Climate change is a global phenomenon with negative impacts severely felt by poor people in developing countries (Morton 2007). Across many parts of Africa, rural poor communities rely greatly for their survival on agriculture and livestock that are amongst the most climate-sensitive economic sectors. Climate-smart agriculture helps farmers to increase food production, become more resilient to climate change and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The main anthro-pogenic GHGs are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O); they are critically important for regulating the Earth’s surface temperature. Inadequate quantity and quality of feed is a major constraint to livestock production, particularly during the dry seasons across Africa.
The overall objective of this inter-institutional program is to increase feed availability in action areas of the target countries in East Africa (e.g. Kenya, Rwanda) by use of climate-smart Brachiaria forage grasses (Rao et al. 2011) for increased animal productivity and for generation of extra income to smallholder famers. An innovative programmatic approach will be used to reintroduce high quality, persistent and productive Brachiaria genotypes that were selected and improved in Latin America (Miles et al. 2004) back to Africa. These forage grasses will contribute to alleviate feed shortages, increase income to resource poor farmers, improve soil fertility, adapt to and mitigate climate change, increase milk and beef production, and as a result improve livelihoods and protect the environment
