As governments heighten the drive to mechanize agriculture, critical information is required on (i) existing mechanization options, (ii) barriers and challenges, (iii) opportunities for scaling and effective demand for mechanization. This paper combines quantitative and qualitative surveys to help elucidate on some of these key issues in Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe where mechanization is part of national policy priorities. Data were collected through Qualitative surveys involving 484 participants in focus group discussions and 109 key informants.

Sorghum sowing density trial conducted by IRD/IGE/CERAAS with Benin Institute student, combining crop varietal diversity and land management interventions at plot level to improve integrated predictive crop modelling. The vision is to develop crop fitness mapping evidence (interaction with development partner MyAgro for scaling). Initiate a socio-economic study on cross-sectoral fodder resource issue in Senegal with ISRA BAME. Evidence to be presented at crop diversification science policy dialogues 14 Dec 2023 ICRISAT led event-

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.

This factsheet gives answers on how climate exacerbates root causes of conflict in Sudan, using an impact pathway analysis. Two main impact pathways are identified: 1. Resource Availability and Access: Climate variability and extreme events are putting pressure on land, water and pasture while increasing desertification is pushing pastoralists ever further south in their quest to feed their livestock. 2. Livelihood and Food Security: Climate variability is reducing agricultural production in Sudan, leading to high food insecurity and protests.

As the global population continues to grow, the urgency of addressing food sovereignty challenges becomes increasingly apparent. Bangladesh, being a densely populated country, encounters significant hurdles in livestock production sectors the high population density leads to a substantial demand for food, resulting in increased resource requirements. This study aimed to explore and analyse new pathways and practices to improve resource use efficiency of smallholder crop-livestock farms in northwest Bangladesh.

Despite increasing popularity of farmer-led irrigation in Ethiopia, little is known about socio-economics of farmers who receive public support in accelerating its expansion. We investigate this question by combining spatial land suitability for groundwater- and solar irrigation with pre-existing socioeconomic data. We find that if public support in farmer-led irrigation expansion were to be provided to farmers who own land areas that are also spatially highly suitable for irrigation, high-value crop cultivators and wealthier farmers would most likely benefit from such investments.

Land degradation affects a significant portion of the Earth’s ice-free land area and several countries have embraced the challenge of restoring large parts of their degraded lands. Success in these efforts depends on various factors, including the amount of resources invested, the technical capacity available and the degree of involvement of stakeholders. Burkina Faso has committed to restoring 5 Mha of degraded land by 2030.

We use CDRs of mobile phone users in Uganda combined with data from a phone survey to train machine-learning models to predict the sex of the mobile phone user and several indicators of economic empowerment such as ownership of a house and land, occupation, and decision-making over household income. The most accurate of the models predicts the sex of the mobile phone user with 78% accuracy. The different indicators of economic empowerment are predicted with accuracies ranging from 57% to 61%. We also predict users’ sex and economic empowerment jointly.

Previous research indicates that some important cocoa cultivated areas in West Africa will become unsuitable for growing cocoa in the next decades. However, it is not clear if this change will be mirrored by the shade tree species that could be used in cocoa-based agroforestry systems (C-AFS). We characterized current and future patterns of habitat suitability for 38 tree species (including cocoa), using a consensus method for species distribution modelling considering for the first time climatic and soil variables.

In 2020 the CGIAR CAS Secretariat is conducting independent reviews of the 12 CGIAR Research Programs (CRPs), including this one of WLE. The reviews will provide information on quality of science and effectiveness in each CRP. This review covers the Phase II years of 2017 through 2019, with a view to identifying lessons for future research modalities.

Following the development and dissemination of new climate-smart agricultural technologies to farmers globally, there has been an increase in the number of socio-economic studies on the adoption of climate-smart integrated pests’ management (CS-IPM) technologies over the years. In this study, we review empirical evidence on adoption determinants of CS-IPM technologies and identify possible science-policy interfaces. Generally, our review shows that socioeconomic and institutional factors are influential in shaping CS-IPM adoption decisions of farmers.

Both global poverty and hunger have increased in recent years, endangering progress towards accomplishing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1 and 2. The regression has been most pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Meeting the SDG targets requires achieving resilient farm productivity. Although many farm management technologies exist to improve yields, farmers in SSA largely have not adopted these approaches.