Abstract
Climate change has resulted in food insecurity for the majority of farming communities in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of Mali. In this paper, we present a methodology for scaling climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technologies such as Contour Bunding (CB), Microdosing (MD), Intercropping (IC), Zaï pits, and Adapted crop Variety (AV) treatments, and evaluated their contribution to smallholder households’ food self-sufficiency. We used the participatory technology selection method and on-farm demonstration in order to tackle farm-related constraints. The study found that there has been a major shift in the spatial distribution of land use/land cover (LULC) classes between 2016 and 2020. About 25% of the areas changed from other land use/land cover to cropland. Crop yields obtained from CSA-treated fields were significantly higher than yields from farmers’ practice (FP). The application of CSA technologies resulted in millet yield increases by 51%, 35%, and 23% with contour bunding (CB), microdosing (MD) and intercropping (IC), respectively. With Zaï pits and adapted variety (AV) treatments, the yield increases were 69% and 27%, respectively. Further, the use of IC and MD technologies reduced the food-insecure household status to 13%, which corresponds to a food insecurity reduction of 60%. The application of Zaï technology reversed the negative status of food-insecurity to +4%, corresponding to a reduction in food insecurity of more than 100%. In the case of food-secure households, the application of CSA technologies led to increased food production. However, notwithstanding this, prospects for CSA in the Sahel hinge on the capacities of farming households and local extension agents to understand the environmental, economic and social challenges in the context of climate change, and consequently to self-mobilize in order to select and implement responsive technologies.
Highlights
Agriculture is the mainstay of the household economy in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of Mali
This study focused on the scaling of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technologies—while taking into account local communities’ capacity and farmers’ field constraints—to aid adaptation to climate change and augment smallholders’ household food self-sufficiency by increasing agricultural production
With the application of IC, Contour bunding (CB) and MD technologies, household food gain increased from 100% to 152%, and to 140% for the Adapted crop Variety (AV) technology, corresponding to an increase of 50% and 40% respectively
Summary
Agriculture is the mainstay of the household economy in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of Mali. Rapid population growth is another factor that is putting greater pressure on farmland and natural resources management, leading to the fragmentation of small landholdings and overexploitation as well as the degradation of land [12,13]. These challenges affect the livelihoods of farming communities and have resulted in a situation of food insecurity in which a large fraction of the population is facing hunger and malnutrition [14].
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