The Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) project is administered by the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). AICCRA is a project that helps deliver a climate-smart African future driven by science and innovation in agriculture. AICCRA builds on 50 years of CGIAR innovation, AICCRA works to
scale climate-smart agriculture (CSA) and climate information services (CIS) that reach millions of smallholder farmers in Africa.

Earthworms (EWs) could be a viable indicator of soil biology and agri-food system management. The influence of climate-smart agriculture (CSA)-based sustainable intensification practices (zero tillage, crop rotations, crop residue retention, and precision water and nutrients application) on earthworms’ (EWs) populations and soil physico-biochemical properties of rice-wheat cropping system in the Indo-Gangetic plains of South Asia was investigated.

WP3 intends to address the question: How can cross-food value chain and market services function better to increase employment and boost income of smallholders and SMEs? The WP focuses on two types of cross-value chain services, logistics and financial services. (1) logistics services – supply chain management, transportation, traceability, digital platforms for e-com merce, and (cold) storage. (2) value-chain financial services – mainly focusing on digital financial services (DFS) that facilitate trans actions, savings, access to and use of credit, and insurance.

Reducing maize postharvest storage losses is a challenge for millions of smallholder farmers in Mexico. A previous study documented the effects of storage technologies on stored grain losses.

Smallholder farmers in Bangladesh often use low-density polyethylene (LDPE) bags contained within woven polypropylene bags to store wheat seed during the summer monsoon that precedes winter season planting. High humidity and temperature during this period can encourage increased seed moisture and pests, thereby lowering seed quality.

The aim of the dissertation was to undertake phenotypic and genetic characterization and design community-based breeding programs for two indigenous goat populations in Ethiopia, namely Arab and Oromo. The dissertation was based on five manuscripts. Papers I, II, IV and V were based on data generated from production system, morphological characterization and ranking experiments. Paper III was based on whole genome data generated from three indigenous goat populations (Arab, Fellata and Oromo).

This paper highlights how farmers in a northern Lao village transformed their customary land rights – in the face of incoherent overlapping state territorialization attempts – into a territorial strategy to secure their land tenure. By planting rubber, some villagers have engaged in a crop boom to lay claim to land which has recently been zoned for upland rice cultivation (and conservation) as part of a state-led land use planning initiative.

The challenges to agroecological transitions are not the same for all farmers and implementation of agroecological practices in different locations could yield different results. With this consideration, this study was conducted in Aba-Garima watershed in northwestern Ethiopia to characterize the structure and activities of farming households and assess factors influencing the implementation and sustainability of agroecological practices. Data were collected from 218 households, 16 key informants, and 12 focus group discussions.

The CGIAR Initiative on Climate Resilience, ClimBeR, aims to transform the climate adaptation capacity of food, land, and water systems in Kenya and five other countries, ultimately increasing the resilience of smallholder production systems to withstand severe climate change effects like drought, flooding, and high temperatures.

A river basin – the breadbasket of millions – battered by floods just a few months earlier, slowly dries up; struck by climate change, over-abstraction of water and degradation of soils and land. As the river flow and reservoir levels fall, hydropower production declines. Farmers start to rely more heavily on groundwater, but access to energy for their irrigation wells is expensive. Many, especially women, are without access and a voice; others pump too much and ratchet up the water stress of the whole basin. Soils turn to dust, crops wilt, livestock and wildlife perish.

The impact of climate change on the availability of water affects all types of land use and sectors. This complexity calls for integrated water resources management and negotiations between sectors on the most important, cost-effective, and productive allocation of water where it is a limited resource.

The colonial legacy of irrigated agriculture in Egypt continues to reinforce food security and poverty. Marginalized tenant farmers along the tail end of Drain 7 in Kafr El Sheikh face challenges of polluted, unreliable irrigation water, low crop productivity, income and food insecurity, and poor health.
Low value agriculture work is increasingly performed by marginalized women, whose work and time is undervalued and taken for granted.