Soil health is food wealth

As the climate warms, extreme weather of droughts, floods and high temperatures are affecting agriculture, threatening food security in Africa. Smallholder farmers are barely able to put food on the table as they work on exhausted soils that only produce poor crop yields, if anything. Erratic and excessive rainfall patterns have also contributed to reduced …

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Improving soil health through CSA: Webinar recap, recording and slides

Efforts to meet the growing demand for food across sub-Saharan Africa has led to unsustainable land management practices, causing soil degradation and weakening agricultural systems. Soil health is key to building climate resilience and can be improved through a range of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices. Held virtually on 23 February 2021, GCRF-AFRICAP’s latest research seminar, …

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How to rethink agricultural innovation: Redefining success

Agricultural innovation packages, like conservation agriculture, are usually developed by research communities and disseminated for farmers to use. Through examples from her research with CIMMYT and Malawian farmers, Thirze Hermans explains why we need to rethink how we measure success, moving beyond counting adoption to consider local context.

How conservation agriculture helps African farmers combat climate change

By Professor Andy Dougill (@AndyDougill), Professor of Environmental Sustainability and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Environment, University of Leeds Can conservation agriculture (CA) help farmers in sub-Saharan Africa build resilience to the problem of climate change? Professor Andy Dougill believes it is possible, but that more co­ordinated planning and coherent policy support across sectors …

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