Symposium on Climate Change Adaptation in Africa

21 - 23 February 2016. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Symposium on Climate Change Adaptation in Africa. This symposium was organised by Manchester Metropolitan University (UK), Addis Ababa University, the Research and Transfer Centre “Applications of Life Sciences” of the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and the International Climate Change Information Programme (ICCIP). 

The Symposium was an interdisciplinary event, mobilising African and non-African scholars undertaking research and/or executing climate change projects in the African continent. It focused on “fostering African resilience and capacity to adapt”, showcasing experiences from research, field projects and best practice in climate change adaptation in African countries, which may be useful or implemented in other countries in the continent.

Extracts of the pogramme: Climate Change and Agriculture 
  • Empirical Analysis of Climate Variability and Impact on Nigerian Agricultural Production Olawale Emmanuel Olayide, University of Ibadan, Nigeria 
  • Silvopastural systems using indigenous fodder trees and shrubs: the underexploited synergy between climate change adaptation and mitigation in the livestock sector Mulubrhan Balehegn Gebremikael, Mekelle University, Ethiopia 
  • Potential for Scaling up Climate Smart Agricultural Practices: Examples from Sub Saharan Africa, CIMMYT
  • Adaptation to Climate Change in Egyptian Marginal Environments through Sustainable Crop and Livestock Diversification: A Case Study Hassan M.EI Shaer, Desert Research Center, Egypt
  • Impacts of climate change and adaptation options for maize production in the Central Rift Valley of EthiopiaBelay Tseganeh Kassie, University of Florida, USA.
  • Approaches to adaptation of agriculture to climate change and variability: The Farm Input Subsidy Program (FISP) and the Green Belt Initiative (GBI) in MalawiFloney Patame Kawaye, Australian National University, Australia 
  • Adaptation Benefits of Climate-Smart Agricultural Practices in the Blue Nile Basin: Empirical Evidence from North-West Ethiopia Paulos Asrat, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia 
  • Assessment of Weather Variability Impact on Rice Yield in South Western Nigeria Tawakalitu Bola Onifade, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Nigeria.
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Save & Grow adoption encourages ecosystem-based farming



A new book from the stables of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has shown that eco-system-based farming has come of age, through the adoption of Save and Grow initiative, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The new FAO book launched Wednesday in Rome, takes a close look at how the world's major cereals maize, rice and wheat - which together account for an estimated 42.5 per cent of human calories and 37 per cent of our protein - can be grown in ways that respect and even leverage natural ecosystems. 

Drawing on case studies from around the planet, the new book illustrates how the "Save and Grow" approach to agriculture advocated by FAO is already being successfully employed to produce staple grains, pointing the way to a more sustainable future for farming and offering practical guidance on how the world can pursue its new sustainable development agenda.

"International commitments to eradicate poverty and tackle climate change require a paradigm shift towards a more sustainable and inclusive agriculture able to produce higher yields over the longer term," said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.

The two recent landmark global agreements, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - which require eradicating hunger and putting terrestrial ecosystems on a sound footing by 2030 - and the Paris Climate Change Agreement (COP21), only underscore the need for inclusive innovation in food systems, he adds. 

While the world's cereal harvests may be at record levels today, their productive base is increasingly precarious amid signs of groundwater depletion, environmental pollution, loss of biodiversity and other woes marking the end of the Green Revolution model. Meanwhile, global food production will need to grow by 60 percent - mostly on existing arable land and in the face of climate change  - to feed the future population in 2050,  making it all the more urgent for the smallholders who grow the majority of the world's crops to be enabled to do so more efficiently and in ways that don't further increase humanity's ecological debt.

Save and Grow is a broad-based approach to environmentally friendly, sustainable agriculture aimed at intensifying production, protecting and enhancing agriculture's natural resource base and reducing reliance on chemical inputs by tapping into the Earth's natural ecosystem processes, and to increase farmers' gross income. As such it is an approach intrinsically crafted to contribute to the SDGs and foster resilience to climate change.

Viable Save and Grow practices range from growing shade trees that shed their leaves when  adjacent maize crops most need sunlight, as tried with success in Malawi and Zambia, to scrapping tillage and leaving crop residues as soil surface mulch, a method applied on a massive scale by wheat farmers on the Kazakhstani steppe and increasingly by innovative slash-and-mulch practices adopted by farmers in the highlands of Central and South America. 

The time has now come for ideas that have proven themselves in farmers' fields to be upscaled in more ambitious national programmes, FAO Director General José Graziano da Silva says in the foreword to Save and Grow in Practice in Practice: A Guide to Sustainable Cereal Production, a book he described as "a contribution to creating the world we want."  

Isaac Oyimah/GEE
... Linking agrobiz, sustainable environs, people & technology
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Role of agricultural biotechnologies in sustainable food systems and nutrition

Helen Altshul, BecA-ILRI Hub's development partnerships
specialist made a presentation at FAO symposium in Rome
(photo credit: FAO/Giuseppe Carotenuto)
15-17 February 2016. Rome, Italy. This technical conference explored how agriculturalbiotechnologies can benefit small-holder farmers, particularly those in developing countries, who need to improve nutrition and strengthen livelihoods even as their production systems are constrained by climate change, population growth, and other socioeconomic factors.  

Through a series of keynote speeches, presentations and side events, the contributions of a wide spectrum of biotechnologies to sustainable food systems and nutrition was covered. A high-level ministerial segment took place on 16 February.

Participants at the symposium included representatives from governments, intergovernmental bodies, the private sector, civil society, research and academic institutions, cooperatives, and other producer and farmer organizations.

Objectives:
  • The symposium focused mainly on the broad range of biotechnologies that could result in yield increases, better nutritional qualities, and improved productivities of crops, livestock, fish and trees on which smallholder farmers’ food systems, nutrition and livelihoods depend. 
  • These biotechnologies encompass a wide range of low-tech to high-tech approaches which can make the development of improved varieties and breeds that adapt to the effects of climate change, faster and more efficient. 
  • Some permit the rapid diagnosis of diseases and pests while others are used in vaccine production and the reduction of the environmental footprints of agricultural production systems. 
  • The focus was on agricultural biotechnologies that are currently available and ready to use by smallholder producers, including low-tech approaches involving artificial insemination, fermentation techniques, biofertilizers etc. up to high-tech approaches involving advanced DNA-based methodologies. 
Highlight:
The increased use of biosciences by African national agricultural research systems (NARS) was highlighted by the BecA-ILRI Hub

In a presentation titled ‘Biosciences capacity building in Africa: lessons learned from the BecA-ILRI Hub’, development partnerships specialist Helen Altshul highlighted lessons learned from over a decade of supporting national programs in building their capacity to deliver on their national research mandate. Altshul emphasised the BecA-ILRI Hub’s demand-driven approach to research and capacity building underpinned by the Africa Biosciences Challenge Fund (ABCF) program. Through the ABCF, the BecA-ILRI Hub continues to contribute to strengthened research capabilities of individuals and institutions within NARS in Africa.

The presentation demonstrated how the BecA-ILRI Hub’s focus on enabling research innovations has produced important discoveries led by national researchers including:
  • Isolation of the new virus in pigs by scientists from Uganda and Kenya led by Charles Masembe from Makerere University in Uganda;
  • Production of new cross between maize and sorghum for crop improvement by Alexander Bombom from the Ugandan National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO);
  • Utilizing genetic diversity of local African chicken to improve productivity by Christian Keambou from the University of Buea in Cameroon; and
  • Contribution to the release of new sorghum varieties in Sudan by Rasha Mohamed from the Agricultural Research Cooperation
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Professionalisation of family farming

10 February 2016. CTA has recently co-published with ISF Cameroon a book aimed at supporting development of the farming family sector.

Professionalisation of family farming – Tools for technical and organisational capacity-building of farmers’ organisations in sub-Saharan Africa
Author: Jean Merlin Etobe
CTA 2015, 54 pages

Goal 
The goal of this guide is to promote the professionalisation of farmers’ organisations through the implementation of technical and organisational capacity-building tools.

The top-down approaches giving donors, governments and their experts a monopoly on designing and decision-making are now called into question. They are now tentatively being replaced by bottom-up approaches, which allow the population to integrate their initiatives into the measures taken by the decision-makers.

We need to give priority to the stakeholders’ viewpoints and bottom-up approaches. But the smooth transition from an administered development to a concerted development requires conditions that are not always present. While various professions try to join together in order to better protect their interests and e…ciently contribute to their country’s development, agricultural producers seem to be lagging behind. 

Their weak organisational capacities might be the cause of this delay. In order for farmers to be recognised as stakeholders in their own right and for them to meet the high expectation of feeding the world by producing more and better and with less means, we must form strong, representative and professional farmers’ organisations.
Target audience 
This guide is mainly directed at the various stakeholders of rural development in sub-Saharan Africa. They are mainly:

  • members of producer organisations, cooperatives, village associations, economic interest groups, common interest groups, etc. 
  • executives and development workers in rural development projects and programmes 
  • leaders of the farming world 
  • farm schools students and pupils; 
  • anyone who wants to create a farmers’ organisation within a rural community.
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