Achieving climate-smart nutrition security in sub-Saharan Africa is an urgent challenge due to increasing climate risks to agricultural production, population growth and food price volatility This necessitates an integrated evidence base that takes into account not only future food system modelling but wider academic expertise and stakeholder knowledge and the plausible and desirable transformations that these information streams can provide. Accordingly, we use the integrated Future Estimator for Emissions and Diets (iFEED) to explore scenarios of food system transformation towards nutrition security. iFEED integrates climate, crop and land use modelling to explore scenarios of relevance to the policy landscape, as informed by stakeholders, assessing the adequacy of energy and nutrient supplies to meet dietary requirements at a population level. Our results show that calories are not always sufficient at the population level in extremely hot and dry years by mid-century in Zambia, even when maximising food production on available land. The majority of micronutrients also remain below population requirements. An alternative scenario where crops for population level nutrition security are prioritised shows that there are larger calorie shortfalls in extremely hot and dry years, although more micronutrient requirements are met than in the production-focused scenario. Both scenarios show benefits, and we point to ways forward that address the challenges to achieving climate-resilient nutrition security in the region. We also introduce our latest thinking on a new inclusive assessment framework that aims to expand iFEED to incorporate bottom-up disruptive seeds work and top-down modelling across spatial scales to deliver socially-equitable nutrition security in Kenya.

African nations are increasingly focusing on exporting high-value crops. However, a major challenge exists: high rates of food waste within supply chains. The problem is often seen as a technological issue—a lack of proper infrastructure and coordination creates inefficiencies. This research takes a different perspective, focusing on social relations within the supply chain. It uses the concept of “food waste regimes” to understand the underlying structures, relationships, and systems that cause food waste, with a focus on Tanzania’s avocado trade. The goals of the research are to: (1) Identify the factors contributing to food waste within Tanzania’s avocado supply chains, particularly in the context of export-oriented production; (2) Explore how these factors change as production shifts towards exports; (3) Analyse the fairness (equity) of how waste burdens are distributed among those involved. We adopted a “follow the thing” approach, combining interviews and observations across both domestic and export avocado supply chains in Tanzania. The research reveals that interactions between various aspects of the supply chain—practices, physical properties of the product (avocado perishability), and established institutions—influence where food waste occurs and who shoulders the burden of that waste. The research exposes how unequal power dynamics between participants lead to some actors bearing a disproportionate amount of the risk and cost of food waste. By taking a social relations approach, this research highlights that tackling food waste and social inequality are intertwined issues. The paper suggests potential areas for future research and intervention to address these interconnected challenges.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has gained traction as one of the effective strategies in tackling the climate crisis. Many CSA practices have been promoted by development agencies to smallholder farmers based on the assumption that farmers would adopt these innovations for their potential benefits. However, the adoption of CSA practices in Ghana and much of Africa remains low and decision making and on-farm innovation processes are poorly understood. This study seeks to provide empirical and participatory insight into how smallholder farmers innovate. Based on a novel application of a participatory video methodology, in farming communities in the Upper West Region of Ghana, that have been exposed to multiple CSA intervention programmes, the paper analyses farmers’ own self-curated accounts of experiences with CSA innovation. The findings show that farmer’s motivation to adopt CSA innovations is driven by their concerns for food security, economic gains, and the environmental impact of climate change on their farming activities and livelihood. The study reveals a mismatch between the CSA technologies and practices advanced by the development agencies and what farmers perceive as relevant and important in addressing their farming challenges. In particular, the findings show that in a pool of more than 12 CSA technologies and practices that had been promoted through three donor-driven intervention programmes in the communities, farmers selected less labour intensive, less costly, and CSA technologies and practices that fitted to their current farming practices and the local context. Agricultural extension agents served as an important information source on the CSA innovation and their practical implementation and farmers’ social groups played a crucial role in facilitating learning about the CSA technologies and practices. There is the need to integrate farmers voices using innovative methodologies such as participatory videos to better understand farmers’ experiences in the innovation process which will help inform the design of effective interventions and promote adoption of innovations aimed at enhancing the productivity of smallholder farmers and reducing environmental impacts in African food systems. By focusing on the innovations that farmers perceive as beneficial and adaptable to their local contexts, development organizations can use their resources more efficiently and promote adoption of contextually appropriate CSA innovations.

Smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) face increasing challenges from pests and climate change, among other issues. In response to these challenges, international agricultural research for development (R4D) investment is often focused on developing and scaling up techniques and technologies that bolster resilience. However, such approaches are often technocentric and follow linear assumptions of innovation diffusion and adoption, which overlook the complex realities that influence smallholder farmers' dynamic decisions and engagement with novel techniques. This study used qualitative ethnographic methods to explore the experiences, knowledge construction, motivations, and decision-making of farmers in Western Kenya regarding the extensively researched push-pull technology (PPT). Findings reveal that motives for practicing PPT evolve as farmers respond to emerging realities. Farmers' practices were motivated by factors such as food culture, resource availability, market demand, social networks, and risk management. Farmers often modify and adapt PPT components rather than simply adopting the practice as taught or shown. Contextual factors such as health, livestock ownership, land tenure, access to information and inputs, cost/benefit trade-offs, and social dynamics interact in complex ways. Ultimately, innovation unfolds as a dynamic process requiring inclusive participation, flexibility for local adaptation, and long-term collaboration with farmers as partners in finding solutions.

Improving nutrition security in sub-Saharan Africa under increasing climate risks and population growth requires a strong and contextualized evidence base. Yet, to date, few studies have assessed climate-smart agriculture and nutrition security simultaneously. Here we use an integrated assessment framework (iFEED) to explore stakeholder-driven scenarios of food system transformation towards climate-smart nutrition security in Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. iFEED translates climate-food-emissions modelling into policy-relevant information using model output implication statements. Results show that diversifying agricultural production towards more micronutrient-rich foods is necessary to achieve an adequate population-level nutrient supply by mid-century. Agricultural areas must expand unless unprecedented rapid yield improvements are achieved. While these transformations are challenging to accomplish and often associated with increased greenhouse gas emissions, the alternative for a nutrition-secure future is to rely increasingly on imports, which would outsource emissions and be economically and politically challenging given the large import increases required.

Abstract Emerging as this era’s most prominent philanthropist organisation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) wield unparalleled influence over global development agendas. Their philanthrocapitalist approach seeks to apply ‘market logic’ promoting neoliberal economic policies to development challenges – from global health to agricultural development, and, more recently, to gender equality and women’s empowerment. We apply Kashwan, MacLean, and García-López’s (2019) ‘Power in Institutions’ framework to the analysis of BMGF’s organisational documents around gender and triangulate findings through key-informant interviews to explore the multiple dimensions of power that the BMGF exert over mainstream approaches to gender. Overt power is exercised through direct control over the types of gender projects funded and the mainstream monitoring techniques used to track progress in line with the BMGF’s impact-orientated approach. Agenda power is exhibited through their ‘smart economics’ discourse rationalising investments in women that set global development agendas around increased yields, productivity and market integration. Discursive/ideational power is evident through shaping narratives around vulnerability – discursively defining global challenges, how they should be addressed, and by whom. Our findings thus contribute to a growing critique against the current neoliberal development landscape where philanthrocapitalists like the BMGF solidify their hegemony through wielding their immense power to push capitalist development agendas.

Biological control for sustainable plant protection in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is gaining attention due to low crop productivity caused by pests, increasing costs of agrochemicals, and their harmful impact on health and the environment. A valuable case is the Push–pull technology (PPT) developed by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE). However, evidence for the success of PPT in reducing pest prevalence has not translated from experimentation and demonstration to wider-scale on-farm uptake. A systematic review was conducted to explore the research gaps, benefits of PPT, adoption determinants, barriers to uptake, and how farmers choose to adopt and adapt the technology. The study found a large body of evidence on the biophysical benefits of PPT, which comes from a relatively narrow set of ICIPE-led or managed experiments in Western Kenya. Besides, evidence of its social and economic benefits is less robust. Documented barriers to adoption include initial establishment costs, labour intensiveness, risk averseness of farmers, socio-cultural rigidity, and inadequate access to information and inputs. The review highlights the need for qualitative research, an in-depth examination of the social dynamics of innovation and decision-making processes on farms, and institutions’ role in shaping innovation for sustainable agricultural development.

The challenges of climate change, food insecurity and land degradation have all led to a push for 'scaling' innovation for sustainable agriculture. For this purpose, international agricultural development projects often use farm trials or farmer field schools as a way for farmers to engage with technically-constructed knowledge and empirical evidence. However, the role of such trials in the socio-political construction of knowledge is often overlooked. This study conceptualises agricultural development interventions as taking place within an interaction space between researchers and farmers. Unpacking the processes and dynamics of the interaction space from four case studies across Malawi and mainland Tanzania, we present findings which evaluate: 1) how agricultural innovation takes place in the context of funded agricultural development projects, and 2) how space for technical and social knowledge construction can be opened up or closed down in these contexts. Results show that farm trials provide a basis for interaction, but that knowledge exchange in these contexts also require knowledge brokers for successful implementation and scaling. Both knowledge brokers, and the trials themselves shape social dynamics, often simultaneously facilitating social learning for some, but contributing to social exclusions for others. A strong connection was identified between the design of the interaction space and social dynamics evident within it, indicative of the close interconnection between the processes of socio-political and technical construction of knowledge. Key factors open or close the interaction space, such as the continuity of knowledge brokers and the complexity of technologies. Improving the effectiveness of innovation for sustainable agriculture, requires opening up the interaction space to enable more effective and sustained co-creation of technologies, social learning and the collaborative construction of shared knowledge.

The Malabo Declaration places the transformation of agriculture and food systems at the centre of regional and national policy priorities across Africa. Transformative change in the way that food is produced, processed and consumed is seen as not only necessary for addressing the complex challenges of food security and poverty alleviation, but also as a driver of new employment opportunities and economic development. As pointed out within the recent UN Food Systems Summit, essential elements of food system transformations include digital transitions and the empowerment of women and youth. However, there are few empirical examples demonstrating how these agendas come together to affect food system change. Here we focus on an enterprising group of young farmers referred to as Malawi’s new achikumbe elite , who are urban based, educated and engaging in agriculture on a commercial basis. The aim is to characterise this emergent group of agriculturalists and to understand the role that they have within the transformation of Malawi-s agricultural sector. We explore how digital platforms are supporting the emergence of this new category of farmer and positioning young people as agents of change in food systems transformation. Based on interviews and ethnographic research with 32 young farmers between 2018 and 2022 combined with interviews with representatives of service providers and agricultural organisations, we argue that this group is characterised by a higher level of education, self-dependency and use of digital platforms, enabling them to adapt their context to sourcing production resources and engaging in commercial agriculture. We present evidence that digital platforms are supporting the new achikumbe elite (NAE) to engage flexibly with new commercial markets, contracts and access a wider range of training and advice. However, while digital platforms can offer more equitable access to information and market opportunities, they also represent potential avenues for food system transformations that are inequitable. As such, we argue that there is need for digital technologies to mitigate against potential inequalities.

EDITORIAL article Front. Sustain. Food Syst., 25 August 2023Sec. Climate-Smart Food Systems Volume 7 - 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2023.1258372

Achieving climate-smart nutrition security in sub-Saharan Africa is an urgent challenge due to increasing climate risks to agricultural production, population growth and food price volatility This necessitates an integrated evidence base that takes into account not only future food system modelling but stakeholder knowledge and the plausible and desirable transformations that these information streams can provide. Accordingly, we use the integrated Future Estimator for Emissions and Diets (iFEED) to explore scenarios of food system transformation towards nutrition security in Zambia. iFEED integrates climate, crop and land use modelling to explore scenarios of relevance to the Zambian policy landscape, as informed by stakeholders. Four scenarios were defined by stakeholders, based on the extent of market connectivity and technological development, and the level of climate risk. Analysis of cross-scenario implications shows that diversification of agricultural production away from maize and towards more nutrient-dense foods is necessary to achieve nutrition security by mid-century, and that agricultural areas must expand unless yield improvements are faster than seen historically. These transformative changes could result in increased greenhouse gas emissions, which may be a necessary trade-off given the need to ensure nutrition security. We also present results from further analysis that shows how crop diversification and irrigation – both identified as key policy topic areas for Zambia – can contribute to building resilience in the face of increasing climate extremes. Results show that irrigation can help to reduce the interannual variability of food production by mid-century – and hence improve nutrition security in an increasingly volatile future climate. Crop diversification also helps to build resilience through crop risk-spreading, and also increases average production. Whilst these transformations are challenging to achieve, the alternative for a nutrition-secure future is to rely increasingly on imports, which would be economically and politically challenging given the large import increases required.

IntroductionFrom 2018 to 2022, the Koronivia Joint Working Group on Agriculture (KJWA) was the key forum for debating global agricultural change and integrating agricultural transformation priorities into the mechanisms of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). As a forerunner to the landmark decision at COP27 to initiate the Sharm El-Sheik Joint Work on Implementation of Climate Action on Agriculture and Food Security, it provided an opportunity to further the (as yet underdeveloped) discourse around social transformation and just transformation in agriculture. At the conclusion of this 4 year process, we ask: to what extent and in what ways has a just agricultural transformation been envisioned within the Koronivia Joint Working Group on Agriculture and what are the implications for the Sharm El-Sheik Joint Work on Implementation? MethodsThe paper presents a textual analysis of 155 written submissions, workshops, and concluding statements from across the full programme of KJWA workshops, meetings, and consultations. ResultsWe find that references to just transformations in agriculture within KJWA are largely implicit, but not absent. We argue that justice has been most obvious and evident when it comes to discussion about who is (and where are) the most vulnerable to climate change and variability, and how access to climate smart technologies and information is distributed. Less evident have been discussions about just representation in the governance and visioning of agricultural transformation, and there have been few explicit appeals to address the historical injustices that have shaped agricultural and rural livelihoods in the Global South. DiscussionWe argue that following its conclusion, there is a danger that the outcomes of KJWA become reduced to a focus on the scaling up of a techno-centric vision of agricultural transformation. To counter this, there is need for ongoing dialogue to develop a shared and more complete understanding of justice that should be central to how agricultural transformation is integrated into the UNFCCC. We highlight some recommendations of how a justice agenda could be taken forward under the Sharm El-Sheik Joint Work on Implementation.

Climate change will put millions more people in Africa at risk of food and nutrition insecurity by 2050. Integrated assessments of food systems tend to be limited by either heavy reliance on models or a lack of information on food and nutrition security. Accordingly, we developed a novel integrated assessment framework that combines models with in-country knowledge and expert academic judgement to explore climate-smart and nutrition-secure food system futures: the integrated Future Estimator for Emissions and Diets (iFEED). Here, we describe iFEED and present its application in Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. The iFEED process begins with a participatory scenario workshop. In-country stakeholders identify two key drivers of food system change, and from these, four possible scenarios are defined. These scenarios provide the underlying narratives of change to the food system. Integrated modeling of climate change, food production and greenhouse gas emissions is then used to explore nutrition security and climate-smart agriculture outcomes for each scenario. Model results are summarized using calibrated statements—quantitative statements of model outcomes and our confidence in them. These include statements about the way in which different trade futures interact with climate change and domestic production in determining nutrition security at the national level. To understand what the model results mean for food systems, the calibrated statements are expanded upon using implication statements. The implications rely on input from a wide range of academic experts—including agro-ecologists and social scientists. A series of workshops are used to incorporate in-country expertise, identifying any gaps in knowledge and summarizing information for country-level recommendations. iFEED stakeholder champions help throughout by providing in-country expertise and disseminating knowledge to policy makers. iFEED has numerous novel aspects that can be used and developed in future work. It provides information to support evidence-based decisions for a climate-smart and nutrition-secure future. In particular, iFEED: (i) employs novel and inclusive reporting of model results and associated in-country food system activities, with comprehensive reporting of uncertainty; (ii) includes climate change mitigation alongside adaptation measures; and (iii) quantifies future population-level nutrition security, as opposed to simply assessing future production and food security implications.

Insect pests are a major challenge to smallholder crop production in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where access to synthetic pesticides, which are linked to environmental and health risks, is often limited. Biological control interventions could offer a sustainable solution, yet an understanding of their effectiveness is lacking. We used a meta-analysis approach to investigate the effectiveness of commonly used biocontrol interventions and botanical pesticides on pest abundance (PA), crop damage (CD), crop yield (Y) and natural enemy abundance (NEA) when compared with controls with no biocontrol and with synthetic pesticides. We also evaluated whether the magnitude of biocontrol effectiveness was affected by type of biocontrol intervention, crop type, pest taxon, farm type and landscape configuration. Overall, from 99 studies on 31 crops, we found that compared to no biocontrol, biocontrol interventions reduced PA by 63%, CD by over 50% and increased Y by over 60%. Compared to synthetic pesticides, biocontrol resulted in comparable PA and Y, while NEA was 43% greater. Our results also highlighted that the potential for biocontrol to be modulated by landscape configuration is a critical knowledge gap in SSA. We show that biocontrol represents an effective tool for smallholder farmers, which can maintain yields without associated negative pesticide effects. Furthermore, the evidence presented here advocates strongly for including biocontrol practices in national and regional agricultural policies.

The concept of, and case for, Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) has been defined since at least 2010, when the FAO published its report outlining the concept and the ways in which policy, practice and finance might orient toward CSA objectives (FAO, 2010). The FAO website at the time of writing gives the three main objectives of CSA as “sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; adapting and building resilience to climate change; and reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions, where possible.”1 Subsequently, research and practice have focussed on identifying how climate-smart a specific strategy or practice is (Campbell, 2017; Lipper and Zilberman, 2018)—and thus methodologies for measurement and assessment of CSA have become important (see e.g., Thornton et al., 2018). The feasibility of CSA interventions at scale, beyond local successful cases, has also become an important topic (Aggarwal et al., 2018). Promoters of CSA such as the FAO and CGIAR ultimately seek reliable and transparent methods for scaling up, prioritization, and monitoring of CSA interventions. Such assessments depend on underpinning research. Contributions to the Climate Smart Food Systems (CSFS) Section of Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems (hereafter “Frontiers in CSFS”) have provided some of the underpinning research for CSA. As laid out in the journal scope,2 submissions should include some assessment of each of the three pillars of CSFS–adaptation, mitigation and increasing productivity (the latter is sometimes conceptualized more broadly as food security). Contributions have ranged from studies with a clear focus on one or two pillars, with a third being treated relatively lightly (see e.g., Jennings et al., 2020) to submissions that focus squarely on all three pillars (e.g., Arenas-Calle et al., 2019). Soon after its inception, Whitfield et al. (2018) set out six research priorities for the Frontiers in CSFS: (i) What is climate smartness and how do we measure it?; (ii) What are the social and economic impacts of climate smart agriculture? (iii) What trade-offs emerge from climate-smart practices, and at what levels do we consider trade-offs to be safe and just?; (iv) How do theory-based climate-smart actions differ across spatial scale?; what are the theoretical and practical feasibility and consequences of scaling up actions within and across systems?; (v) Which climate-smart

Droughts and changing rainfall patterns due to natural climate variability and climate change, threaten the livelihoods of Malawi's smallholder farmers, who constitute 80% of the population. Provision of seasonal climate forecasts (SCFs) is one means to potentially increase the resilience of rainfed farming to drought by informing farmers in their agricultural decisions. Local knowledge can play an important role in improving the value of SCFs, by making the forecast better-suited to the local environment and decision-making. This study explores whether the contextual relevance of the information provided in SCFs can be improved through the integration of farmers' local knowledge in three districts in central and southern Malawi. A forecast threshold model is established that uses meteorological indicators before the rainy season as predictors of dry conditions during that season. Local knowledge informs our selection of the meteorological indicators as potential predictors. Verification of forecasts made with this model shows that meteorological indicators based on local knowledge have a predictive value for forecasting dry conditions in the rainy season. The forecast skill differs per location, with increased skill in the Southern Highlands climate zone. In addition, the local knowledge indicators show increased predictive value in forecasting locally relevant dry conditions, in comparison to the currently-used El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) indicators. We argue that the inclusion of local knowledge in the current drought information system of Malawi may improve the SCFs for farmers. We show that it is possible to capture local knowledge using observed station and climate reanalysis data. Our approach could benefit National Meteorological and Hydrological Services in the development of relevant climate services and support drought-risk reduction by humanitarian actors.

Irrigation strategies are keys to fostering sustainable and climate-resilient rice production by increasing efficiency, building resilience and reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. These strategies are aligned with the Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) principles, which aim to maximize productivity whilst adapting to and mitigating climate change. Achieve such mitigation, adaptation, and productivity goals- to the extent possible- is described as climate smartness. Measuring climate smartness is challenging, with recent progress focusing on the use of agronomic indicators in a limited range of contexts. One way to broaden the ability to measure climate-smartness is to use modeling tools, expanding the scope of climate smartness assessments. Accordingly, and as a proof-of-concept, this study uses modeling tools with CSA indicators (i.e., Greenhouse Intensity and Water Productivity) to quantify the climate-smartness of irrigation management in rice and to assess sensitivity to climate. We focus on a field experiment that assessed four irrigation strategies in tropical conditions, Continuous Flooding (CF), Intermittent Irrigation (II), Intermittent Irrigation until Flowering (IIF), and Continuous soil saturation (CSS). The DNDC model was used to simulate rice yields, GHG emissions and water inputs. We used model outputs to calculate a previously developed Climate-Smartness Index (CSI) based on water productivity and greenhouse gas intensity, which score on a scale between−1 (lack of climate-smartness) to 1 (high climate smartness) the climate-smartness of irrigation strategies. The CSS exhibited the highest simulation-based CSI, and CF showed the lowest. A sensitivity analysis served to explore the impacts of climate on CSI. While higher temperatures reduced CSI, rainfall mostly showed no signal. The climate smartness decreasing in warmer temperatures was associated with increased GHG emissions and, to some extent, a reduction in Water Productivity (WP). Overall, CSI varied with the climate-management interaction, demonstrating that climate variability can influence the performance of CSA practices. We conclude that combining models with climate-smart indicators can broaden the CSA-based evidence and provide reproducible research findings. The methodological approach used in this study can be useful to fill gaps in observational evidence of climate-smartness and project the impact of future climates in regions where calibrated crop models perform well.

Agricultural productivity can be increased sustainably in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) by reducing crop losses due to insect pest damage. As an alternative to environmentally-damaging chemical pesticides, biological control interventions and botanical pesticides show potential to achieve both high yields and profits. However, synthesized information of their performance and understanding of their adoption among smallholder farmers is limited. Here, 173 studies of biological control interventions and botanical pesticides of insect pests for 35 crops from 20 sub-Saharan countries from 2005 to 2021 were systematically reviewed. Drawing on published datasets, we found that cereals, particularly maize, were the most studied crop (59%). Research on botanical pesticides constituted 32% of the studies, followed by augmentation/introduction biocontrol (29%), and push-pull (21%). Studies evaluating the technical performance of biocontrol interventions dominated (73%), with a regional clustering of push-pull studies in Kenya. Few studies investigated each intervention on each crop type, across different farming contexts and scales, highlighting an urgent need for landscape-scale studies to elucidate land-use impacts on biocontrol effectiveness. Limited evidence also exists on the synergistic effects of biocontrol on multiple ecosystem services and on non-target/beneficial organisms. We found an absence of interdisciplinary studies that addressed the wider indirect benefits of not using chemical pesticides, the social-economic outcomes, and barriers to adoption by farmers, which we argue are necessary to identify pathways to greater adoption and to support policy advocacy of biocontrol interventions in SSA.