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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).

Climate policy commonly carries an implicit assumption that incremental improvements in agricultural systems are adequate to make them resilient to climate change. In some cases, however, agricultural systems may cross certain environmental thresholds that require more transformational adaptation. Governments and development agencies need to improve their understanding of climate thresholds and their preparedness for transformational adaptation. Climate smart agriculture frameworks should consider the piloting of strategies for transformational adaptation.

This information brief highlights key findings of the Vuna report “Transformational Adaptation to Climate Change: Concepts, Examples, and Relevance for Agriculture in Eastern and Southern Africa.”

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.

Taking a gender-responsive approach to Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) means that the particular needs, priorities, and realities of men and women are recognized and adequately addressed in the design and application of CSA so that both men and women can equally benefit.

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.

 ‘Climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA)—agriculture and food systems that sustainably increase food production, improve resilience (or adaptive capacity) of farming systems, and mitigate climate change when possible—has quickly been integrated into the global development agenda. However, the empirical evidence base for CSA has not been assembled, complicating the transition from CSA concept to concrete actions, and contributing to ideological disagreement among development practitioners. Thus, there is an urgent need to evaluate current knowledge on the effectiveness of CSA to achieve its intended benefits and inform discourse on food, agriculture, and climate change. This systematic review intends to establish the scientific evidence base of CSA practices to inform the next steps in development of agricultural programming and policy.