The frequency and severity of uncertain rainfall and climate extremes are projected to increase across many parts of the world. Access to rainfall forecasting information becomes an essential and critical resource that smallholder farmers should use to take advantage of good rains and avoid its adverse effects. In many smallholder farming communities, the reliability and accuracy of the scientific information is questionable and therefore not adequately used to make informed farming decisions. Amidst this dilemma, smallholder farmers rely heavily on indigenous knowledge to comprehend rainfall patterns in their day-to-day and seasonal farming calendar. A study carried out among smallholder farmers in the Mt. Elgon region indicated that a large proportion of farmers used a wide range of indigenous indicators to predict rainfall patterns. The indicators used by farmers were largely celestial objects and/or animal/plant behaviour to forecast onset and cessation of rains. While this is true, the type of indicators used to forecast the rainfall patterns were site specific, made prediction over a short temporal scale (days to a few weeks) and did not provide adequate information on rainfall amount, intensity and distribution which are key parameters for making evidence-based farming decisions
In this paper the authors provide climate smart agriculture (CSA) planners and implementers at all levels with a generic framework for evaluating and prioritising potential interventions. This entails an iterative process of mapping out recommendation domains, assessing adoption potential and estimating...
Conventional approaches to agricultural extension based on top–down technology transfer and information dissemination models are inadequate to help smallholder farmers tackle increasingly complex agroclimatic adversities. Innovative service delivery alternatives, such as field schools, exist but are mostly implemented in isolationistic...
The purpose of this study is to develop a robust, rigorous and replicable methodology that is flexible to data limitations and spatially prioritizes the vulnerability of agriculture and rural livelihoods to climate change. The methodology was applied in Vietnam, Uganda...
The purpose of this paper is to map some elements that can contribute to an IFAD strategy to stimulate and support pro-poor innovations. It is an initial or exploratory document that hopefully will add to an ongoing and necessary debate,...
This paper proposes the adoption of small-scale friendly postharvest techniques in the form of small-scale postharvest practices (SSPPs). To justify this proposal, the impact of SSPPs adoption on self-reported losses were investigated in Rivers State Nigeria. The factors influencing plantain...