Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA): field manual. A step-by-step guide to using PICSA with farmers

Smallholder farmers are key to food security in sub-Saharan Africa where two thirds of the population depend on small-scale, rain-fed farming as their main source of food and income. Critical farming and household decisions depend upon the weather, for example, how much rain falls, the length and start date of the rainfall season and the timing of dry spells. Such aspects of the weather vary considerably from year to year. The Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach aims to facilitate farmers to make informed decisions based on accurate, location specific, climate and weather information; locally relevant crop, livestock and livelihood options; and with the use of participatory tools to aid their decision making. Considering farming and livelihood options in the context of climate is crucial for making good decisions. A farmer in Matumba village in central Tanzania expressed this notion perfectly when he said, “We should select crops that look like the climate”. The PISCA approach has been designed with field staff in mind, and aims to support you to do your job better by providing you with improved resources and information. This field manual is a step by step guide to working though the PICSA approach with farmer groups. It is primarily for the use of facilitators (e.g. NGO and extension field staff who have received training in the use of the PICSA approach). The PICSA approach is divided into twelve steps to be carried out with groups of farmers. Due to the location specific nature of PICSA there are a number of preparatory activities that need to be completed before field staff are trained in the approach. The details of these activities can be found in the document ‘Preparing for PICSA’ on the PICSA website (http://www.walker-institute.ac.uk/research/PICSA)

Climate services for agriculture in Rwanda: initial findings from PICSA monitoring and evaluation

Key messages * More than 2,600 farmers have been trained in the first year rolling out PICSA in Rwanda. * Farmers find the different elements of the PICSA approach useful and are using them in their decision-making processes, namely historical climate information, participatory budgets, and seasonal forecast. * As a result of the PICSA training and the information shared, the vast majority of those farmers are making changes in their crops, livestock, and/or livelihood enterprises. * Farmers are sharing the different PICSA tools and information with their peers

Doing more harm than good? Community based natural resource management and the neglect of local institutions in policy development

Approaches to natural resource management emphasise the importance of involving local people and institutions in order to build capacity, limit costs, and achieve environmental sustainability. Governments worldwide, often encouraged by international donors, have formulated devolution policies and legal instruments that provide an enabling environment for devolved natural resource management. However, implementation of these policies reveals serious challenges. This article explores the effects of limited involvement of local people and institutions in policy development and implementation. An in-depth study of the Forest Policy of Malawi and Village Forest Areas in the Lilongwe district provides an example of externally driven policy development which seeks to promote local management of natural resources. The article argues that policy which has weak ownership by national government and does not adequately consider the complexity of local institutions, together with the effects of previous initiatives on them, can create a cumulative legacy through which destructive resource use practices and social conflict may be reinforced. In short, poorly developed and implemented community based natural resource management policies can do considerably more harm than good. Approaches are needed that enable the policy development process to embed an in-depth understanding of local institutions whilst incorporating flexibility to account for their location-specific nature. This demands further research on policy design to enable rigorous identification of positive and negative institutions and ex-ante exploration of the likely effects of different policy interventions

Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) Intermediary Training in Muhanga, Rwanda

The Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture project is a four-year initiative (2016-2019) that seeks to transform Rwanda’s rural farming communities and national economy through improved climate risk management. This report presents the outputs of a five-day training workshop in Muhanga, Rwanda on the use of the Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach to help farmers make climate informed decisions. This training brought together farmer promoters, Social Economic Development Officers (SEDOs), as well as Sector Agronomists from the four pilot districts in Rwanda. The training workshop aimed to initiate the process of PICSA implementation starting by training lead farmers who will train farmers in the use of the PICSA approach. The report includes the process of the training workshop, presentations, and the evaluation by participants

Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) Specialist Intermediary Training in Nyamata, Rwanda

The Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture project is a four-year initiative (2016-2019) that seeks to transform Rwanda’s rural farming communities and national economy through improved climate risk management. This report presents the outputs of a five-day training on the use of a Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach to help farmers make climate informed decisions. This training brought together key government agencies in Rwanda, research organizations, farmers’ representatives, development partners, non-governmental organizations, and media. The one week training workshop aimed to initiate the process to develop skills of staff to become a group of expert trainers in the PICSA approach. The report includes the proceeding of the training workshop as well as reflections on workshop outcomes and feedback by participants

Evaluating the robustness of an active network management function in an operational environment

This paper presents the integration process of a distribution network Active Network Management (ANM) function within an operational environment in the form of a Micro-Grid Laboratory. This enables emulation of a real power network and enables investigation into the effects of data uncertainty on an online and automatic ANM algorithm's control decisions. The algorithm implemented within the operational environment is a Power Flow Management (PFM) approach based around the Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP). This paper show the impact of increasing uncertainty, in the input data available for an ANM scheme in terms of the variation in control actions. The inclusion of a State Estimator (SE), with known tolerances is shown to improve the ANM performance

Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA): Climate services for farmers in Latin America and the Caribbean

Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) is an agricultural extension and climate services approach that supports farmers in making plans and decisions tailored to each farmer’s own ‘context’ in their production systems. It is implemented by facilitators (e.g., extension officers, non-governmental organisation field staff, community volunteers and researchers) through a series of meetings with groups of farmers. Rather than focusing on the delivery of information, PICSA integrates information with decision- making tools: resource allocation maps, agroclimatic calendars, crop, livestock and livelihood option matrices and participatory budgets

Can the TV makeover format of edutainment lead to widespread changes in farmer behaviour and influence innovation systems? Shamba Shape Up in Kenya

Edutainment, the combination of education with entertainment through various media such as television, radio, mobile phone applications and games, is increasingly being used as an approach to stimulate innovation and increase agricultural productivity amongst smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Shamba Shape Up, a widely publicised makeover reality TV programme, is an example of edutainment that has received considerable attention, and airs in three countries in East Africa where it is estimated to be watched by millions of viewers. There is no published academic research on the influence of makeover television formats on innovation systems and processes in smallholder agriculture. Using an Agricultural Innovation Systems approach, this paper explores how makeover edutainment is influencing smallholder farmer innovation systems together with the effect this is having on smallholder farms. In the absence of previous research, it articulates a Theory of Change which draws on research traditions from mass communication, agricultural extension and innovation systems. Data came from two large scale quantitative (n=9,885 and n=1,572) surveys and in-depth participatory qualitative research comprising focus group discussions, participatory budgets, agricultural timelines, case studies and key information interviews in Kenya. An estimated 430,000 farmers in the study area were benefiting from their interaction with the programme through increased income and / or a range of related social benefits including food security, improving household health, diversification of livelihood choices, paying school fees for children and increasing their community standing / social capital. Participatory research showed SSU enhanced an already rich communication environment and strengthened existing processes of innovation. It helped set the agenda for discussions within farming communities about opportunities for improving smallholder farms, while also giving specific ideas, information and knowledge, all in the context of featured farm families carefully selected so that a wide range of viewers would identify with them and their challenges. Broadcasts motivated and inspired farmers to improve their own farms through a range of influences including entertainment, strong empathy with the featured host farm families, the way ideas emerged through interaction with credible experts, and importantly through stimulating widespread discussion and interaction amongst and between farmers and communities of experts on agricultural problems, solutions and opportunities. The fact that local extension workers also watched the programmes further enhanced the influence on local innovation systems. The findings indicate that well designed makeover edutainment can strongly influence agricultural innovation processes and systems resulting in impact on the agricultural production and behaviours of large numbers of smallholder farmers