A report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published last month, entitled “Identifying opportunities for climate-smart agriculture investments in Africa” looks at how CSA is being applied to Africa. Africa’s population has just passed 1 billion and is due to double by 2050. As a consequence, the FAO has estimated that Africa will need to provide adequate food supplies for over 20 million additional people each year and improve the nutritional status of  more than 239 million people. Increasing food production in Africa is essential, but are current farming processes in Africa climate smart?

The governments of 14 African countries (Benin, Ethopia, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo and Uganda) have put into place “National Agriculture and Food Security Investment Plans” (NAFSIPs) in order to adapt to slow-onset climatic change and extreme events, and mitigate climate change. The report has assessed these plans to identify investment needs and options for climate-smart agriculture financing in Africa.

Key findings of the report:

Of the National Agriculture and Food Security Investment Plans in African countries examined…

• 60 percent are expected to generate climate benefits in terms of slow-onset climate change

• 18 percent are expected to generate climate benefits in terms of adaptation to extreme events

• 19 percent are expected to generate climate benefits in terms of climate change mitigation

Gambia and Malawi lead the African countries in terms of number of projects that address slow onset climate change as well as climate change mitigation, whereas Liberia and Niger ranked higher in terms of number of projects that address adaptation to extreme events.

In an assessment of the potential for quick deployment of climate-smart agricultural practices, Ghana and Kenya were both ranked as having a high potential, whereas Senegal, and Benin were ranked as low.

The results of the analysis highlight that NAFSIPs already include many climate-smart activities, however there is the need to consolidate and integrate these findings by providing country-specific inputs such as:

• analyzing the most promising CSA agricultural investment options and estimating their cost-effectiveness also considering the expected climate benefits
• outlining investments needed to transform ongoing and planned programmes, activities and  projects into proper climate-smart interventions, also identifying the corresponding (public and private) financing sources
• analyzing the profitability of the investments in order to determine the type of finance required
• leveraging existing financing instruments in agriculture with innovative climate financing mechanisms
• designing result-based monitoring and accounting procedures and national registries related to identified financing option

To read the full report click here

Find out more about Farming First’s principles on climate change

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Currently, over 1 billion people – about 15 percent of the world – are hungry. Smallholder farmers are unable to produce enough food to feed their families and lack the support to work themselves out of poverty. In his letter, Gates highlights the responsibility developed countries have to not only invest in agricultural aid, but in agricultural research. Between 1987 and 2006, agricultural aid fell from rich countries from 17 percent to just 4 percent.

At the same time, demand for food is increasing because of population growth and economic development, with the world’s population set to hit 9 billion in 2050. Supply growth has not kept up, leading to higher food prices and climate change threatens farmers’ ability to produce enough food to meet the growing demand.

Agricultural innovation, Gates argues, is a vital way forward. During the ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970s, new seed varieties for rice, wheat, and maize were developed that helped many farmers greatly improve their yields. In some places, such as East Asia, food intake went up by as much as 50 percent. Globally, the price of wheat dropped by two-thirds. The same process can happen again:

We can be more innovative about delivering solutions that already exist to the farmers who need them. Knowledge about managing soil and tools like drip irrigation can help poor farmers grow more food today. We can also discover new approaches and create new tools to fundamentally transform farmers’ lives. But we won’t advance if we don’t continue to fund agricultural innovation, and I am very worried about where those funds will come from in the current economic and political climate.

He also stated that agricultural research is ‘chronically underfunded’.  Climate change is becoming an increasing threat; studies show that the rise in global temperature alone could reduce the productivity of the main crops by over 25 percent. Climate change will also increase the number of droughts and floods that can wipe out an entire season of crops. Increased investment in agricultural research can unveil new seed varieties that can survive extreme weather conditions, as well as combat plant diseases that destroy crops.

Click here to read Bill Gate’s 2012 Annual Letter letter in full. Follow the debate on Twitter with the hashtag #BillsLetter.

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The following list was taken from e-agriculture.org and is based on activity levels during the year.

1) Impact of ICT4ag projects: The Community recognizes that “ICT will only become an effective, mainstream tool for agricultural development if the proponents of ICT for development can provide more rigorous evidence, strategies, benchmarks, indicators, and promising practices that are directly relevant to the core poverty-reduction and development priorities of developing countries and their international partners.” (Read more about Capturing Impact)

2) Agricultural Value Chains: The critical role and potential of ICTs in agricultural value chains continues to be important to the Community. With different types of ICT having different strengths and weaknesses when applied to particular interventions, the impacts of ICT are diverse and markets are influenced in different ways. People and institutions are as recognized as the essential elements in this system. (Read more about Agricultural Value Chains)

3) Mobile technology: Some have called 2011 the “year of the mobile”. As an affordable and accessible means of communication, rural communities and development workers are realizing the potential of mobile telephony to create economic opportunities and strengthen social networks. The Community continues to seek and share new applications of this technology and to monitor its limitations. (Read more about Mobile Telephony)

4) Improving access to ARD: The potential of ICT to make information from agricultural research and development more available, accessible and applicable is growing in recognition. To further understanding and successes in this area, the Community joined with the CIARD community to explore the issue in detail this year. (Read more on access to ARD)

5) Youth, agriculture and ICT: An agriculture sector able to meet the world’s needs without depleting its resources will only become a reality if young professionals are actively engaged in shaping the sector’s future. ICTs are a vehicle through which young people are attracted to and can find a place within the agricultural sector. The Community made a special effort this year to reach out to its younger members as well as raise awareness through YPARD. (Read more about Youth, agriculture and ICTs)

6) Gender and ICT: If gender is missing from rural and agricultural ICT initiatives, then an opportunity to improve the socio-economic conditions of women, who are the largest and most active component of many agricultural populations is missed. The Community realizes that ICTs have the potential to benefit women in agricultural production and to challenge existing gender imbalances in rural livelihoods only if there is sufficient understanding of women’s status and gender roles and responsibilities in society. (Read more about Gender and ICTs)

7) Water and ICT: As the population increases and development calls for increased allocations of water for agriculture and other uses, the pressure on water resources intensifies. ICTs provide wide ranging opportunities for the management of water as a resource, and for the management of information about water. As with other subject, ICTs are being used to manage critical information resources about water, making these readily available, and accessible. (Read more about water and ICTs)

8 ) Knowledge Base: The Knowledge Base is home to valuable resources related to ICT in Agriculture and Rural Development. These resources are submitted by Community members covering experiences and outcomes through case studies and reports, ICT statistics, examples of government e-agriculture programmes and policies, and other relevant information. We invite you to submit materials relating to e-agriculture.

9) Members: As with any network, getting to know more about fellow members and expanding professional networks is an important activity. The Community’s Member Profiles were very popular.

10) Sourcebook: With the launch of the “ICT in Agriculture” Sourcebook, a multi-author resource on the use of ICT in the field, the World Bank established one of the preeminent resources in the Community’s area of interest. Becoming available near the end of the year, it just made the top10 list. No doubt with more discussions on the Sourcebook planned in 2012, it will remain high on the agenda of the Community. (Read more about the Sourcebook)

Read more about Farming First Principle 2 and the importance of access to information for rural farmers.

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As global demand for food is expected to double by 2050, agricultural productivity will need to increase significantly. Climate change presents a further challenge as more frequent and extreme weather events affect our food supply, our infrastructure and our livelihoods. The report explains how scientific innovation offers the best solution to increase agricultural productivity:

Modern, science‐driven farming including genetically modified crops represents our best chance of generating the increases in agricultural productivity necessary to feed our future.

The paper explores agricultural productivity strategies in the past, present and future as well as detailing the wealth of technological advancements available to combat world hunger, which are deemed “critical” by editor Calestous Juma, Director of the Science, Technology and Globalization Project at Harvard Kennedy School.

It also outlines the challenges science-based approaches to global agriculture face, most notably the lack of universal acceptance of genetically modified crops and the precautionary regulatory regimes in both Europe and low-income, developing countries that are inhibiting the research, development, and use of genetically modified crops.

The report argues that the challenge to food security can be met by enhanced agricultural productivity, provided there is greater investment in agricultural research, more innovation and investment friendly regulatory regimes, and enhanced global and regional networks for knowledge and technology transfer.

Read the full report

Read more about Farming First’s views on the responsible use of science and technology for improved productivity

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At his keynote presentation on Saturday 3rd December at the third Agriculture and Rural Development Day (ARDD), President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Kanayo F. Nwanze urged that “negotiators must recognize the critical importance of enabling smallholder farmers to become more resilient to climate change and to grow more food in environmentally sustainable, climate-smart ways.”

Later in the day, Dr Lindiwe Majele Sibanda opened up a side event on behalf of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) which focused on how we can build the resilience of African smallholder farmers in a changing climate. The event highlighted the work of smallholder farmers in Swaziland and how they are coping with the impacts of climate change.

Back in 2002, Swaziland was hit hard by drought. Many smallholder farmers in the region saw their crops destroyed and their livelihoods threatened due to changing weather conditions. Happy Shongwe, a mother of two from Maphumulo in the Lubombo district of Swaziland, was on-site at the event to discuss her experiences as a smallholder farmer who watched her food reserves run dry due to the drought and was left impoverished. Shongwe and others in her community were helped with food vouchers and knowledge on how they could best respond to the drought.

Shongwe realised that planting maize and raising broiler chickens were not viable ways of coping with a changing climate and instead she began planting legumes which proved to be drought resistant. Starting with just one hectare of land, she quickly increased yields and was able to plant three hectares the following season.

Since then, her fate has changed. Shongwe has since registered Hlelile Investments (Pty) Ltd, a company that produces and markets seeds and is now a certified seed producer through the Seed Quality Division of the Ministry of Agriculture. “I now have my own business and have been able to afford to buy a tractor – I have come along way over the past ten years”, said Shongwe at the event.

Sibanda highlighted the importance of labelling and certification from the government:

For a region to be food secure, it needs to be seed secure. We believe in our own farmers; if given the necessary knowledge, they can grow more food. However, there is still a great need for research, technology and to mobilise funding for smallholder farmers in Swaziland, and other regions across Africa.

Measuring the vulnerability of rural households to external shocks

Today, few tools exist that can effectively measure the impact of shocks and stressess on the lives of the poor. By intermittently measuring the livelihood assets owned by a household over a period of time, researchers can determine household vulnerability and provide evidence to inform investment decisions around the design of policy responses and programme interventions aimed at strengthening household resilience.

Along with World Vision, FANRPAN has developed the Household Vulnerability Index (HVI) to measure the vulnerability of rural households to external shocks such as disease outbreaks, extreme weather and other stresses such as food insecurity. Through this approach, households are categorized into three levels of vulnerability, namely low, moderate and high vulnerability. Based on this more targeted classification system, development response packages are formulated to assist the most vulnerable households at the root causes of their vulnerability.

Following the successful piloting of the HVI tool in three countries in Southern Africa (Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe), FANRPAN and World Vision have shared their perspectives on the importance on developing and updating livelihood databases to benchmark livelihoods and provide data for modelling projected changes in livelihoods as a result of climate change.

Speaking at the learning event, Dalton Nxumalo, a Knowledge Management Officer with World Vision Swaziland (who provide funding for the project) noted,

This tool is meant to be a community based tool. The HVI assesses a household’s access to five livelihood assets; natural; physical; financial; human; and social assets and a total of 15 variables are then assessed together and a statistical core is calculated for each household.

Read more about the other learning events at Agriculture and Rural Development Day on its blog.

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Our world faces formidable challenges. The global population has now crossed the seven billion mark and is projected to reach nine billion by mid-century, requiring at least a 70 percent increase in agricultural production to meet increased demand.

The world’s resources are under more strain than ever before as global demand for water, energy and food is on the rise. At the same time, climate change threatens farmers’ ability to produce enough to meet growing demand, and poor communities’ ability to access nutritious food.

More frequent and extreme weather events are affecting our food supply, our infrastructure and our livelihoods. Last year, Russia suffered its worst drought in more than 100 years, triggering forest fires and destroying millions of hectares of crops. This year we have seen the Horn of Africa face its worst drought in 60 years as more than 13 million people requiring emergency food aid and pastoralists losing a third of their livestock. Recent flooding in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Cambodia has also impacted livelihoods and worsened food insecurity.

The most vulnerable regions of the world – developing countries – are disproportionately affected by climate change, despite contributing little to carbon emissions. People in developing countries depend heavily on agriculture for their livelihoods, yet are increasingly challenged in their ability to produce sufficient food for their families and for markets.

Whilst agriculture is a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, it has significant potential to be part of the solution to climate change.

Preserving and enhancing food security requires increasing agricultural productivity whilst at the time adapting to and mitigating climate change. It also requires a shift towards building farmers’ and vulnerable communities’ resilience to climate shocks, and related food price volatility.

More productive, sustainable and resilient agriculture requires transformations in how rural people manage natural resources and how efficiently they use these resources as inputs for crop production. For these transformations to occur, it is essential that the world’s farmers, scientists, researchers, the private sector, development practitioners and food consumers come together to achieve climate-smart agriculture.

Yet the agricultural sector remains astonishingly underfunded. As a percentage of total investment, agriculture has dropped from 22 percent in 1980 to approximately 6 percent today. In absolute terms, this constitutes a drop to roughly half of the funding allocated thirty years ago.

At the upcoming climate change negotiations in Durban, we call on negotiators to recognise the important role of agriculture in addressing climate change so that a new era of agricultural innovation and knowledge sharing can be achieved. Specifically, we ask that they approve a Work Programme for agriculture under the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) so that the sector can take early action to determine the long-term investments needed to transform agriculture to meet future challenges.

You can see the full list of signatories on the Agriculture and Rural Development Day website.

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The summary includes seven key recommendations to policy makers that, if actioned, the authors believe would bring us closer to a global sustainable food system in the face of climate change.

The key message from the summary is that the global food system faces pressure. This is due to a range of factors, including the shift in diets towards higher consumption of calories, fats and animal products and the growing, increasingly urban, population.

Further pressure is added to the food system through inefficiency – an estimated 12 million hectares of agricultural land are lost to land degradation each year, and around a third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted across the global food system.

Moreover, although sustainable agriculture can be a powerful mitigating factor in tackling the effects of climate change, many current farming practices – including land clearing and inefficient use of fertilizers and organic residues – mean that agriculture is a significant contributor to greenhouse gasses (accounting for up to 30 percent of global emissions).

This is problematic as the authors argue that ever-higher temperatures are exacerbating the above issues, and that global climate change will have an adverse effect on agricultural production, bringing us toward critical thresholds in many regions.

The authors argue that:

“Business as usual in our globally interconnected food system will not bring us food security and environmental stability.”

In order to make the vital transition to a global sustainable food system, CCAFS have proposed seven evidence-based actions to achieve food security in the face of climate change. These are:

1. Integrate food security and sustainable agriculture into global and national policies.
2. Significantly raise the level of global investment in sustainable agriculture and food systems in the next decade.
3. Sustainably intensify agricultural production while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other negative environmental impacts of agriculture.
4. Develop specific programmes and policies to assist populations and sectors that are most vulnerable to climate change and food insecurity.
5. Reshape food access and consumption patterns to ensure basic nutritional needs are met and to foster healthy and sustainable eating patterns worldwide.
6. Reduce loss and waste in food systems, targeting infrastructure, farming practices, processing, distribution and household habits.
7. Create comprehensive, shared, integrated information systems that encompass human and ecological dimensions.

Farming First has written a policy paper on climate change, and has a range of resources on the role of agriculture in creating a global green economy.

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The agreed focus is to be on “Growth with Resilience”, and central to this agenda will be the publication of a report, due in late February 2012, which aims to inform discussions related to key policy events. It will look broadly at agriculture’s role in supporting green growth, food and nutrition security, ecosystem services and climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Sir Gordon Conway, Chair of the Montpellier Panel, said:

“Agriculture is back high on the political agenda, as more leaders are recognizing the key role which it can play in addressing many of the world’s most pressing challenges. Policies and funding now need to better reflect African national and regional priorities, and build resilient agricultural programmes that fulfill the strong growth potential of the sector. The Montpellier Panel work will also suggest more and better ways for translating these discussions into meaningful interventions on the ground.”

The Montpellier Panel consists of a group of ten experts from the fields of agriculture, sustainable development, trade, policy, and global development. It first convened at the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) in Montpellier in March 2010.

Montpellier Panel members include:

• Sir Gordon Conway, Professor of International Development, Imperial College London (Chair)
• Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, Chief Executive, Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN)
• Ramadjita Tabo, Deputy Executive Director, Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA)
• David Radcliffe, Senior Policy Advisor, Directorate-General, Development and Cooperation, European Commission
• Prabhu Pingali, Deputy Director, Agricultural Development, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

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As we have previously written, the Water, Energy and Food nexus refers to the interlinked risks of water security, food security and energy security. With the current combined challenges of degraded ecosystems, a rapidly increasing demand for resources, climate change, growing urbanization and globalization, there is a threat that social-ecological systems at all levels will be driven across critical thresholds.

This new paper presents initial evidence for how a nexus approach can enhance water, energy and food security by increasing efficiency, reducing trade-offs, building synergies and improving governance across sectors.

The paper claims that:

“A nexus approach can support a transition to sustainability, by reducing trade-offs and generating additional benefits that outweigh the transaction costs associated with stronger integration across sectors.”

The authors argue that a nexus approach can create a number of opportunities, including:

-       Increased productivity of resources. The nexus focus is on system efficiency rather than on the productivity of isolated sectors.

-       Waste as a resource in muti-use systems. Cross-sectoral management can boost overall resource use efficiency. Waste can be turned into a resource for other products.

-       Stimulating development through economic incentives. A nexus approach can help to avoid investments that lock development into non-sustainable pathways.

-       Governance, institutions and policy coherence. Enabling conditions for horizontal and vertical policy coherence include institutional capacity building, political will, change agents and capacity building.

-       Benefiting from productive ecosystems. Green agriculture can provide benefits such as carbon sequestration and resilience to climate risks while improving food security.

-       Integrated poverty alleviation and green growth. Green agriculture can generate more rural jobs and increase diversity and resilience of production systems.

-       Capacity building and awareness raising. This can help to deal with the complexity of cross-sectoral approaches, and to promote sustainable lifestyles and consumption patterns.

-       Moving towards a green economy. As the green economy approach seeks “to unite under a single banner the entire suite of economic policies of relevance to sustainable development”, it is the nexus approach par excellence.

You can read the paper in full here:

http://www.water-energy-food.org/en/bonn_2011_process/show__50_understanding_the_nexus.html

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To read more about Farming First’s position on the green economy, watch our animated video or view our infographic please see the page on our website on agriculture and the green economy.

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In the paper, the authors argue that the areas of energy, water and food policy are interlinked, and have shared concerns ranging from environmental impacts to price volatility.

The Water-Food-Energy nexus, a term developed by the World Economic Forum in its Global Risks 2011 series, refers to the risks of water security, food security and energy security. Population growth and rising economic prosperity are expected to increase demand for energy, food and water, which in turn puts pressure on natural resources. This, combined with global governance failures, economic disparity and geopolitical conflict, could result in food shortages, struggles over water and hamper economic development. The three issues are deeply linked – food production requires water, water extraction and distribution require energy, which in turn requires water, and food prices depend on energy inputs. Climate change and growing populations also exacerbate this nexus.

The authors claim that identifying the interrelationships between these three areas is of great importance to help avoid potential tensions, and that ‘systems thinking’ – the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole – is required to address such a wide range of possible topics.

The paper states that while environmental issues are the core link between all three areas, other factors suggest that economic and security-related issues may be stronger motivators of change. The authors conclude that understanding of the complex interactions between the areas of energy, water and food will require new institutional capacity both in industrialised and developing countries.

The Farming First coalition advocates a six-point action plan for enhancing sustainable development through agriculture. In line with these six principles, Farming First encourages stakeholders to pursue policies that achieve long-term global sustainability goals through proven techniques, including specific actions in the area of water use and management, and around food security.

These principles are:

1. Safeguard natural resources
2. Share knowledge
3. Build local access and capacity
4. Protect harvests
5. Enable access to markets
6. Prioritise research imperatives

You can read more about the Farming First principles here, download our policy paper on food security here, read about our water policy here or find our section on the green economy here.

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