CSA options in mixed crop-livestock systems in sub-Saharan Africa

Philip Thornton, Todd Rosenstock, Christine Lamanna, Pat Bell, Wiebke Förch, Ben

Henderson, Mario HerreroCCAFS-ILRI, ICRAF, Ohio State University, GIZ SADC, OECD,

CSIRO

Outline

• Importance of the mixed systems in SSA

• CSA interventions in the mixed systems

• Adoption constraints and potential uptake

• Towards prioritising investments in CSA

• Conclusion

Mixed crop-livestock systems

The backbone of African agriculture,

providing the great majority of staples for the resource-poor

• 41-86 % of the maize, rice, sorghum, millet

• 90 % of the milk

• 80 % of the meat

Mixed crop-livestock systems: Potential

Two types of mixed systems:

“extensive,” withlower agroecological potential (LGP fewer than 180 days per year)

“intensifying,” withhigher agroecological potential (having an LGP of 180 or more days per year, less than 8 hours’ travel from markets)

0

50

100

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200

250

300

350

1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050

Po

pu

lati

on

(in

de

x 1

99

1=1

00)

Year

WORLD

Northern Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

Latin America and the CaribbeanEastern Asia

Southern Asia

South-Eastern Asia

Western Asia

UN Population Division. 2006 Revision. World Population Prospects.

Sub Saharan Africa

Africa’s mixed crop-livestock systemsCritical for food security now, even more so in the future

UNPD (2017)

Agricultural interventions that address• Adaptation, mitigation and food security (and nutrition?)• Intended to guide changes in agricultural systems to achieve

the “triple win” where this is feasible

What are CSA practices?• Potentially many, but evidence limited• “Operationalization” of CSA key

A framework for addressing the food security challenge: Climate Smart Agriculture

Domain Size

AdoptionPotential

ProductionImpact

MitigationPotential

Feasibility

Domain Size

AdoptionPotential

ProductionImpact

MitigationPotential

Feasibility

1 Diet intensification: stoverdigestibility improvement

2 Diet intensification: grain supplementation

01

23

Thornton & Herrero (2014)

CSA interventions will often involve trade-offsTwo ways of intensifying ruminant diets in the mixed systems of SSA

A qualitative analysis of different options

• We used data from the soon-to-published Compendium of CSA, a global survey of CSA practices and best estimates of their effects on productivity, resilience and mitigation (Rosenstock et al., ICRAF)

• Where data were missing, a survey of topic experts to estimate impacts and evaluate the adoption constraints associated with each option

• A continental-scale semi-quantitative estimation of the suitability of each option geographically (the domain) and the rural population in each domain

List of climate-smart options considered

Asterisks show the strength of evidence relating to potential impacts on productivity, resilience, mitigation (weak *, moderate **, strong ***)

Thornton et al. 2017

Some of the climate-smart options available to smallholders in mixed crop-livestock systems in SSA

Potential impacts: + positive, -negative, +/- = uncertainStrength of evidence: *** confident, ** likely, * poor

Constraints to the widespread adoption of some climate-smart options

Importance of constraint: ** major, * moderate

Thornton et al. 2017

Agricultural system domains for some climate-smart options in SSA

Thornton et al. 2017

Relative suitability: 0, not suitable; 1 (low), 5% potential adoption; 2 (medium), 15% potential adoption; 3 (high), 30% potential adoptionEM, extensive mixed systems; IM, intensifying mixed systems

Main conclusions of the analysis

• There are no silver bullets: climate smartness in the mixed systems depends on local context

• One key message from this analysis is that broad-brush targeting of CSA interventions is not appropriate, from a technical standpoint, given that the impacts are often not clear or are highly context specific.

• Triple wins may exist in some situations, but there may often be trade-offs• E.g. temporal trade-offs between meeting shorter-

term food production / income objectives and longer-term resilience objectives

Main conclusions of the analysis

• Constraints to adoption of interventions in SSA still need to be addressed

• Some promising options are heavily under-researched: food storage, food processing

• Evidence base needs to be improved for several other options, including climate services and insurance

Thank you

For more information:

p.thornton@cgiar.org