ilri

by Philip Thornton

Climate change is already having impacts on food systems in the tropics, and in the coming decades it will alter the regional distribution of hungry people. A new working paper from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) distils what is known about the likely impacts of climate change on the commodities and natural resources that make up the mandate of the CGIAR and its 15 Centres.  The study, “Impacts of climate change on the agricultural and aquatic systems and natural resources within the CGIAR’s mandate”, contains summaries for 22 mandate commodities and for agroforestry, forests, and water.  These summaries, written by scientists at each CGIAR centre, outline the importance of each commodity for food and nutrition security, its biological vulnerability to climate change, and the likely socio-economic vulnerability of the people affected. 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 »

According to a recent article in The New Agriculturist pastoralism is the best way to cope with drought. This statement is based on the findings from the report ‘An Assessment of the response to the 2008-2009 drought in Kenya’, produced by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Based on interviews with pastoralists the researchers found that the best way for them to cope with famine was to ensure that they had access to grazing and watering areas. Pastoralism was also viewed as the most productive use of drylands in the Horn of Africa and increased mobility of pastoralists could prevent future food crisis in these areas. In other words, by allowing pastoralists to move to other, unused grazing areas, they can more easily mitigate livestock losses during a drought. This is becoming increasingly problematic however, the report states, since mobility is being reduced and impeded. The report recommends that interventions targeting the removal of restrictions to mobility and access should be considered as prime activities during preparedness. To read more about the ILRI report please click here. Read more »

This article by Susan MacMillan was originally posted on the ILRI News blog

A new study out last week reveals future ‘hotspots’ of risk for hundreds of millions whose food problems are on a collision course with climate change. The scientists conducting the study warn that disaster looms for parts of Africa and all of India if chronic food insecurity converges with crop-wilting weather. They went on to say that Latin America is also vulnerable.

The red areas in the map above are food-insecure and intensively farmed regions that are highly exposed to a potential five per cent or greater reduction in the length of the growing season. Such a change over the next 40 years could significantly affect food yields and food access for 369 million people—many of them smallholder farmers—already living on the edge. This category includes almost all of India and significant parts of West Africa. While Latin America in general is viewed as having a ‘high capacity’ to cope with such shifts, there are millions of poor people living in this region who very dependent on local crop production to meet their nutritional needs (map credit: ILRI-CCAFS/Notenbaert). Read more »