The Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) project is a three-year initiative funded by the World Bank and implemented in six (6) African countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Senegal and Zambia. In Senegal, the project’s objective is to reach and impact over 300 000 farmers and value chain players with climate informed agro-advisories and new/improved climate smart-agriculture (CSA) packages and technologies by the end of 2023.

This is a blog about how Conservation Agriculture can be a game changer in alleviating factors such as poverty, climate change, increasing conflicts, lack of economic means and various underlying environmental factors which can and do impact agricultural productivity negatively.

The potential for operations research with farmer supplied data coupled with machine learning to improve crop management is explored through a series of case studies from developing countries. The information provided by the farmers ranged from solely yield to a description of the management of the crop and some details of the growth environment. The climate or weather conditions of the georeferenced farms were estimated from publicly available data bases. Two principle analytical approaches were used.

This report summarizes findings from a study on digital tool use among rice farmers in Vietnam for the Inclusive Digital Tools Project (ATDT) of the Agroecological Transitions for Building Resilient and Inclusive Agricultural and Food Systems (TRANSITIONS) program. Results show that few digital tools focused on rice production in Vietnam provide technical advice and performance assistance.

This info brief provides an executive overview of the research methods and key finding of a series of information briefs. The briefs were developed to assess the role of Heifer Nepal programming in supporting the adoption of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices amongst Heifer supported goat cooperatives, and their impact on a range of environmental and economic indicators.

Until recent decades, labour-intensive subsistence farming was a way of life and livelihood in the hill communities of Uttarakhand, India. However, the nature of agriculture falls far short of the expectations of the main labour force, the rural youth, leading to their mass migration to non-agricultural occupations. The large-scale youth migration has left many hill farming landscapes depopulated and farmlands abandoned. As youth have special stakes in food systems, they must be included in the sustainable transformation of food systems.

Weather and climate information services (WCIS) are recognized as a powerful tool to support the management of climate risk in the context of climate variability. However, the picture of its value for agriculture is not yet well evaluated. This study used the Average Treatment Effect (ATE) framework to assess the impact of WCIS use on yield, income and technical efficiency of

The framework presented here integrates CGIAR and AICCRA experience in gender and socially-inclusive approaches to reach women, youth and under-represented groups, to develop a model for scaling up climate resilient agriculture that integrates equality and empowerment.

Irrigation is an important mechanism to mitigate risks associated with the variability in rainfall for the smallholder subsistence farming system. This study analyzed how practicing small-scale irrigation (SSI) impacts the key livelihood assets on farm households’ human, physical, natural, financial, and social capitals in Ethiopia’s upper Awash sub-basin. The household-level survey data, collected from the 396 sample households, was used to carry out the current study. A Propensity Score Matching (PSM) analytical model was applied to match the SSI user and nonuser groups.

In this brief, we present AICCRA Zambia's scaling vision. Our scaling strategy employs a number of interconnected and mutually reinforcing channels. These include public and private sector scaling partnerships, individual and collective investments, financing mechanism for SMEs, institutional capacity building and multistakeholder dialogues (Figure 2). AICCRA works with Zambian partners to scale actionable climate smart agriculture (CSA) and climate information services (CIS) innovation bundles that contribute to smallholder farmers’ water and food security and build resilience.

Background
Digital technologies are promoted as transformational for smallholders in Africa through the potential to enhance access to knowledge, increase productivity and food security. Despite the anticipations for agricultural digitalization in Africa, smallholders' engagement with digitalization is empirically underexplored. Hence, we surveyed 1565 rural farmers in Northern Ghana to explore how farmers interact with digital tools and services, and the variations in their engagements.
Results

Manipulation of the rhizosphere can improve soil health; and foster sustainable management of pests and diseases. Biological inputs such as spent substrates from edible mushrooms (e.g., Pleurotus ostreatus) gardens offer sustainable alternatives on