1) PICSA is an approach developed by the University of Reading to provide participatory integrated climate services for agriculture. It was implemented in villages in Mali and Senegal. 2) Through a series of meetings with farmers, PICSA analyzed historical climate data, seasonal forecasts, crop and livestock options, and helped farmers develop plans. 3) Evaluations found farmers found PICSA very useful. It led to adoption of new practices and reached many more farmers through farmer-to-farmer extension. Key lessons included the value of participatory planning and decision making support using climate information.

1. Participatory integrated climate services for agriculture (PICSA):
Assessment of the use by farmers to manage climate risk in Mali and Senegal
WASCAL Science Symposium
ACCRA, Ghana; 19-21 June 2018
Dayamba S. Djibril, Ky-Dembele Catherine, Bayala Jules, Dorward Peter, Sanogo Diaminatou, Diop Lamine, Traoré
Issa, Diakité Adama, Graham Clarkson, Andree Nenkam, Ouedraogo Mathieu, Zougmore Robert

2. Presentation outline
Introduction / Context
Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA)
Implementation of PICSA in Senegal and Mali
Results and discussions
Lessons learnt, constraints and perspectives

3. Introduction / Context
Challenges of the livelihood-agric
systems (including climate-related ones)
Climate-Smart Agriculture
(CSA): the pillars
Taking CSA to scale: required
evidences - approaches
The CCAFS CSV-AR4D approach:
components – CIS and farmers’
knowledge are key

4. CIS – seasonal forecasts – important in planning
livelihoods/productions activities
Issue of:
relevance at local
scales
understanding by
extension staffs /
farmers
What advisories, etc.

5. CIS – Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA)
developed and tested by the University of Reading

6. 1. Providing and considering climate and
weather information with farmers - including
historical records and forecasts
2. The joint analysis of information on
crops, livestock and other livelihood
options and their risks, by field staff and
farmers
3. Participatory tools to enable farmers to
use this information in planning and
decision making for their individual
circumstances
PICSA: Key components

7. Long Before
the Season
Historical
Climate Data
sans sequence seches (10 jours dans 21)
gfedcb
Premiere date pour le semi
gfedcb
2010
2000
1990
1980
1970
1960
1950
1940
1930
13
Jul
28 Jun
13
Jun
29
May
14 May
29 Apr
During the
Season
Short-term
Forecasts & Warnings
Just Before
the Season
Seasonal
Forecast & Revise
Plans
Participatory Planning
Shortly After
the Season
Review weather,
production, forecasts &
process
Crop + Livestock + Other
livelihood Options
PICSA: Season-wide approach

8. PICSA steps and
phases

9. Long before the season,
Calculate simple probabilities/risks
of occurrence of climate events
(given amount of rainfall, start and
end dates of the rainy season, etc.)
which are discussed with farmers in
combination with various livelihood
options
Discussion on historical records - improve
understanding of seasonal forecasts
information: it puts locally relevant
figures on qualitative words (below
normal, normal, above normal, etc.)
PICSA: Season-wide approach

10. Overview of the PICSA approach
Chosing options based
on the previous step
Adapt
plans
Adapt
plans
MONITORING AND EVALUATION
Ex: 1/5 - once every
five years
Choice:
Number of
options

11. The case studies

12. Mali: villages of
Kouna, Allaye Daga
and Youre in the
commune of Sio in
the Mopti region
Senegal: villages of
Ngouye and Daga-
Birame in the Kaffrine
region: Climate-Smart
village sites
Study sites in Mali and Senegal

13. Rolling out PICSA: a number of meetings with farmers (timing and
venue agreed)
Monitoring:
Perception on the usefulness of PICSA: 5-point Likert scale, i.e.
not useful (1), of little use (2), useful (3), very useful (4) and
extremely useful (5)
Changes in farmers’ decisions that could be attributed to PICSA
Farmer-to-farmer extension: number of fellow farmers with
whom ideas/information were shared
Rolling-out PICSA and data collection

14. Farmers’ perception on the usefulness of the PICSA
approach
After end of season
0,0
10,0
20,0
30,0
40,0
50,0
60,0
70,0
80,0
90,0
100,0
Not
useful
Of little
use
Useful Very
useful
Extremely
useful
Proportionofpeopleassessingthe
usefulnessofPICSA(%)
Mali (b)
N = 45
Women Men
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Not useful Of little
use
Useful Very useful Extremely
useful
Proportionofpeopleassessingthe
usefulnessofPICSA(%)
Senegal (a)
N = 40
Women Men

15. Aspects of PICSA identified as most useful to farmers in the sites in Mali and Senegal

16. Major changes

17. 198
209
156
351
9 11 12 11
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
women Men women Men
Site in Senegal Site in Senegal Site in Mali Site in Mali
Numberoffarmersreachedbyfellowfarmers
Number of farmers reached through farmer to farmer extension
Total number of farmers reached Average number of farmers reached
Farmer-to-farmer extension

18. Lessons
PICSA stimulated farmers to consider and then implement a range of
innovations;
PICSA combines a new way of doing extension / communicating with farmers +
includes climate information as part of it.
Supporting farmers to make their own choices and decisions and giving them the
tools and information to do this
Led to demand from farmers for other services and information associated
with the innovations and to connecting farmers with technical and
financial institutions
potential to improve the relationship between farmers and extension and open opportunities for further interactions
PICSA tools: Most of them easily understandable by farmers but some
draw more attention: historical records graphs on rainfall amount, the
length of the season, the start and end of the season
PICSA can go to much bigger scale in countries (after pilots like these) and
needs to be contextualized regarding CSA and other options, and climate
information, for different environments
Lessons learnt, challenges and perspectives

19. Lessons learnt, challenges and perspectives
Challenges for the approach
Time required for the training and follow up;
(might refrain development organizations to support – needed anyway)
High turnover of the personnel both for the government extension and
NGO staffs;
Extension staffs (key for the approach) is being downsized in most places;
Lack of historical climate records due to the poor coverage of most
Sahelian countries in term of climate information recording devices /
automatic weather stations
opportunities with Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS) or other initiatives
Methodological issue to assess the impact of the use of CI at community
and landscape scales

20. Perspectives (for scaling up)
Improve documentation of the effectiveness of the approach to fine-tune
evidences (possibility of quantifying effects, etc. );
Seek effective ways to put farmer-to-farmer extension into play to reach
big number (go to scale) effectively and efficiently;
Synthesis and guidelines that can be used by trainers to take this beyond
the sites (work being done)
Mainstream the findings and knowledge generated into national and
regional programs/projects and in policies
Lessons learnt, challenges and perspectives

22. Thank you for your attention