Page 90 - FAO-IPCC Expert meeting on climate change

Appendix 01: Speakers’ summary notes
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Theme 4.
Climate change adaptation, resilience, and linkages to food security
Sustainable intensification as adaptation: potential and limits
MARK T. VAN WIJK
PLENARY SESSION 7:
CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION, RESILIENCE, AND LINKAGES TO FOOD SECURITY
Sustainable intensification of agricultural production (i.e. increasing food production from existing farmland in ways that have lower environmental impact and which do not undermine our capacity to continue producing food in the future (Garnett et al. 2013)) has been promoted as a means to meet growing food needs in developing countries. Examples of interventions that are seen as sustainable intensification are crop – livestock integration, conservation agriculture, intercropping systems and improved rainfall water harvesting (e.g. Campbell et al. 2014). Sustainable intensification can be an attractive option for climate change adaptation in agricultural systems because of its reported capacity to increase resource use efficiencies and reduction of yield variability. Within the setting of Climate-smart agriculture (CSA), which promotes agriculture and food systems that (1) enhance food security, (2) improve resilience to climate variability and change, and (3) mitigate greenhouse gas emissions where appropriate (e.g. Campbell et al., 2014; Lamanna et al., 2016) adaptation naturally plays a key role, and sustainable intensification options might well deliver double and even triple wins.
However, the success of sustainable intensification is dependent on availability of productive resources (land, livestock), availability of organic resources (crop residues, manure, etc.) and the labor to implement the interventions. All of these are limiting resources for which there are competing demands within the farming system. An example is the discussion on conservation agriculture, and its limited success in sub Saharan Africa up to now, compared to Latin and North America. Despite the sometimes substantial yield increases observed with conservation agriculture (e.g. Rusinamhodze et al., 2011) it is likely that competition for the limited amount of crop residues available in many mixed crop – livestock systems and the key role that these crop residues play in feeding cattle is one of the factors limiting uptake of conservation agriculture (see Giller et al, 2009) for a detailed discussion of this topic).
One other aspect which has often been overlooked is how much sustainable intensification can actually contribute to improved food security. As has been shown in many studies, sustainable intensification can lead to substantial yield increases, however, whether this leads to similar substantial increases in food security for the poorest farm households has been studied much less. This is an important question, because it critically addresses the targeting and prioritization of intervention options, and the likely efficiency of large scale investment in sustainable intensification as a way to improve food security of the poor agricultural producers. Existing large scale assessments (e.g. Brown et al., 2015) often make use of continuous responses between production intensification and country wide food security levels, but it is clear that the regional level these (simulated) (e.g. Fisher et al., 2005) relationships do not hold up, possibly leading to policy recommendations that do not target the right part of the population (Van Wijk, 2014).
For different farming systems in sub Saharan Africa we have quantified how much the food security of different farm households can be improved with certain levels of production increases. For this we analyzed existing databases of farm household characterization data (in total roughly 35000 farm households) and quantified a simple indicator of food security (e.g. Frelat et al., 2016). Mainly due to limited land availability and productivity levels of the most food insecure farmers, even cereal yield increases of 50% only lead to an improved food security status of only 2-7% of the farmers, the exact value depending on the production system. Production intensification can realistically only target the already more food secure smallholder farmers while intensification strategies must be augmented with transformational strategies to reach the poorest households (Ritzema et al., 2017). Many of these transformational changes are likely to be off farm opportunities for the poorest households. One example of transformational change of the farm livelihood that tries to improve the overall agricultural production of the system is the so-called ‘girinka’ (‘One cow per poor
FAO-IPCC Expert meeting on climate change, land use and food security