Best Practice

This information brief highlights key findings in the Vuna report “Scaling Up and Scalability: Concepts, Frameworks and Assessment,” by Pooniah Anandajayasekeram.

Crop yields in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are typically less than half of yields in the developed world. With growing populations, and with climate change already beginning to put downward pressure on crop yields, intervention is urgently needed to enable farmers in SSA to produce more food. A key first step is to ensure that farmers have greater, and more reliable, access to high-quality seed of the modern varieties of climate smart crops that will best equip them to both feed themselves and produce food for barter or sale.

In many cases, breeding work for new varieties has been done. Farmers, however, are unaware of the new varieties, or seed of these varieties is not reaching them at meaningful levels. As a result, potential farmer yield and overall production levels for the target crops are not realised. The opportunity cost associated with this is significant and, without intervention, will grow as the effects of climate change increase.

This information brief highlights key findings of the Vuna report “Reaching More Farmers with High-Quality Seed for Drought Tolerant Crops,” by Aline O’Connor and Mulemia Maina of AgriExperience (October 2016).

Site-Specific Nutrient Management (SSNM) provides guidance relevantto the context of farmers’ fields.SSNM maintains or enhances crop yields, while providing savings for farmers through more efficient fertilizer use. By minimizing fertilizer overuse, greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced, in some cases up to 50%.

Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM) is a set of practices related to cropping, fertilizers, organic resources and other amendments on smallholder farms to increase production and input use efficiency. ISFM delivers productivity gains, increased resilience, and mitigation benefits. ISFM benefits food security and incomes enhances yield stability in rainfed systems, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions from soils and fertilizers making it of value to climate-smart agriculture.

The Climate-Smart Agriculture Rapid Appraisal (CSA- RA) provides an assessment of key barriers to and opportunities for CSA adoption across landscapes by collecting gender-disaggregated data, perceptions of climate variability, and resource and labor allocation,
as well as economic assessments at the household level. This approach combines participatory workshops, expert interviews, household/farmer interviews, and farm transect walks to gather and capture the realities and challenges facing diverse farming communities.

This brief synthesizes knowledge within CGIAR on agricultural practices and technologies that enhance food security, resilience and productivity. This brief has been prepared for the benefit of parties and observers making submissions to the UNFCCC SBSTA 44 on issues related to agriculture.

This latest Module of the Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook entitled Gender in Climate-Smart Agriculture provides development agencies and practitioners, policy makers, civil society, research and academia, as well as the private sector with tested good practices and innovative approaches and technologies for gender mainstreaming in climate-smart agriculture (CSA). Gender equality is equal participation of women and men in decision making, equal ability to exercise their human rights, equal access to and control of resources and the benefits of development, and equal opportunities in employment and in all other aspects of their livelihoods. Gender equity is fairness of treatment for women and men, according to their respective needs. Equity and equality both need to be considered in designing CSA interventions. This module is a joint product of the World Bank Group, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

This report provides an introduction to the different approaches and experiences in designing and implementing, Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems for adaptation at these aggregated levels.

This policy brief aims at stimulating and enriching discussions without attempting to provide a final answer to the question of synergies and links between adaptation components in intended nationally determined contributions(INDCs) and the  national adaptation plan (NAP) process.