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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If women in rural areas had the same access to land, technology, financial services, education and markets as men, agricultural production could be increased and the number of hungry people reduced by 100-150 million.

Globally, the share of women employed in agriculture stands at 35.4 per cent, as compared to 32.2 per cent for men, but this proportion rises to almost half of all female employment, at 48.4 per cent, if the more industrialized regions are excluded. In Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia the agricultural sector makes up more than 60 per cent of all female employment.

Generally, women do not access the same resources – inputs, finance, support, land – as men and consequently their productivity is lower. Financial resources are limited for women: they receive 7 per cent of the agricultural extension services and less than 10 per cent of the credit offered to small-scale farmers. Women generally own less land and the land they have is often of lower quality than the land owned by men. According to the International Development Research Centre, women in Africa only own 1 per cent of the land. Just giving women the same access as men to agricultural resources could increase production on women’s farms in developing countries by 20 to 30 percent.

Research shows that if women farmers in Kenya had the same access to farm inputs, education, and experience as their men counterparts, their yields for maize, beans, and cowpeas could increase as much as 22 percent. This would have resulted in a one-time doubling of Kenya’s GDP growth rate in 2004 from 4.3 percent to 8.3 percent (World Bank).

On Reuters Trust website today, FANRPAN’s Lindiwe Majele Sibanda told the story of the “voiceless pillars of African agriculture”: the women farmers. She wrote,

A combination of logistical, cultural, and economic factors, coupled with a lack of gender statistics in the agricultural sector, means that agricultural programs are rarely designed with women’s needs in mind. As a result, African women farmers have no voice in the development of agricultural policies designed to improve their productivity.

However, FANRPAN’s WARM project (Women Accessing Realigned Markets) is helping to address that.

Based on results of a FANRPAN commissioned input subsidy study done in Malawi and Mozambique, FANRPAN has developed a theatre script “The Winds of Change”. The play explores challenges rural women farmers face in accessing agricultural inputs, land, credit and extension services among other things.

Through performance, women are able to voice their concerns, pressures and ideas in front of local leaders and policy makers.

Photo credit: Neil Palmer, CIAT

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Climate-Smart Agriculture: Policies, Practices and Financing for Food Security is divided into three sections; i) examples of climate-smart production systems, ii) institutional and policy options and iii) financing and investment.

The key messages of the report are:

1. Agriculture in developing countries must undergo a significant transformation in order to meet the related challenges of food security and climate change.
2. Effective climate-smart practices already exist and could be implemented in developing country agricultural systems.
3. Adopting an ecosystem approach, working at landscape scale and ensuring intersectoral coordination and cooperation is crucial for effective climate change responses.
4. Considerable investment is required in filling data and knowledge gaps and in research and development of technologies, methodologies, as well as the conservation and production of suitable varieties and breeds.
5. Institutional and financial support will be required to enable smallholders to make the transition to climate-smart agriculture.
6. Strengthened institutional capacity will be needed to improve dissemination of climate-smart information and coordinate over large areas and numbers of farmers.
7. Greater consistency between agriculture, food security and climate change policy-making must be achieved at national, regional and international levels.
8. Available financing, current and projected, is substantially insufficient to meet climate change and food security challenges faced by the agriculture sector.
9. Synergistically combining financing from public and private sources, as well as those earmarked for climate change and food security are innovative options to meet the investment requirements of the agricultural sector.
10. To be effective in channeling fast-track financing to agriculture, financing mechanisms will need to take sector-specific considerations into account.

At next week’s conference, the Farming First coalition is holding a side event, ‘Best practices in agricultural value chains: Improving productivity, reliability and resilience to climate change.’ The discussion will hear from industry experts who will be providing case studies of existing initiatives that are helping to increase resilience and productivity at different points in the value chain. The purpose is to provide examples of initiatives that could be scaled up.

The Farming First event will take place on Wednesday 3 November 2010 from 13:00-15:00 (CET) in “Room Yangtze 2” at the World Forum. To view the event flyer click here.

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The new site follows the CIARD manifesto to establish a ‘knowledge commons on agricultural research for development’.  Through making content accessible, developing capacities and advocating better investments, the initiative helps to disseminate agricultural knowledge in order that it may be put to use locally, nationally and globally.

On the new CIARD site, users are offered various tools:

• Evaluate their information management practices against a checklist of good practices,
• share and follow pathways towards better accessibility of information,
• contribute case studies, and
• participate in CIARD’s activities and join the network.

Users can also record their information sources or services in the CIARD ring; a portal that facilitates the sharing of sources of agriculture-related information around the world.

The new site can be viewed in English, French and Spanish and is coordinated by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR).

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High soil salinity is a major environmental issue whose effects can cause difficulties for farmers growing crops in salt-affected areas. Most crops do not grow well on soils that contain salts and subsequently farmers lose large amounts of yield.

The CSIRO research team used traditional breeding techniques, involving molecular markers, to introduce salt tolerant genes into durum wheat lines. The salt tolerant genes work by limiting the passage of sodium from the roots to the shoots of the plant, preventing its passage to the leaves where it can be toxic to the plant.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, 17 million hectares of durum wheat are cultivated worldwide, with 60 per cent of cultivation taking place in developing counties in regions including the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America and central India.

This new variety will allow wheat farmers to cope with high salinity levels in the soil and achieve higher yields of their crop. The scientists have said they will make the enhanced durum wheat freely available to the developing world.

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Farming First calls on governments to enable agricultural innovation and empower farmers to safeguard the world’s biodiversity while increasing global food production.

Sustainable agricultural production needs to be achieved through both accelerated research programmes and broader uptake of existing technologies by farmers.   Public-private partnerships are key to identifying and addressing these innovation gaps as well as disseminating effective agricultural tools and technologies to farmers.

Ajay Vashee, President of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) says:

Government leaders need to recognise how interconnected agriculture and biodiversity protection are. Today’s farmers are the true stewards of our global ecosystem.

The twin challenge of conserving ecosystems while ensuring future food security means that the role of the farmer is more crucial than ever. With 2.3 billion more mouths to feed by 2050, food production must increase by 70 per cent, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, despite the threats of climate change and limited availability of natural resources.

Like biodiversity, agriculture benefits from fertile soils, fresh water and natural predators, and farmers can also play a role in maintaining natural habitats and other ecosystem services.

Luc Maene, Director General of the International Fertilizer Industry Assocation says:

Farmers around the world are facing competing pressures to grow more food while preserving the world’s biodiversity.  To succeed, agriculture and biodiversity conservation efforts must walk hand in hand.

The Farming First coalition supports the following principles for protecting biodiversity through agriculture:

• Safeguarding natural resources through sustainable agricultural practices such as sustainable use of land, water and energy resources, conservation agriculture, cultivation of local species and giving value to marginal areas such as wetlands and forests.

• Sharing knowledge of agriculture’s role in preserving biodiversity through stewardship programmes for farmers and government mechanisms for incentivising biodiversity-friendly practices.

• Building local access to agricultural tools and infrastructure which help protect biodiversity, such as multi-cropping systems or crop rotation, without jeopardising agricultural production.

• Protecting harvests by building storage facilities and transport mechanisms, whilst providing support to farmers in managing weather variations and minimising the amount of yield lost to prevent further expansion in land used for agriculture.

• Enabling access to markets via payment incentives for ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, reforestation, measures against desertification and other sustainable land management practices as well as developing and supporting markets for underutilised local species which encourage local biodiversity.

• Prioritising research imperatives by addressing both farmers’ needs and the specificities of local ecosystems as well as factoring in farmers’ local expertise and providing resources such as seed banks.

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In a Reuters article, Leslie Lipper, FAO economist and co-author of the report said that financing remains a major hurdle to greater implementation:

“A key part of the problem is a lack of financing.  If adopted by farmers, many of these practices make them better off, but in the short run they may face reduced income,” Lipper said, using the example of removing cattle to allow grasslands to recover.

In terms of contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, the report estimated that farms accounts for 10-12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions directly.  It also estiamted that $210bn would be needed between now and 2050 to help farms upgrade sufficiently to meet future yield needs.

Developing countries could raise about $30bn annually toward this investment through carbon market financing.  Measuring such improvements to the carbon efficiency of farm production is currently being researched.

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Coinciding with the summit, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has launched 1BillionHungry.org, a petition to promote an end to hunger. The web site is premised on the fact that one billion people currently live in chronic hunger.

Jacques Diouf, the FAO Secretary-General, is recorded counting out the amount of time another child soemwhere in the world dies from hunger: 6 seconds.

To support the initiative, all you need to do is enter an e-mail address and your currently country location.

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The FAO has calculated that agriculture has grown by 3.5% in 2008, largely due to better policies and more uptake of new technologies such as drought-resistant rice.

Keith Wiebe, FAO’s Deputy Director of the Agricultural Development Economics division, said:

After a long period of neglect, the importance of agriculture is becoming more clear to all of us.  And that is resulting in improvements in some of the supporting services and infrastructure that are the real obstacle to improved growth in Africa.

Women are a key part of the agricultural workforce as they represent about 80% of those working in the sector.  They will be expected to double food production in order to feed an African population that is set to grow from 770 million in 2005 to over billion by mid-century.

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Global cereal demand must increase by about 50%, from 2.1 billion tonnes today to 3 billion tonnes by 205.  Over the same period, meat output must increase by almost 75% by 2050 to 470 million tonnes.

A massive 90% of the needed output is expected to come from higher yields, but the area of land under cultivation is also expected to grow by 120 million hectares.  These increases are most likely to occur in developing regions with large supplies of land per capita, such as sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

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