Climate change will likely have significant impacts on the agricultural sector in Colombia, which accounts for over one-tenth of the country’s GDP and employs over one-fifth of its population. Analyses indicate that by 2050, there will likely be significant temperature rises, more erratic precipitation, and higher pest and disease prevalence. To address the extensive socioeconomic implications of these effects, the government must prioritize adaptation, investing in regionally-based assessments; research and development; and technology transfer to and training for farmers.

JRC, CCAFS jointly sponsored the workshop on June 13-14, 2012, at the JRC in Ispra, Italy, to identify avenues for exploiting remote sensing information to improving crop forecasting in smallholder farming environments. The workshop’s objectives were:

In recent years governments and donor agencies have devoted considerable resources to efforts to improve the management of communal grazing lands. Range and livestock projects have been designed to address such familiar pastoral problems as endemic overgrazing of rangelands, often leading to permanent degradation of vegetation, soils, and water resources, and reduced livestock productivity, adversely affecting the welfare of rural people.

Goat producers in Inhassoro follow traditional management practices that lead to low supply of low quality goats. This has negative impacts on profitability, and on market access. Traders who buy in the Inhassoro locality buy only small volumes, and buyers from external markets are unaware of potential market supply in Inhassoro. This interaction of production constraints and limited information flows in the value chain was addressed using a system dynamics model for various commercialization scenarios.

CGIAR and partner scientists met in Cancun, Mexico, with the purpose to advance science on climate change adaptation and mitigation, according to the scope of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food security (CCAFS).
The objectives of the workshop were to (1) understand ongoing research as a foundation for future collaboration and advances, and (2) explore research that shows the highest promise for scientific breakthroughs.

A classification of the major ruminant livestock production systems in West Africa is proposed. The proposed typology has two major classes of systems-sole livestock and crop-livestock. The sole livestock class has two systems (rangeland-based and landless) and the crop-livestock class has three sub-classes (annual crop-livestock, tree-crop-livestock and irrigated/flooded cropland-livestock). Within the 3 crop-livestock subclasses 13 systems defined by the dominant crops are identified.

A myriad of agricultural and livestock production systems co-exist in the developing countries. Agricultural research for development should therefore aim at delivering strategies that are well targeted to the heterogeneous landscapes and diverse biophysical and socioeconomic contexts the agricultural production system is operating in. To that end, in the recent past several approaches to spatially delineate landscapes with broadly similar production strategies, constraints and investment opportunities, have been applied. The mapped Seré and

The purpose of this brief is to share insights on agriculture and NAPs with national-level decision makers in developing countries and Least Developed Countries (LDCs), multilateral agencies, UNFCCC negotiators and donors. This brief explores how countries are overcoming the biggest challenges in developing NAPs, outlines examples of successful cross-sector adaptation planning, explores influence and leverage necessary for successful NAP processes, and offers specific recommendations.

We assessed land use/ land cover changes from remotely sensed satellite imagery and compared this with households perceptions on availability/use of livestock feed resources and feed deficit management strategies since the 1973 in three districts representing the pastoral, agro-pastoral and mixed crop-livestock eco-environments of Ethiopia.

National governments across East Africa are in the process of formulating and implementing adaptation and mitigation strategies to assist farmers cope with climate change. These include formulating actions, frameworks and programs to address climate change and embedding these within the long-term national development plans.