Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) is a social enterprise that finances improved agricultural practices through the adoption of agroforestry and a legume-based farming system that increases food crop yields and market opportunities for over 230,000 small-scale farmers. The proposed project will build on this foundation that spans 19 years of growing a brand called It’s Wild! of 20 different value-added food products by partnering with the Chitetezo Co-operative Federation.

Climate change threatens the livelihoods of millions of small-scale farmers in East Africa. How farmers perceive climate change and its impacts has a strong bearing on how they adapt to the adverse impacts. This paper focused on factors that determine climate change adaptation and perceptions among small-scale farmers of Embu County. A survey was carried out across five sub-counties of Embu County where a multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 411 households. A questionnaire was administered to each household. A total of five FGDs were generated by the use of quota sampling.

The Central African forest ebony, Diospyros crassiflora Hiern, is a small tree native to the moist forests of the Congo Basin. Its appealing black heartwood was one of the first products to be exported from the Gulf of Guinea in the 17th century and is today one of the main sources of ebony globally. Like for other ebony species, its commercial exploitation raises serious questions about the long-term sustainability of its trade and the viability of its populations, but the dots are yet to be joined.

Micronutrient deficiencies (MNDs) remain widespread among people in sub-Saharan Africa1,2,3,4,5, where access to sufficient food from plant and animal sources that is rich in micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) is limited due to socioeconomic and geographical reasons4,5,6. Here we report the micronutrient composition (calcium, iron, selenium and zinc) of staple cereal grains for most of the cereal production areas in Ethiopia and Malawi. We show that there is geospatial variation in the composition of micronutrients that is nutritionally important at subnational scales.

The purpose of this study was to assess women’s decision-making power in small-scale agriculture in six African countries in view of the feminization of agriculture and to discuss the meaning of decision-making in relation to women’s empowerment and sustainability. The data are drawn from a multisite and mixed-method agricultural research and development project in six sub-Saharan countries including two sites in each country. The five domains of empowerment outlined in the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index are used to structure the analysis.

This document is a supplement to the UNFCCC NAP technical guidelines. It aims to raise awareness amongst national policymakers on the potential importance of digital agriculture (DA) in National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), provide tangible information on how it can be incorporated into NAP formulation and propose ways forward to implementing DA at scale.
The research for this supplement included reviewing the existing literature on digital agriculture and its role in supporting climate adaptation, alongside consultations with experts from the research community and UNFCCC.

The Banana Bunchy Top Disease (BBTD), caused by the Banana Bunchy Top Virus (BBTV) is the most important and devastating in many tropical countries. BBTD epidemiology has been little studied, mixed landscape smallholder systems. The relative risks associated with this disease vary between geographical areas and landscapes. This work analyzed the management and vegetation conditions in smallholder gardens to assess the factors linked to landscape-level BBTV transmission and management.

The pioneering work of establishing a Climate-Smart Village (CSV) in Guinayangan, Quezon Province in 2014 became an avenue for promoting interventions to address climate change in a local government in the Philippines. The CSV served as a laboratory where climate-smart technologies and practices were tested, promoted, and scaled out. Through a CSV, Climate-Smart Agriculture was introduced as an integrated approach that aims to achieve short- and long-term agriculture development priorities in the face of climate change.

Potato plays an important role in Kenya’s food and nutrition security plan - part of the Big Four
Economic Development Strategy. The crop is cultivated by approximately 800,000 smallholder farmers
and a few medium and large-scale farmers. The sector employs another 2.5 million people -
transporters, distributors, processors, vendors, retailers, and exporters - who derive their livelihoods
along the value chain. Production has fluctuated over the last decade, despite a steady increase in area

The rich agrobiodiversity of China is under unprecedented threat, experiencing a dramatic loss of many valuable local varieties and wild relatives of main crops. The country's formal conservation system of ex situ genebanks faces serious challenges to address this loss. Community seed banks can play a key role to complement the conservation activities of these genebanks and provide other important collective goods, such as evolutionary services, but although they have been around for some 35 years in various parts of the world, in China they have a much shorter history.

This study takes stock of over 10-years of experience and increasing coverage of index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) programs to protect pastoralists from drought shocks in the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) region. The study reviews the status of national-level drought/climate risk financing solutions in the region and discusses the operational and technical feasibility of a regional IBLI program, summarizing critical lesson learned and providing a set of recommendations and options for regional implementation.

In South Asia, the CGIAR-led innovation of bundled agricultural technologies (including index-based flood insurance, climate resilient seeds and agroclimatic services), relying on advanced tools and modeling including satellite data, speeded payouts to over 15,000 flood-affected farm households, indirectly benefitting another 125,000 farmers who learned from participating neighbors. Governments and insurance companies are beginning to scale out these new products to farmers, including women, in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.