Every year, millions of dollars are spent on tree-based landscape restoration activities. Over the last five decades, there are few success stories of such interventions and even those do not match the anticipated objectives for which the resources were spent. News articles that announce planting campaigns of millions of seedlings are common. Despite all this, in many countries, vegetation cover has not improved due to poor seedling survival rate. This makes the return on investment low.

Following the launch of the CSA strategy for the Central American Integration System (2017), supported by CCAFS, actors from all levels (local, national, regional/international) implemented 259 transformations aligned with the strategy’s objectives toward scaling Climate Smart Agriculture. These transformations include CSA policy formulation and implementation, capacity strengthening and partnership around CSA, mechanisms to facilitate and articulate climate financing. Most of the transformations are concentrated in the policy area.

Over the past 10 years, there have been a myriad of foresight exercises and scenarios developed that are relevant to consider in the context of building climate-resilient pathways of development in the SADC region. These scenarios consider different pathways for developing climate-resilient food and agricultural systems relevant for the region. However, not all the scenarios ar e developed for the r egion; most are either at SSA or country level, with a few at regional level, and several at global level.

Community-based seed producers are a relatively under-researched and under-documented category of seed producers, but have the potential to cater to the diverse seed needs and interests of smallholder farmers. This working paper presents a number of such community-seed producers, with a focus on community seed banks.

This working paper presents results of an impact assessment of management innovations that were introduced in agricultural carbon projects in East Africa. We evaluated the effect of project design, management, and monitoring transfer of responsibilities to local communities on the performance of agricultural carbon projects. The assessment included the economic, social, and environmental impacts of the projects on the smallholder farmers.

Enset (Ensete ventricosum) is an important starch staple crop, cultivated primarily in south and southwestern Ethiopia. Enset is the main crop of a sustainable indigenous African system that ensures food security in a country that is food deficient. Related to the banana family, enset is similarly affected by plant-parasitic nematodes. Plant-parasitic nematodes impose a huge constraint on agriculture. The distribution, population density and incidence of plant-parasitic nematodes of enset was determined during August 2018.

This study aims to describe recent developments in the Southern African region by documenting a set of mega-trends defining social, economic, political and environmental conditions. It includes analysis of the recent past as well as projections of future trends. To the extent possible, the report is based on information from 2010 to the present, except in some cases where more recent information was not available.

This study examines the extent of the productivity gap between male and female bean producers, its discriminatory nature and implications for the policymakers in agriculture in Tanzania. Generally, women are distinctively “invisible” in agriculture, due to social norms and even from the national agricultural policy perspective. Their discrimination arises from uncounted and unaccounted for farm work, and their productivity is reduced by triple roles, limited access to education, having triple effects on access to technology, training and land rights.

Little is known about the responses of endangered Rosewood species to drought and heat stress. These stresses are expected to increase in the Greater Mekong Subregion where the species co-occur and are endemic. Our results indicate contrasting relationships in water relations, photosynthetic pigment levels, and total soluble sugars in the two species, matching their ecological niches. The results support effective regeneration and conservation of the species in degraded habitats and in the face of climate change.

The biodiverse, predominantly crop-livestock mixed-farming in India is key to ensuring resilience to climate change and sustainability of smallholder farming agroecologies. Farmers traditionally grow diverse crops as polyculture, and agriculture is mainly organic/biodynamic with spirituality in food systems deeply ingrained.