense farming activities. During the absence of male family members, women temporarily made more domestic decisions. In areas with a higher-risk adaptation strategy (Ha Tinh), farming was planned for longer absences; thus decisions remained largely unchanged. Remittances invested into agriculture contributed to shortening the recovery period after disasters and, in some cases, diversifying farming systems. The migrant’s absence was offset by relatives and neighbors as essential labor reserves. New resilient farming systems need to be disaster proof, gender-sensitive and free up labor

Typologies of crop-drought vulnerability: an empirical analysis of the socio-economic factors that influence the sensitivity and resilience to drought of three major food crops in China (1961-2001)

Why is it that sometimes small droughts trigger serious crop losses while in other cases even large droughts do not have such a major effect? In this paper, we identify socio-economic indicators associated with sensitivity and resilience to drought for each of China's main grain crops (rice, wheat and corn). Provincial harvest and rainfall data (1961-2001) are used to calculate an annual "crop-drought vulnerability index". We separate "sensitive cases" (where significant harvest losses occurred in years with only minor droughts) and "resilient cases" (where harvest losses were minimal despite there being a major drought) and explore the socio-economic characteristics of these different situations. Results show that sensitive cases were particularly common in economically poor landlocked provinces and in wealthy coastal areas that have a limited land base. in such "sensitive cases", the size of the rural population and the quantity of agricultural inputs were negatively correlated with drought vulnerability, while for resilient cases, vulnerability was negatively correlated with the abundance of land. This leads us to propose a series of drought-vulnerability typologies based on the extent to which land, labour, capital, agricultural technology, and infrastructure buffer or exacerbate the effect of a drought event

Non-Farm Activities and Impacts beyond the Economy of Rural Households in Vietnam: A Review and Link to Policies

Rural households in Asian developing countries such as Vietnam have been participating in non-farm activities for decades, yet impacts beyond the economy of these households are little understood. Using evidence from available literature and two case studies from rural Vietnam, this paper exposes a range of socio-cultural impacts of non-farm activities. An increased social tension driven by a widening economic gap between poor and better-off households or ethnic majority and minority groups was the most frequently reported impact in the literature. The case studies reveal additional impacts, notably those associated with public security, preservation of local culture, and safety of farm households with migrants during and following climate-related disasters. An increasing number of young migrants who exited family farms to access non-farm jobs partially led to the latter two impacts. The rural development and poverty reduction policies of Vietnam enacted in the past two decades (2000–2020) that promoted livelihood diversification had limited measures addressing socio-cultural impacts of non-farm activities. An amendment of these two categories of policies for the implementation beyond 2020 or a strengthened synergy in implementation with other categories of policy such as social policies is necessary to ensure sustainable rural development in Vietnam

Safe local onion (Hanh Tam) flyer

Local onion (Hanh Tam) - bean rotation is considered as a climate-smart agriculture intervention to adapt to drought condition during the summer-autumn season in Can Loc district, Ha Tinh province. This poster summaries key information on scale, economic as well as environmental benefits of this practice and can be used to introduce the practice to various stakeholders, including buyers of agricultural products