The Millennium Development Goals: How realistic are they?

Poverty reduction, Hunger, Lagging regions, Social innovation, United Nations, MDGs, Investment needs, infrastructure, health,

The Impact of Climate Change on Water Availability and Recharge of Aquifers in the Jordan River Basin

Climate change can seriously affect the Middle East region by reduced and erratic rainfall. Formulating appropriate coping policies should account for local effects and changing flows interconnecting spatial units. We apply statistical downscaling techniques of coarse global circulation models to predict future rainfall patterns in the Yarmouk Basin, using a linear regression to extrapolate these results to the entire Jordan River Basin (JRB). Using a detailed water economy model for the JRB we predict rainfall patterns to evaluate the impact of climate change on agriculture and groundwater recharge. For the JRB, rainfall in 2050 will be around 10% lower than present precipitation, but with substantial spatial spreading. An overall reduction of net revenue from crop cultivation is estimated at 150 million USD, with major losses in Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank; Syrian revenues will slightly increase. The recharge of groundwater is affected negatively, and outflow to the Dead Sea is substantially lower, leading to further increases in salinization

Adoption of CSA practices in Nyando basin, western Kenya: NWO-CCAFS research project: Using climate-smart financial diaries for scaling in the Nyando basin, Kenya

Since 2012 the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) has been piloting the Climate-Smart Villages (CSVs) approach in East Africa, including the Nyando basin of western Kenya, introducing a wide range of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) technologies and practices. The CSA interventions were tailored to address the climate risks in Nyando, the needs and circumstances of individual farmers, and were collectively piloted with the farmers for potential adoption. In this report, we present the adoption rates of various CSA technologies and practices in Nyando since the start of the CCAFS program in 2012 up to 2020. Specifically, we address the following questions: (i) What is the rate and intensity of adoption? (ii) Are there any time trends in adoption since 2012? (iii) How is adoption distributed across farmers? (iv) How does adoption change over time at the farm level (dynamics including dis-adoption)? and (v) How does adoption intensity vary across farmer characteristics

Financial landscape mapping for climate-smart agriculture in the Nyando Basin, Western Kenya

The present case study analyses the financial environment within which the farmers in Nyando operate and within which they deploy their CSA practices. This initial financial mapping will help the project to identify relevant questions to be asked in the financial diaries surveys, including interpretation of the results. It will also be a point of departure for the second phase of the project, when the financial diaries will be discussed with financial institutions in the region to identify the potential of existing financial products and the possible need for new, innovative ones to enable upscaling

Scaling climate-smart agriculture: Co-creating business models in the supply and finance chains in Nyando, Western Kenya

In the context of Nyando, with very small land sizes and subsistence agriculture, it is hard to envisage a large investable CSA portfolio. Smallholder farmers and commercial parties tend to see each other as risky partners in business. Building trust and long-term partnerships are the key to success of upscaling CSA investments. From the viewpoint of commercial players, Nyando is considered competitive in drought-resistant crops (sorghum and cassava). Seeds and fertilizers for these crops are an interesting market for the input suppliers. Milling sorghum into flour could add value to their business. It might be profitable for smallholder farmers to turn their sorghum food crop into a cash crop. This business model could be further enhanced with warehousing and with contracts with off-takers, but this requires certain conditions to be met for it to be successful. In the context of Nyando, modest increases in smallholder farmer finance are possible, through two channels. Firstly, through linkages between banks and community savings groups. And secondly, where farmers have access to marketing contracts with off-takers

Landscape mapping for upscaling CSA in the Nyando Basin, Kenya

The Nyando Basin in South West Kenya has been an area where the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) has been actively promoting CSA interventions (see the Output Networks section). Upscaling of successful interventions is the next natural step to take. However, whereas small-scale interventions may be successful for individual farmers, upscaling may change the environment in which these interventions take place (system changes). Typical issues that need to be addressed under upscaling include economic impacts, agro-ecological impacts, and institutional impacts. For economic impacts, the central issue is whether output markets are able to absorb increasing amounts of CSA products (in the Nyando Basin among others goat, sheep and chicken products), whether input markets are able to supply larger quantities of required fertilizer, (improved) seed, and feed, and whether credit is available to invest at scale in improved seeds, planting of trees and soil and water management. To ensure sustainable upscaling, it may be necessary to reach out to new consumers, or new sources for inputs. Agro-ecological impacts refer to changing input requirements, predominantly of fodder, while institutional impacts relate to barriers that may exist in current laws and regulations

Scaling climate-smart agriculture: Towards co-creating business models in the input supply chains and finance chains

This Info Note presents an exploration of CSA scaling options in the Nyando Basin area of Kisumu and Kericho Counties in Kenya, through partnerships in the value chain. It is part of the NWO-CCAFS research project “Climate-Smart Financial Diaries for Scaling in the Nyando Basin, Kenya”, led by the Amsterdam Centre for World Food Studies, in consortium with Wageningen Economic Research, University of Nairobi and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) in East Africa

Assessing the world-wide effects of a shift towards vegetable proteins: a General Equilibrium Model of Agricultural Trade (GEMAT) and the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP)

The present system of food production has a considerable and rapidly increasing impact on the environment. Meat production, in particular, is not attractive from an environmental point of view, as a result of the inefficient animal conversion of feed into meat. However, meat is clearly attractive to consumers all over the world. Since the non-meat protein products presently on the market do not meet the expectations of most western-style consumers, they do not constitute realistic alternatives to meat. The prospects for replacing meat-derived ingredients by non-meat ingredients are more promising. The PROFETAS project (Protein Foods, Environment, Technology and Society) is a Dutch multidisciplinary research program on sustainable food systems, which includes researchers from the fields of plant breeding, food technology, economics, and environmental sciences. The central research question of the project is to what extent a shift from animal to plant protein foods can be environmentally more sustainable than present trends; technologically feasible; and socially desirable. Whereas the technical research concentrates on defining plant-based protein products that closely resemble meat ingredients in terms of taste, texture, and so on, the economic assessment concentrates on the consequences of such a transition for agricultural production and trade, and on its economic feasibility. A second objective is to contribute to the methodological development of AGE models in agriculture. Therefore, two models are being used. One is the GTAP model that, in PROFETAS, is used at the Agricultural Economics Research Institute (LEI) and is employed to trace changes in production, consumption, trade and welfare for EU countries, other regions of interest as well as the rest of the world. Although there are clear and well-known advantages of using GTAP, the “one size fits all” approach of having a single model framework for widely differing issues and regions clearly also has disadvantages. The underlying paper describes how the GTAP framework, and the second model (GEMAT), developed at the Centre for World Food Studies (SOW-VU) can contribute to understanding the likely effects of a transition. GEMAT changes some assumptions made within the GTAP model regarding agricultural production, trade, and consumption. In particular, the model includes different land types, with the possibility of conversion by investments; imposes physical constraints on the maximum attainable yield per ha for different crop types in different regions; explicitly incorporates constraints on feed composition for ruminants and monogastrics that follow from dietary requirements for these types of animals; models the production of many feed items as byproducts of the production of food; includes multifunctional agriculture as a means of promoting a production shift towards more environmentally-friendly production; and includes a projected meat demand pattern that shifts with changes in the distribution of income. In addition, there is no Armington assumption imposed to describe trade between countries. On the other hand, institutional elements of world agricultural trade, such as the EU Common Agricultural Policy, are not (yet) included in the model, and its empirical base is much weaker than that of the GTAP framework. Therefore, in this paper, GEMAT is used to show the effects of alternative model structures in the study of a transition from meat to NPFs, whereas GTAP simulations concentrate on changes in policy. The contributions of this paper are methodological as well as empirical. The results of the model exercises carried out with GEMAT reveal the importance of including the above-mentioned assumptions on agricultural production and consumption. GTAP provides the effects of general macroeconomic trends and political developments. In addition, the paper shows the importance of using different models to study different aspects of a complex problem, and as such, shows the limits of the "one size fits all" approach