Making agriculture climate
smart at scale
Philip Thornton
CCAFS Southeast Asia-South Asia CSA workshop
Hanoi, 21 November 2017

Outline
• The food security challenge
• Foresight – how systems are changing
• Targeting interventions for adaptation – who, what,
where
• Scaling up - CSA challenges
• Enabling the changes needed

http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Multimedia/On-the-record/Sustainable-Agriculture-Feeding-the-World.aspx

Feeding 9.6 billion
people by 2050?
• Different social and
environmental costs
in different regions
• More food trade
• Increases in prices
• Limited land expansion, mostly via intensification
• We will not meet key environmental goals if current trends
continue (reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing
deforestation, managing water)

Steffen et al. Science (2015); updated from Rockstrom et al. (2009)
Current status of key planetary boundaries … but
what of the future?

Need for climate-smart agriculture:
Asia a hotspot
GHG emissions
from agriculture
Food intensity
Carlson et al. Nov 2016

0.0
2.0
4.0
6.0
8.0
10.0
12.0
14.0
16.0
1970 1990 2010 2030 2050
Fooddemand(kcal/yearx1015)
Balancing food supply and demand
Reducing
the
Demand
Filling the
Production
Gap
Sustaining
productive
capacity
Keating et al. (2014)

Systems change: Plot sizes in Asia
Very small < 0.5 ha small 0.5-2 ha medium 2-100 ha large > 100 ha
Fritz et al. (2015), GCB

Transforming agriculture: which development pathways?
Keating et al. (2013)

Transforming agriculture: which development pathways?
Keating et al. (2013)
• Intensification and land
consolidation? Farming in
2030: more inequality in farm
incomes, sizes, technologies,
market linkages
• 30% of most food commodities
in SSA & Asia produced on
farms ≤2 ha; 75% on farms <20
ha
• 560 million farms today, maybe
750 million by 2030 (most
increases in Africa, Asia). How
to enable the sustainable
intensification needed?
Herrero et al. (2017), Campbell & Thornton (2014)

Prospects for game-changing / disruptive technologies?
Mobile phones in Africa
In 1997: zero
By early 2017:
 960 million mobile
subscriptions
 80 % penetration rate
(Jumia, 2017)

Prospects for game-changing / disruptive technologies?
Mobile phones in Africa
In 1997: zero
By early 2017:
 960 million mobile
subscriptions
 80 % penetration rate
(Jumia, 2017)
Courtesy of Steve Swain, 2017

Prospects for game-changing / disruptive technologies?
Mobile phones in Africa
In 1997: zero
By early 2017:
 960 million mobile
subscriptions
 80 % penetration rate
(Jumia, 2017)

Prospects for game-changing / disruptive technologies?
Mobile phones in Africa
In 1997: zero
By early 2017:
 960 million mobile
subscriptions
 80 % penetration rate
(Jumia, 2017)

Targeting: Some climate-smart options
Asterisks show the strength of evidence relating to potential impacts on productivity, resilience,
mitigation (weak *, moderate **, strong ***)
FAO 2013; Thornton et al. 2017

Some of the climate-smart options available to smallholders in mixed crop-
livestock systems: synergies, trade-offs
Potential impacts: + positive, -negative, +/- = uncertain
Strength of evidence: *** confident, ** likely, * poor
Rosenstock et al. 2016; Thornton et al. 2017

Constraints to the widespread adoption of some climate-smart options
Importance of constraint: ** major, * moderate
Thornton et al. 2017

Targeting interventions
• No silver bullets: “climate smartness” depends on local context
• Triple wins may exist in some situations, but there will often be trade-
offs
• E.g. temporal trade-offs between meeting shorter-term food
production / income objectives and longer-term resilience
objectives
• Constraints to adoption of interventions still need to be addressed
• Some promising options are heavily under-researched: food storage,
food processing
• Evidence base needs to be improved for several other options,
including climate services and insurance
• Are we using appropriate metrics and currencies?

Nutritional diversity matters
Uday et al. (2013)

Herrero et al. (2017)

Nutritional security Resource use and emissions
Agro-ecosystems health Value chains and zoonosis
Risk management Income and employment
Using nutrition as a driver for shaping the supply
response in agriculture
Another dimension to CSA? And a highly effective entry
point for gender issues

Cacho (2015)
Budget
Extension
Road building
Subsidy removal
Crop insurance
…
Which interventions, policies?
What response?
What outputs?
Production
Incomes Self-sufficiency
GHGs
Taking CSA interventions to scale: evaluation

Studies based on value chain and private sector approaches
1 Climate smart value chains (coffee, cocoa) in Ghana, Nicaragua, Peru
2 Sustainable dairy development in Kenya
3 Integrating private businesses in scaling CSA in Kenya
4 Index-based weather insurance in Nigeria
Studies utilising ICT and agro-advisories
5 Climate smart information services in Senegal
6 Agro-climatic advisories and CSA in Colombia
7 Edutainment for scaling out CSA in Kenya “Shamba Shape-Up”
Studies utilising policy engagement
8 Scenario-guided policy formulation in Cambodia
9 Climate Smart Villages in India
10 Mitigation & adaptation planning in Honduras
11 Alternate wetting & drying in rice in Vietnam
Approaches to scaling up: some CCAFS case studies
Westermann et al. (2015)

Strategies Primarily demand-
or supply-led
Mean score, strength of impact
Tensions & constraints Process & learning
Value chains /
private sector
D 1.04 1.58
ICT / agro-
advisory services
S 0.94 1.67
Policy
engagement
D, S 1.46 1.92
Weighted average 1.17 1.73
Eleven CCAFS case studies and three scaling-up strategies evaluated
for different characteristics
Strength of impact: 0 (none) to 3 (large)
Farmers’ objectives
Reach strategy
Context specificity
Cross-level methods
Equity
Barriers
Partners, alliances
Capacity development
Learning
Westermann et al., 2015, 2017

Approaching CSA scaling more systematically
Already in the sunlight
• Success factors / principles for R4D achieving development outcomes
• Applying the lessons learnt for scaling CSA
Still somewhat in the shadow
• What precisely is it that we want to scale out?
→ What are our products (services, approaches, …)
→ What do we want to achieve (impact yes, but other things too?)
• Do we need formalized strategies for communication and stakeholder
engagement?
Still in the dark
• Costs of scaling ?
• Partner profiles for scaling CSA?
• How best to mix strategic work and making the best of opportunities?
Jana Korner (2017)

Countries’ NDC commitments
Richards et al. (2015)

Aggarwal et al. (submitted)
Estimated global crop yield growth rates per year
FAOSTAT data (current) and a meta-analysis of integrated assessment projections

Aggarwal et al. (submitted)
Estimated global crop yield growth rates per year
FAOSTAT data (current) and a meta-analysis of integrated assessment projections
Households in SA & SEA:
• 10% Scraping by (food insecure: >5 food deficit
months per year)
• 15% Stepping up (practice changes in the last 10
years involving some intensification)
• 15% Stepping out (no practice changes, increased
off-farm income)
• 60% Hanging in (none of the above)
CCAFS baseline surveys

1. Harnessing the power of better participatory foresight around:
• Future structure of production: sustainably intensified, market
orientated smallholders and/or the commercial large-scale
sector within a nutrition security framework
• Game-changing innovations, and understanding where
innovation comes from (sectors other than agriculture)
• Power (and limitations) of markets: new value chains, new
products, new business models: what works where
• Institutions, governance and the private sector: how to provide
appropriate incentives for change at multiple levels
Upping our game: enabling change at scale

Upping our game: enabling change at scale
2. Beyond technology:
• Addressing conflicts and tensions as well as convergence:
 values, worldviews, perceptions of experts, policy makers,
farmers (personal sphere)
 knowledge, authority and subjectivities in the political
sphere
• Scaling up adoption (practical sphere) in the light of the
personal (e.g. worldviews) and political (e.g. power structures)
spheres
 New mechanisms for scaling
 Constraints around politics and power?

Upping our game: enabling change at scale
3. Bridging the science-policy divide
• Co-design of processes is key – a critical contributor to co-
ownership
• Engage at multiple levels, and provide mechanisms to link levels
up and down the hierarchy
• Build on what’s already going on, use existing “infrastructure”,
link into opportunities as they arise, e.g. NDCs
• Engagement and translating research outputs into something
useful for decision making needs time, resources, energy
• Ensure there are tangible benefits for everyone involved
• Recognise that decision making in any policy environment is
affected by many things other than research outputs
Lessons from CCAFS projects, 2017

4. Understand and utilise the power of communications
• Burgeoning literature on global change communications: framing,
psychology, values, attitudes, beliefs, political ideologies, …
• Apply new skills in discourse analysis and understanding societal
norms (including gender): how can they be modified or
addressed, behavioural science, marketing science
• Discourses around agriculture, food health & nutrition, climate
change, the environment - are complex and differentiated by
type, location, nature
• Getting the messaging right, backed up by appropriate
communications and engagement
Upping our game: enabling change at scale

p.thornton@cgiar.org