Contributions

Links to grand challenges

Climate variability and change are major challenges facing agri-food systems, especially in rainfed production areas at the farm scale. This predisposes smallholder farmers to risks associated with household nutritional security and income generation. Efficient use of resources through the adoption of sustainable and resilient agricultural practices, and the inclusion of diverse stress-tolerant crop varieties with short duration and improved nutrients (N) use efficiency will enhance adaptation and contribute to mitigating the effects of climate change. FP3 will be closely linked to FP4 to increase accessibility to locally adapted farmers’ preferred varieties. It will work with the integrating CRPs that includes CCAFS to evaluate the impact of climate change on dryland agroecosystems and WLE to evaluate the interactions between farm-scale cropping systems and larger scale land and water management systems.

Dryland farming risks can be reduced by exploring crop, tree and livestock diversification and intensification options of food, fodder and feed systems through rotations, intra-specific and intercrop diversity, sequential crops and improved short-season dryland cereals and grain legumes. This will be complemented by better management of abiotic and biotic stresses and the safe use of crop protection products for reduced adverse effects on the environment.

Land degradation needs to be addressed by moving to more resilient and resource conserving production systems. With locally adapted crop, tree and livestock solutions, this flagship will contribute to restoring degraded lands and the efficient use of scarce water resources for sustainable and productive agroecosystems. FP3 will emphasize this via close connections with WLE and FTA sharing common land health surveillance and restoration monitoring tools and methods (for instance LDSF, Revised Universal Soil Loss or RUSLE, etc.), and scaling up strategies for land restoration at farm to landscape scales.

This FP will contribute to the global targets set for the GLDC and those that are proposed for a safe operating space through sustainable and diverse crop-tree-livestock systems that contribute to net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, reduced land degradation, improved water and nutrient use efficiency, increased agrobiodiversity, including reduced and safe use of crop protection products.

FP3.2 Objectives and targets

The goal of this flagship is to capacitate stakeholders such that they can improve the productivity, profitability and sustainability of smallholder farming systems using on-farm and in-household innovations to ensure household nutritional security and enhanced income generation through integrated crop, tree and livestock production systems. Its specific objectives are:

To design, test and scale improved crop-tree-livestock management options and their interactions to optimize productivity and enhance resource use-efficiency;

To increase the productivity and agro-biodiversity in farming systems and strengthen household livelihoods through improved nutrition and dietary diversity;

To increase the climate resilience of farming systems through integrated soil, crop, water and nutrient management approaches;

To manage and conserve the natural resource base and close nutrient cycles to avoid soil fertility losses; and

To use (with FP1 and FP2) Innovation Platform (IP) approaches to identify opportunities for value chain enhancement.

FP3 will include and build on a portfolio of mapped projects (representing > US$15 million in 2018) such as Drylands Development Program (DRYDEV) for enhanced food and water security for rural economic development (ICRAF 2013-2019); increasing agricultural productivity and incomes through bridging yield gaps (ICRISAT 2013-2018); increasing food legume production by smallholder farmers (ICARDA 2013-2018); enhancing food and nutritional security and improved livelihoods (ICARDA & ICRISAT 2016-2019); integrating crop genetic diversity into NRM in East Africa and Nepal (Bioversity); IPM with the legume innovation lab and cowpea scaling up projects in West Africa (IITA 2013-2018); Sustainable intensification of key farming systems in West Africa Sudan-Sahelian zone and Africa RISING (multi-institutional 2017-2021). The estimated W3/bilateral funds from these projects for 2017 amount to US$14.9 million.