7 pages., via online journal., Climate services entail providing timely and tailored climate information to
end-users in order to facilitate and improve decision-making processes.
Climate services are instrumental in socio-economic development and
benefit substantially from interdisciplinary collaborations, particularly
when including Early Career Researchers (ECRs). This commentary
critically discusses deliberations from an interdisciplinary workshop
involving ECRs from the United Kingdom and South Africa in 2017, to
discuss issues in climate adaptation and climate services development in
water resources, food security and agriculture. Outcomes from the
discussions revolved around key issues somewhat marginalized within
the broader climate service discourse. This commentary discusses what
constitutes “effective” communication, framings (user framings, mental
models, narratives, co-production) and ethical dimensions in developing
climate services that can best serve end-users. It also reflects on how
ECRs can help tackle these important thematic areas and advance the
discourse on climate services.
5 pages, The scientific advice needed to inform national and regional policies addressing the key challenges we face today must take account of disparate requirements. The complex nature of the problems addressed in this article—which encompass food and nutrition security, global health and climate change—and the multitude of their interconnections, calls for an integrated and multi-disciplinary approach that spans aspects related to the use of natural resources; the adoption of new technologies all the way to issues related to food demand and human behaviour. The scale is also important: national policies need to respond to a set of heterogeneous local conditions and requirements and should be particularly mindful of the effect on vulnerable groups of the population. At the same time, the global interconnectedness of food systems and shared natural resources also necessitates coordinated action at regional and global levels. The InterAcademy Partnership sought to develop an innovative model for integrating and analysing multidisciplinary scientific evidence to inform governments and regional policy bodies for policymaking on food and nutrition security. This approach relies on IAP’s membership of over 130 science academies grouped in four regional networks for Africa, America, Asia and Europe. Our article reviews the model, in particular with regards to interdisciplinarity, exploring examples relating to yield gap, plant breeding and food processing, and reflects on lessons learned during the project discussions and when engaging with policy-makers and other stakeholders. We propose that the framework developed can be applied to integrated assessment of other societal challenges where the scientific community can play a significant role in informing policy choices.
21 pages, Climate change continues to impact the livelihoods of smallholder farmers due to low adaptive capacity. In South Africa, the challenge is exacerbated by water scarcity and shortened crop-growing seasons. Climate-smart irrigation innovative technologies (CSIT) enhance smallholder farmers’ resilience to climate change. However, there is still a limited level of effective adoption and usage of these technologies in smallholder communities. This study investigated the barriers affecting the adoption of CSIT in rural areas of the Vhembe and Capricorn districts in Limpopo Province, South Africa. We explored the farmers’ socioeconomic factors extracted from farmers’ perceptions of CSIT-specific attributes. A multi-stage randomized sampling technique was used to select 100 smallholder farmers (SHF). Data analyzed by descriptive statistics such as percentages and frequency distribution are presented in graphs and tables. According to the findings, insufficient communication channels, a lack of financial availability, unstable land tenure systems, and insufficient training are the main obstacles to implementing CSIT. There is a need for policy and decision-makers to improve the communication channels for disseminating agro-meteorological information to the intended beneficiaries.
https://link-springer-com.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/content/pdf/10.1007/s10708-019-10024-2.pdf, 15 pages, Enhancing sustainable food security requires agricultural production systems to change in the direction of higher productivity and to mitigate lower output variability in the face of climate extreme related hazards such as land degradation. Adoption of resilient food production system capable of withstanding disruptive events is therefore needed to stabilize farmers' productivity. Consequently, participation in collective actions has been touted as an effective approach to enhance cooperation among individuals within a social system and to advance adoption of climate-smart farming techniques (conservation agriculture). This study investigated this perspective using heterogeneous treatment effects estimation to analyze the data collected from 350 smallholder farmers selected randomly from the South–West Nigeria. The average treatment effects on the treated estimate revealed that participation in collective actions had adoption-increasing effect for each unit variation in propensity score rank, although, negative selection effect was suspected. Similarly, information acquisition, access to extension service and frequency of visit by extension workers are significant features that predict adoption in the study area. However, rosenbaum sensitivity analysis test revealed that the increasing effect of participation in collective actions on conservation agriculture adoption is insensitive to unobserved bias that may double or triple the odds of exposure to treatment. Hence, the average treatment effect on the treated estimate is a pure impact of the participation in collective actions. The study concluded that farmers with high propensity to participate in collective action have high likelihood to adopt climate-resilient farming practices compared to the counterparts with a lower propensity of participation in collective action.
7 pages, Climate change is considered primarily as a human-created phenomenon that is changing the way humans live. Nowhere are the impacts of climate change more evident than in the food ecosphere. Climate-induced changes in temperature, precipitation, and rain patterns, as well as extreme weather events have already started impacting the yield, quality, and safety of food. Food safety and the availability of food is a fundamental aspect of ensuring food security and an adequate standard of living. With climate change, there have been increasing instances of observed changes in the safety of food, particularly from a microbiological standpoint, as well as its quality and yield. Thus, there is an urgent need for the implementation of advanced methods to predict the food safety implications of climate change (i.e., future food safety issues) from a holistic perspective (overall food system). Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other such advanced technologies have, over the years, permeated many facets of the food chain, spanning both farm- (or ocean-) to-fork production, and food quality and safety testing and prediction. As a result, these are perfectly positioned to develop novel models to predict future climate change-induced food safety risks. This article provides a roundup of the latest research on the use of AI in the food industry, climate change and its impact on the food industry, as well as the social, ethical, and legal limitations of the same. Particularly, this perspective review stresses the importance of a holistic approach to food safety and quality prediction from a microbiological standpoint, encompassing diverse data streams to help stakeholders make the most informed decisions.
13 pages, via Online journal, Natural resource advisors operate at a natural resource-climate nexus that presents opportunity for utilization of regionally relevant climate science and tools to support climate smart decision making among land managers. This opportunity, however, may be underutilized. In thousands of county offices across the country, USDA field staff with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Farm Service Agency (FSA) interface with farmers on a daily basis to provide conservation technical assistance, farm loans, and disaster recovery assistance. In this study, we conducted a survey of NRCS field staff (n = 1,893) and a similar survey of FSA field staff (n = 4,621) to determine the following: (1) how concerned USDA field staff are with both general and specific climate and weather threats and their effect on agriculture and forestry, (2) what available climate and weather resources staff are currently using, (3) how these factors relate to USDA field staff's confidence and interest in playing the role of climate advisor, and (4) the differences that exist between NRCS and FSA field staff related to these research questions. We found that many USDA field staff are concerned about climate change in general and about several specific impacts, but fewer are confident in their ability to support land managers in addressing these impacts. Additionally, increased concern about climate threats was related to higher levels of climate and weather resource use and an increased desire to play the role of climate advisor, but was also related to lower levels of self-reported ability to play that role. These findings can be used to inform appropriate application of professional development opportunities and creation of tools and resources to improve professional uses of weather and climate information.
31 pages, Imaginaries of empty, verdant lands have long motivated agricultural frontier expansion. Today, climate change, food insecurity, and economic promise are invigorating new agricultural frontiers across the circumpolar north. In this article, I draw on extensive archival and ethnographic evidence to analyze mid-twentieth-century and recent twenty-first-century narratives of agricultural development in the Northwest Territories, Canada. I argue that the early frontier imaginary is relatively intact in its present lifecycle. It is not simply climactic forces that are driving an emergent northern agricultural frontier, but rather the more diffuse and structural forces of capitalism, governmental power, settler colonialism, and resistance to those forces. I also show how social, political, and infrastructural limits continue to impede agricultural development in the Northwest Territories and discuss how smallholder farmers and Indigenous communities differently situate agricultural production within their local food systems. This paper contributes to critical debates in frontiers and northern agriculture literature by foregrounding the contested space between the state-driven and dominant public narratives underpinning frontier imaginaries, and the social, cultural, and material realities that constrain them on a Northwest Territories agricultural frontier.
3 pages, via online journal, The fast-moving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic engulfed the world within four months from December to March of 2020, with long-lasting impacts on social, economic, political, educational, and scientific programs. It exacerbated risks of food and nutritional insecurity for a large segment of society, and threats of disruption in the food supply chain may be aggravated by climate change, soil degradation, and the flood/drought syndrome. Ensuring adequate access to nutritious food is a daunting challenge even in developed/scientifically advanced countries, and is a sheer tragedy in poor nations.
8 pages, In the face of rapidly advancing climate change, biodiversity loss, and water scarcity, it is clear that global agriculture must swiftly and decisively shift toward sustainability. Fortunately, farmers and researchers have developed a thoroughly studied pathway to this transition: agroecological farming systems that mimic natural ecosystems, creating tightly coupled cycles of energy, water, and nutrients. A critical and underappreciated feature of agroecological systems is that they replace fossil fuel- and chemical -intensive management with knowledge-intensive management. Hence, the greatest sustainability challenge for agriculture may well be that of replacing non-renewable resources with ecologically-skilled people, and doing so in ways that create and support desirable rural livelihoods. Yet over the past century, US agriculture has been trending in the opposite direction, rapidly replacing knowledgeable people with non-renewable resources and eroding rural economies in the process. Below, we suggest how US policy could pivot to enable and support the ecologically skilled workforce needed to achieve food security in the face of climate change.
