Climate-change and variability (CC&V) exerts multiple stresses on agriculture production. It negatively impacts gender-cadres especially in Kenya's arid and semi-arid lands that occupy 89% (area), 36% (population), 70% (livestock), and 90% (wildlife). Smallholders with limited resources endowments have adopted climate-smart agriculture technologies, which are viewed as a panacea to CC&V in addressing interlinked food-security challenges. This paper reports baseline survey results on 149 randomly selected households in Kalii watershed. Primary and secondary data were collected in March 2015. Data-analyses encompassed regressions, descriptive statistics and gender-analysis. Local perceptions/results revealed precipitations downward-trend and an upward-trend of temperatures, and other elements, and outcomes of CC&V. Gender and innovations are statistically significant at (p<0.05). Decision-making on assets' and proceeds' control and use, was men's domain. Invariably, gender and climate-smart agriculture innovations are critical in food and nutrition security strategy under CC&V.

This paper evaluates the potential impact of adoption of improved legume technologies on rural household welfare measured by consumption expenditure in rural Ethiopia and Tanzania. The study utilizes cross-sectional farm household level data collected in 2008 from a randomly selected sample of 1313 households (700 in Ethiopia and 613 in Tanzania). The causal impact of technology adoption is estimated by utilizing endogenous switching regression. This helps us estimate the true welfare effect of technology adoption by controlling for the role of selection problem on production and adoption decisions. Our analysis reveals that adoption of improved agricultural technologies has a significant positive impact consumption expenditure (in per adult equivalent terms) in rural Ethiopia and Tanzania. This confirms the potential role of technology adoption in improving rural household welfare as higher consumption expenditure from improved technologies translate into lower poverty, higher food security and greater ability to withstand risk. An analysis of the determinants of adoption highlighted inadequate local supply of seed, access to information and perception about the new cultivars as key constraints for technology adoption.

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This paper contributes to literature on agricultural technology adoption by using a novel data set that combines data from two large-scale household surveys with historical rainfall data to understand the determinants and the intensity of adoption of Conservation Farming (CF) practices in Zambia. Conservation agriculture (CA), defined as practicing minimum soil disturbance, cover crops and crop rotation, has the technical potential to contribute to food security and adaptation to climate change. It has been actively promoted in seven of Zambia's nine provinces since the 1980s in the form of CF including planting basins and dry season land preparation in addition to the 3 CA practices. Rigorous analyses of the determinants of adoption/dis-adoption of these practices, however, are still scarce. This paper fills this gap using panel data from two rounds of the Supplemental Survey to the Central Statistical Office's 1999/2000 Post Harvest Surveys, which were implemented in 2004 and 2008, as well as (district level) historical rainfall estimate (RFE) data obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center (NOAA-CPC) for the period of 1996-2011. We specifically analyze the adoption and dis-adoption of two main components of CF: minimum soil disturbance and planting basins. Considering that the Eastern Province has historically received the bulk of the CF support activities, we also do our analyses separately for this province to assess the effectiveness of these activities. We document high levels of dis-adoption (around 95%) of these practices in the whole country, while dis-adoption in the Eastern province-the hub of CF projects in Zambia-is significantly lower. Nationwide only 5% of the households practiced minimum soil disturbance/planting basins in 2008, down from 13% in 2004, which raises the question of the widespread suitability of this practice.

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We examine a set of potentially climate smart agricultural practices, including reduced tillage, crop rotation and legume intercropping, combined with the use of improved seeds and inorganic fertiliser, for their effects on maize yields in Zambia. We use panel data from the Rural Incomes and Livelihoods Surveys merged with a novel set of climatic variables based on geo‐referenced historical rainfall and temperature data to explore the changing effects of these practices with climatic conditions. We estimate the impacts on maize yields, and also on the exhibition of very low yields and yield shortfalls from average levels, as indicators of resilience, while controlling for household characteristics. We find that minimum soil disturbance and crop rotation have no significant impact on these yield outcomes, but that legume intercropping significantly increases yields and reduces the probability of low yields even under critical weather stress during the growing season. We also find that the average positive impacts of modern input use (seeds and fertilisers) are significantly conditioned by climatic variables. Timely access to fertiliser emerges as one of the most robust determinants of yields and their resilience. These results have policy implications for targeted interventions to improve the productivity and the resilience of smallholder agriculture in Zambia in the face of climate change.

Background: Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) addresses the challenge of meeting the growing demand for food, fibre and fuel, despite the changing climate and fewer opportunities for agricultural expansion on additional lands. CSA focuses on contributing to economic development, poverty reduction and food security; maintaining and enhancing the productivity and resilience of natural and agricultural ecosystem functions, thus building natural capital; and reducing trade-offs involved in meeting these goals. Current gaps in knowledge, work within CSA, and agendas for interdisciplinary research and science-based actions identified at the 2013 Global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture (Davis, CA, USA) are described here within three themes: (1) farm and food systems, (2) landscape and regional issues and (3) institutional and policy aspects. The first two themes comprise crop physiology and genetics, mitigation and adaptation for livestock and agriculture, barriers to adoption of CSA practices, climate risk management and energy and biofuels (theme 1); and modelling adaptation and uncertainty, achieving multifunctionality, food and fishery systems, forest biodiversity and ecosystem services, rural migration from climate change and metrics (theme 2). Theme 3 comprises designing research that bridges disciplines, integrating stakeholder input to directly link science, action and governance.

Paying for the provision of environmental services is a recent policy innovation attracting much attention in both developed and developing countries. This innovation, referred to as ‘payments for ecosystem services’ (when the emphasis is on enhancing ‘nature’ services) or ‘payments for environmental services’ (when amenities provided by the built environment are also included) is referred to here as PES. PES programs aim to harness market forces to obtain more efficient environmental outcomes. Since so many opportunities for PES programs could involve farmers in poor regions, international aid agencies and private donors, looking for a double dividend, increasingly consider using PES programs as a potential way of meeting both social and environmental objectives.