Improving agricultural productivity in Ethiopia is crucial to alleviate poverty and meet growing food demand amid environmental stress and climate change. Agricultural innovation and access to digital agricultural solutions have the potential to boost productivity while reducing negative environmental footprints in agriculture and food system value chains. However, most smallholder farmers in Ethiopia have limited access to digital farming solutions.

In its Phase 1 (September to December 2022) the Climate, Security and Food Systems theme workstream of the HDP coalition worked together with its members to collate state-of-the-art evidence on the connection between climate, food, and peace and security. This brief summarises the latest research conducted by CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security for the country of Kenya as validated by the members of the Climate, Security and Food systems workstream. CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security has developed a Climate Security Observatory (CSO) within the ONECGIAR Climate Resilience Initiative.

The Darwin Initiative funded project “Bridging Agriculture and Environment: The Southern African Crop Wild Relatives Network” aims at establishing strategic partnerships and networks of protected areas for Crop wild relatives’ (CWR) conservation and use. One of the key components of this project is “Access and Benefit Sharing” (ABS).

RUFORUM conducted a scoping study to identify areas of CSA/CIS convergence for member universities from 20th November to March 2022. Consultations were made with the Deans of the Faculties of Agriculture and related disciplines of Congolese member universities in eastern DRC, through zoom and then individual questionnaires to identify the focal persons who are involved in Climate Smart Agriculture teaching and research.

The advent of improved lentil varieties (ILVs) in the mid-1990s solved the disease problem which almost halted lentil production in Bangladesh. Levels of adoption of ILVs have been documented in the literature, but little is known about their impacts. Applying an instrumental variables regression to data collected from a sample of 1,694 lentil plots and DNA fingerprinting for varietal identification, this study provides estimates of the plot-level impacts of adoption of ILVs in Bangladesh.

Climate services for agriculture (agrometeorological services) are only possible through collaborative, interdisciplinary efforts. To this end, a national-scale service operated by centralized governments will mandate institutional coordination for data sharing, in addition to designated staff time and budget commitments for effective and sustainable operation; however, previous efforts have revealed that institutional coordination, particularly between meteorology and agriculture, represents the most difficult part preventing successful implementation in most countries.

Groundwater resources and irrigation systems are a fundamental consideration for sustainable and inclusive food system transitions in South Asia. Over the course of the latter part of the 20th century and the early 21st century, groundwater has become the primary source of irrigation water across South Asia and globally. The aquifers in Western and Peninsula regions in South Asia have faced water scarcity and groundwater depletion. But in the Eastern Gangetic Plains, aquifers are still considered underutilized by most planners and policymakers.

The presentation discussed the various steps in Climate-Smart Mapping and Adaptation Planning (CS-MAP), such as: defining climate-risks and agriculture products, mapping climate-risks, proposing adaptation plans, revising climate-smart maps and adaptation plans, and map integration at province level.

Among smallholder maize farmers in Ethiopia (and similar areas in Africa), yield and stress tolerance traits in maize varieties are important. While high yields remain a major objective, breeding and seed system development programs are increasingly based on the recognition that farmers also have an interest in other agronomic and consumption traits. In this paper we illustrate these issues by measuring the trade-offs farmers may be willing to make for specific traits in the mid-altitude maize markets in Ethiopia.