Drawing on social constructivist approaches to interpreting the generation of knowledge, particularly Stirling’s (Local Environ 4(2):111–135, 1999) schema of incomplete knowledge, this paper looks critically at climate-crop modelling, a research discipline of growing importance within African agricultural adaptation policy. A combination of interviews with climate and crop modellers, a meta-analysis survey of crop modelling conducted as part of the CGIAR’s Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) programme in 2010, and peer-reviewed crop and climate modelling literature are analysed. Using case studies from across the crop model production chain as illustrations it is argued that, whilst increases in investment and growth of the modelling endeavour are undoubtedly improving observational data and reducing ignorance, the future of agriculture remains uncertain and ambiguous. The expansion of methodological options, assumptions about system dynamics, and divergence in model outcomes is increasing the space and need for more deliberative approaches to modelling and policy making. Participatory and deliberative approaches to science-policy are advanced in response. The discussion highlights the problem that, uncertainty and ambiguity become hidden within the growing complexity of conventional climate and crop modelling science, as such, achieving the transparency and accessibility required to democratise climate impact assessments represents a significant challenge. Suggestions are made about how these challenges might be responded to within the climate-crop modelling community.
Tag: agriculture
Climate change, agriculture and food security: a global partnership to link research and action for low-income agricultural producers and consumers
To achieve food security for many in low-income and middle-income countries for whom this is already a challenge, especially with the additional complications of climate change, will require early investment to support smallholder farming systems and the associated food systems that supply poor consumers. We need both local and global policy-linked research to accelerate sharing of lessons on institutions, practices and technologies for adaptation and mitigation. This strategy paper briefly outlines how the Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centres (CGIAR) is working across research disciplines, organisational mandates, and spatial and temporal levels to assist immediate and longer-term policy actions.
Climate-smart landscapes: opportunities and challenges for integrating adaptation and mitigation in tropical agriculture
Addressing the global challenges of climate change, food security, and poverty alleviation requires enhancing the adaptive capacity and mitigation potential of agricultural landscapes across the tropics. However, adaptation and mitigation activities tend to be approached separately due to a variety of technical, political, financial, and socioeconomic constraints. Here, we demonstrate that many tropical agricultural systems can provide both mitigation and adaptation benefits if they are designed and managed appropriately and if the larger landscape context is considered. Many of the activities needed for adaptation and mitigation in tropical agricultural landscapes are the same needed for sustainable agriculture more generally, but thinking at the landscape scale opens a new dimension for achieving synergies. Intentional integration of adaptation and mitigation activities in agricultural landscapes offers significant benefits that go beyond the scope of climate change to food security, biodiversity conservation, and poverty alleviation. However, achieving these objectives will require transformative changes in current policies, institutional arrangements, and funding mechanisms to foster broad-scale adoption of climate-smart approaches in agricultural landscapes.
Constraints and opportunities for tree diversity management along the forest transition curve to achieve multifunctional agriculture
On-farm tree diversity patterns result from a social-ecological process shaped by different actors. Farmer preferences, tree-site matching, seed dispersal, tree domestication and delivery via nurseries all play important roles in forming these patterns. As part of a wider interest in tree cover transition curves that link agroforestation stages of landscapes to a preceding deforestation process, we here focus on ‘tree diversity transition curves’ i. as a conceptual framework to understand current processes and how shifts in drivers affect tree diversity and ii. to help identify constraints and opportunities for interventions. We provide some examples of current research efforts and make suggestions for databases and analyzes that are required to improve our understanding of tree diversity transitions. We explore drivers, consequences and entry points for tree diversity management to achieve multifunctional agriculture.
Central hypotheses for the third agroforestry paradigm within a common definition
In the four decades of its existence, agroforestry as a concept has been understood and defined in multiple ways, often referring to a specific system scale of interest. This has ranged from trees, via tree-soil-crop interactions at plot level to the interactions between land, labour, knowledge and investment at farm level. These in turn shape human livelihoods at landscape scale, dynamics of tree cover change in space and time, socio-ecological systems at landscape scale, the multiple value chains that start with tree, crop and livestock production in landscapes, and the policy domains of forestry and agriculture in the context of sustainable development goals, globalizing markets and global climate change. We propose a new, simple definition1: “Agroforestry, a contraction of the terms agriculture and forestry, is land use that combines aspects of both, including the agricultural use of trees.” This includes trees on farms and in agricultural landscapes, farming in forests and at forest margins and tree-crop production, including cocoa, coffee, rubber and oilpalm. It includes interactions between agriculture and forestry as policy domains. Interactions between trees and other components of agriculture may be important at a range of scales: in fields (where trees and crops are grown together), on farms (where trees may provide fodder for livestock, fuel, food, shelter or income from products including timber) and landscapes (where agricultural and forest land uses combine in determining the provision of ecosystem services). At national and global scales, forestry and agriculture interact ecologically and through policies relating to land use and trade and are important with respect to climate change and other environmental concerns. Agroforestry embraces an agroecological approach emphasising multifunctionality and the management of complex systems and polycultures rather than focusing exclusively on monoculture. At each scale we need clarity on what non-agroforestry comparisons can be made, before any hypotheses on properties of agroforestry can be tested. We discuss current use of agroforestry in terms of “theory of place”, describing context, “theory of change”, understanding options and choices, and “theory of induced change”, articulating how interventions can be evaluated a priori on likely effectiveness, in socio-ecological systems with multiple feedbacks. Effectiveness and tradeoffs are to be evaluated across the full set of sustainable development goals. One overarching hypothesis for each of these three theory domains is proposed, with an indication of the type of evidence that could lead to rejection or at least refinement of the statement. Answers to a coherent set of ten questions can increase the system level understanding of emerging issues, available and new options, and ways to evaluate scenarios and form platforms for change, all in local context. As umbrella term for bringing agriculture and forestry aspects together, agroforestry has an ambitious but important role in current debates. 1 Other options are: A) “Agroforestry is the combination of agriculture and forestry, including…” or B) “Agroforestry is the combination of agriculture and trees, including…”
A protocol for modeling, measurement and monitoring soil carbon stocks in Agricultural landscapes – version 1.1
Burning of fossil fuels and land – use change, particularly deforestation, have resulted in a steady accumulation of CO 2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which is the cause of global warming (IPCC, 2003) . The two major strategies to mitigate the potential negative effects of climate chang e are reducing the emission of greenhouse gases and the capture and storage of CO 2 from the atmosphere. Through the framework of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto protocol, increasing terrestrial sinks through afforestation and reforest ation are the two accredited activities. Besides afforestation and reforestation, reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) and enhancing carbon stocks thought sustainable land management (REDD+) are given due credit in mitigating climate change (Campbell, 2009) .
Effective monitoring of agriculture: a response
The development of effective agricultural monitoring networks is essential to track, anticipate and manage changes in the social, economic and environmental aspects of agriculture. We welcome the perspective of Lindenmayer and Likens (J. Environ. Monit., 2011, 13, 1559) as published in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring on our earlier paper, “Monitoring the World’s Agriculture” (Sachs et al., Nature, 2010, 466, 558–560). In this response, we address their three main critiques labeled as ‘the passive approach’, ‘the problem with uniform metrics’ and ‘the problem with composite metrics’. We expand on specific research questions at the core of the network design, on the distinction between key universal and site-specific metrics to detect change over time and across scales, and on the need for composite metrics in decision-making. We believe that simultaneously measuring indicators of the three pillars of sustainability (environmentally sound, social responsible and economically viable) in an effectively integrated monitoring system will ultimately allow scientists and land managers alike to find solutions to the most pressing problems facing global food security.
Landsat-based approaches for mapping of land degradation prevalence and soil functional properties in Ethiopia
Agriculture is the basis of the Ethiopian economy, accounting for the majority of its employment and export earnings. Land degradation is, however, widespread and improved targeting of land management interventions is needed, taking into account the variability of soil properties that affect agricultural productivity and land degradation risk across landscapes. In the current study we demonstrate the utility of Landsat ETM + imagery for landscape-level assessments of land degradation risk and soil condition through a combination of systematic field methodologies, infrared (IR) spectroscopy and ensemble modeling techniques. The approaches presented allow for the development of maps at spatial scales that are appropriate for making spatially explicit management recommendations. Field data and soil samples collected from 38 sites, each 100 km2, were used to develop predictive models that were applied as part of a case study to an independent dataset from four sites in Ethiopia. The predictions based on Landsat reflectance were robust, with R-squared values of 0.86 for pH and 0.79 for soil organic carbon (SOC), and were used to create predicted surfaces (maps) for these soil properties. Further, models were developed for the mapping of the occurrence of soil erosion and root depth restrictions within 50 cm of the soil surface (RDR50), with an accuracy of about 80% for both variables. The maps generated from these models were used to assess the spatial distribution of soil pH and SOC, which are important indicators of soil condition, and land degradation risk factors in order to target relevant management options.
Principles, design and processes of integrated agricultural research for development: experiences and lessons from LKPLS under the SSACP
With increasing recognition holding the promise of overcoming the outstanding problems faced by African agriculture, IAR4D faces the danger of being’blurred’ by past approaches and falling short of its potential to deliver the desired impact s in diverse multi-stakeholder, biophysical, socio-economic, cultural, technological and market contexts unless its actualisation and working is clearly understood. In this paper, we present the conceptualisation and principles of and knowledge-based experiences and lessons from the implementation of the sub-Saharan Africa Challenge Programme (SSACP) in the Lake Kivu Pilot Learning Site (LKPLS). The presentation covers the formation and facilitation of IPs for the actualisation of IAR4D to evolve mechanisms for the early recognition of interlinked issues in natural resource management, productivity and value addition technologies, markets, gender and policy arrangements. These have autonomously triggered flexible, locally directed interactions to innovate options from within or outside their environment for resolving the challenges, and have moved along a new institutional and technological change trajectory. Emerging lessons point to the endowment of IP members with self-help knowledge interactions, training in IAR4D, quality of facilitation and research to be key determinants of the power behind of self-regulating mechanisms.
Local institutions in southwestern Uganda: the role of integrated agricultural research for development
Local institutions are commonly referred to as mediating factors that govern the relationship between a community and the natural resource base upon which it depends. However, conventional agricultural research and extension approaches have had limited impact in positively influencing the role of institutions in natural resource management (NRM). In this paper we discuss the role of Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D) in by-law enactment, implementation and compliance in southwestern Uganda, and the potential benefits of the IAR4D approach for the development of local-level institutions. Although the level of awareness of the enacted by-laws was highest in the conventional sites, compliance was highest in the innovation platform (IP) villages. With the multi-stakeholder participation of the IAR4D approach in the IPs, there was a conducive environment in which to formulate and implement new by-laws, such as those relating to the harvesting and marketing of produce. IAR4D was found to have the potential to empower individual farmers through their interactions with each other, as well as to increase inter-institutional interactions for increased information sharing among stakeholders, thus building social capital for collective action