Progress report on harnessing gender and social equality for resilience in agri-food systems (her+)

The technical report highlights the progress and achievements of the HER+ Initiative, a collaboration between the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, WorldVeg, and SNV, on the Lersha platform by Green Agro Solution PLC. The project aims to contribute to stakeholders’ understanding of how women can be equal partners and drivers of climate-smart solutions by 2024 and to develop and test methods and tools for designing and implementing Socio-Technical Innovation Bundles (STIBs). This report provides an update on the project’s activities, including how social innovations like farmer registration, active agents, retailer shops, climate advisory services, access to finance, capacity-building initiatives, financial literacy training, extension services, and market linkages where integrated in the project. It discusses the challenges encountered, the lessons learned, and the next steps for the project’s success

Climate Change Disproportionately Hits Women Farmers

▪ The effect of climate change is manifested by increased frequency, duration and intensity of extreme weather and climate events that include unexpected, unusual, severe, or unseasonal weather conditions. ▪ These primarily range from increases in seasonal temperature involving heat waves, dry spells, and water stress, as well as cold(frost) and changes in the precipitation patterns, including rainfall intensities and flush floods. ▪ The effects of extreme weather events are seen in rising economic (production) costs, loss of livestock (human) lives, droughts, floods, landslides, and salient changes in ago-ecosystems. ▪ These results in reduced crop yield, crop failure, reduced soil fertility, loss of vegetation cover, livestock number reduction and land degradation, among other factors. ▪ Women and men experience the impacts of climate change differently, but considering the existing gender inequalities, these climate crises pose more threats to women and young girls than men. ▪ Climate change is burdening women to provide energy, water and food for their families and livestock. ▪ Accordingly, the analysis indicated that women excessively suffer the impacts of climate disasters, as they are more exposed, sensitive and have low adaptive capacity

Site-specific fertilizer recommendation spilled over to other partners: The opportunity and potential for facilitated scaling up

Over the last decades, the government of Ethiopia has taken several measures to achieve food security for its population. However, crop production is still below the optimal possible. Studies show that wheat, maize, and sorghum yields in Ethiopia are about 26.8, 19.7, and 29.3 % of their water-limited yield potentials. Some legumes such as common bean even experience higher yield gap of 35.5%. These indicate the potential for increasing productivity of crops in the country through addressing the key bottlenecks. Several factors play important role in determining crop yields in the country. Genetic varieties, agronomic practices, climate variability, soil fertility, and limited or lack of input use are the major once. Evidences show that the lack of a context-specific and evidence-based advisory system that enables targeted application of the right amount and type of input at the right place and right time play pivotal role in undermining the productivity of major crops in Ethiopia. The Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT in collaboration with different partners has been engaged to develop ‘site-specific’ fertilizer recommendation for wheat, maize, barley, and teff. The project was mainly implemented through the support of the Supporting Soil Health Initiative (SSHI) of GIZ-Ethiopia, the Excellence in Agronomy (EiA) CGIAR Initiative, and the Accelerating the Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research in Africa (AICCRA). The engagement was structured so that the research organizations could produce advisory content to meet the demands of development organizations and other actors, including Digital Green. The generated advisory content was then communicated to extension workers and farmers by Digital Green through agile dissemination channels. Validation and piloting results of the site-specific recommendations for wheat showed very encouraging results in terms of both yield and water and nutrient efficiency. Validation and piloting results of the site-specific recommendation for wheat showed very encouraging results in terms of both yield, water, and nutrient efficiencies. This success story has attracted the attention of other actors (government organizations and private sector) to pilot the advisory. This report outlines the processes of the piloting exercises and the number of farmers reached through the ‘new partners’ that have been attracted by the achievement with Digital Green

Delivering Digital Climate Services to Smallholder farmers in Ethiopia

One of the overall project components for the Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) project is supporting the generation and sharing of knowledge tools to address critical gaps in the provision of climate advisory services, enable climate-informed investment planning and contribute to the design of policies to the uptake of climate-smart agricultural practices

Satisfaction with the Accessibility and Usefulness of tailored CIS and Agro-advisory for Wheat Value Chain

In Africa, particularly East Africa, more than 80% of the population depends on agriculture and the income generated from the sector that contributes about 30-40% to the regional Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Adesina, 2019). Ethiopia is the second most populated country in Africa with 80% of them are living in rural areas (Sakketa, 2022). Studies showed that many families in Ethiopia are unable to produce the necessary amount of food and generate income for their own subsistence and food security (Devereux and Sussex, 2000). The high levels of poverty coupled with the high population pressure, land degradation, and water scarcity are increasing the vulnerability of the country to climate change (Tadesse et al, 2021). Ethiopia is among one of the countries in East Africa at disproportionately higher risk of adverse consequences of climate change (Zermoglio et. al., N.A). The country is extremely vulnerable to various climate change events, and it is considered a climate hotspot where climate change poses grave threats to human well-being and natural environments (Aid, 2018). Climate variability and change are having significant direct and indirect impacts on agricultural production, agricultural value chains, food, and nutrition security as well as the overall sustainable growth of the sector in Ethiopia (Gitz et. al., 2016). The number of rainy days in the country has decreased perceptibly, which increases dry spells by 0.8 days per decade, causing crop moisture stress during the growing season. The mean annual temperature has been warming at a rate of 0.12 to 0.54 oC per decade and it is expected to rise by 1.4 to 4.1 oC by 2080. Average annual temperatures nationwide are expected to rise 3.1°C by 2060, and 5.1°C by 2090 (Rovin et al, 2013)