October 2011

Keynote speakers at the opening of the Global Conference on Climate Smart Agriculture share their common vision

“Scientists and technology have a critical role to play if we are to achieve food security in the context of climate change,” said Sir John Beddington, Chair of the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change at the opening of the Global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture in Ede, The Netherlands. He urged the participating agricultural experts from governments, international agencies, and universities to think about smart ways for farmers to produce enough food while managing and adapting to climate change.

The talk included a foretaste of the soon to be launched recommendations from the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change. The Commission, made up of thirteen experts from around the world, has been collecting evidence to synthesizing the evidence to develop practical actions to support sustainable agriculture in the context of climate change. The summary will be aimed for policy makers and launched in time to be fed into the discussions in Durban. Read more »

Last week, we shared the news that cattle herders in Kenya had received their first payments as part of an innovative livestock insurance scheme, partly set up by our partners the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Now, we share a farm-level view of the scheme, courtesy of Neil Palmer (republished from the CIAT blog).

What hits you when you get out of the truck at Ginda Village, in Northern Kenya, is the smell.

Farmer Haro Sora’s land is littered with the carcasses of cattle and donkeys that have keeled over following an intense, prolonged drought. A skull here; half a ribcage there. In some places there are whole animals slumped on the roadside. Some have died in the last few days, and the wind does little to clear the air.

Ginda, in Marsabit District, has been affected by the now infamous Horn of Africa drought, which triggered a food crisis affecting around 13 million people in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia. After more than a year, the rains finally returned to Ginda a fortnight ago.

The fact that the food crisis in the Horn was the result of a livestock crisis has been well documented. A major pastoralist zone, when vegetation for grazing began to dry-up and livestock started to die, the knock-on effects on farmer livelihoods became strikingly clear.

Now, whatever your gut reaction to the principle of a financial institution selling insurance to already cash-strapped smallholder farmers to protect them against the risk of drought, there are 650 livestock keepers in Marsabit this year who are delighted to be receiving their first payouts. Read more »

A recently released report (PDF) by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) finds that Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire might become too hot for the cocoa plant by as early as 2030, based on a projected one-degree Celsius increase. Smallholder farmers in the two countries supply over half of the world’s cocoa which means a risk of increasing global market prices and a negative effect on the cocoa producers livelihoods. Read more »

Guest blog by Laura Cramer, Program Specialist for CCAFS East Africa Regional Office

In early July CCAFS East Africa Regional Theme co-sponsored a national awareness raising conference at the Ghion Hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia titled “Climate Change Vulnerability and Risk Assessment of Agriculture and Food Security in Ethiopia: Which Way Forward?” The co-hosts of the event were the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), Climate Change Forum – Ethiopia (CCF-E), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Read more »