The message in this short, yet stark sentence highlights a phenomenon that farmers, particularly in marginalized dryland areas, have been experiencing for years – the threat of desertification and climate change to their lives. Carbon sequestration, however, serves a dual purpose to remedy this threat. Firstly, global warming can be mitigated significantly by removing atmospheric carbon dioxide and sequestering it in soil. Secondly, increased carbon in the soil has great value as a food-producing asset.

This report reflects the summary of baseline findings in Malawi, under the auspices of the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) Adaptation Programme in Africa. It identifies gaps in climate information access and use at the local level, types of climate services farmers and pastoralists need in Malawi, relevant channels to reach farmers with requested services, lead-time and gender-specific requirements for the design and delivery of climate services that matter to farmers.

Indus basin irrigation system (IBIS) is one of the largest contiguous irrigation systems of the world. The surface canal water supplies are far less than the crop water demands which lead farmers to use groundwater to cope surface water scarcity. Although many studies in the IBIS are conducted to analyze the equitable distribution of canal water, there is hardly any study which comprehensively analyze the equitable use of canal water and groundwater at different spatial and temporal scales. One of the main reasons is lack of reliable information on the volume of groundwater abstraction.

Between 2005 and 2009, the EU-financed project ForLive set out to analyse promising local forest management initiatives in the Amazon Basin in four countries: Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru. Researchers aimed to identify locally viable practices that benefit livelihoods and ecological stabilisation of landscapes, as well as to define ways to promote these practices as a basis for sound rural development. This book presents lessons learnt from more than 100 studies by researchers from Latin America, from practitioners and from local families themselves.

We often talk about custodian farmers; several countries recognized them by facilitating awards and we often interact with them about what they do on their farm?

CIAT - International Center for Tropical Agriculture. Achieving Sustainable Agricultural Production in Haiti. In collaboration with international and local partners to assist with Haiti’s severe food production constraints in three major areas:

Seed Solutions for Food Security

Improved seeds of staple crops are a major leverage point for change in agriculture. By giving higher and more stable yields, they offer short-term benefits, which open the way toward a more profound transformation.

Resilient System Solutions for Sustainable Growth

Productivity decline occurs in many agronomic systems due to loss of soil organic matter and a consequent decline in soil fertility. This is pronounced in light textured soils, which even in their pristine state can have low levels of fertility. High temperatures and leaching conditions in tropical environments further exacerbates this poor fertility. In order to facilitate agronomic production on these soils, significant amounts of organic or inorganic fertilizers are required to maintain economic yields.

The overuse and misuse of chemical pesticides has widely been reported in vegetable cultivation in Sri Lanka. While safer and environmental friendly pest and disease management methods such as Integrated Pest Management (IPM) are popular around the world, only little effort has been taken to promote IPM in Sri Lankan vegetable cultivation. Furthermore, farmers have not shown much interest on practicing IPM in vegetable cultivation.

Large-scale agricultural land investments in Africa are often considered solely from the land perspective. Yet land, water and other natural resources are closely interlinked in agricultural production and in sustaining rural livelihoods. Such investments involving irrigation will potentially have implications for water availability and utilization by other users, making it imperative to regard water as an economic rather than a free good.