As climate change takes hold, increasingly erratic weather and climate shifts threaten already tenuous agricultural livelihoods and food security in the developing world. Agricultural insurance is an important tool which can help address this risk, by providing indemnity payments to farmers. Join the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA) in this one-day conference that will bring together the climate change, agriculture and insurance communities to highlight the value of index-based insurance, draw lessons and identify key challenges for effective scaling up of index-based insurance as a climate change adaptation action. Read more >>
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In this guest post, Michael Hailu, Director of the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) outlines how ICTs can entice young people into agricultural professions and modernize the sector.
When I first met Gerald Otim and Opio David at CTA’s first agricultural hackathon in 2013, they had their heads locked together, preparing the pitch for the app they had been working on to improve access to finance for smallholder farmers in Uganda.
Now, they work full-time for their start-up company that not only won them the title as Eastern Africa’s AgriHack Champions, but also a place on a follow-up business incubation programme and access to financial partnerships with online crowdfunding organisations such as Kiva. Continue reading →
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At Farming First we are excited to announce the launch of the Guide to UNFCCC Discussions on Agriculture.
Launched today, exactly two months before COP19 takes place in November, the guide aims to provide key stakeholders with a one-stop source of information on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change discussions. Offering a series of videos, infographics, quotes and key facts and figures on the relationship between agriculture and climate change, it is hoped the guide will enable people to participate in discussions.
Produced in partnership with the CGIAR program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA), the guide underlines the need for a Work Program on Agriculture under the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA). This would ensure that agriculture is better incorporated into the various convention mechanisms at future COPs.
Agriculture will be crucial to finding solutions to the challenges of climate change, since adaptation is critical to agriculture and the industry also offers huge potential in mitigation. The Guide provides farmers, industry leaders and policy makers with direct access to helpful tools and explains how these resources can be used to support the role of agriculture at climate change discussions.
One of the videos included in the toolkit is a Farming First interview with Dyborn Chibonga, Chief Executive Officer of the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi (NASFAM), who explains the impact of climate change for farmers around the world:
“Climate change effects our production as farmers and farmers of course are going to need to learn two things: firstly, to adapt to a changing climate with which we need the help of researchers and governments and secondly, we need to learn how to prevent the greenhouse gas emissions.
Farmer education is very important to try and help them understand the variability in the seasons and the need to adopt technologies that can mitigate against climate change.”
It is hoped that resources, such as the above quotes, will provide a valuable resource for everyone interested in following climate change discussions and will enable more people to follow agriculture at UNFCCC discussions in November.
For more information and to explore the toolkit click here
