Are food insecure smallholder households making changes in their farming practices? Evidence from East Africa

Abstract

We explore the relationship between farming practice changes made by households coping with the huge demographic, economic, and ecological changes they have seen in the last 10 years and household food security. We examine whether households that have been introducing new practices, such as improved management of crops, soil, land, water, and livestock (e.g. cover crops, microcatchments, ridges, rotations, improved pastures, and trees) and new technologies (e.g. improved seeds, shorter-cycle and drought-tolerant varieties) are more likely to be food secure than less innovative farming households. Using data from a baseline household survey carried out in five sites and 700 households in four countries of East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia) across a range of agricultural systems and environments, this study contributes to the evidence base of what smallholders are doing to adapt to changing circumstances, including a changing climate. Lessons from both similarities and differences across sites are drawn. This unique baseline study provides a wide range of indicators of activities and behaviors that will be monitored over time. We found that many households are already adapting to changing circumstances, and their changes tend to be marginal rather than transformational in nature, with relatively little uptake of existing improved soil, water and land management practices. There is a strong negative relationship between the number of food deficit months and innovation, i.e. the least food secure households are making few farming practice changes. This has very different policy and investment implications depending on assumptions made as to the direction of causality.

Identifying drivers of household coping strategies to multiple climatic hazards in Western Uganda: implications for adapting to future climate change

“…However these responses were analysed in combination with responses to food security and poverty, without differentiating between shock-specific strategies. Kristjanson et al (2012) further explored the relationship between food security and adaptation and whilst food insecure households were found to undertake fewer adaptive actions, the relationship is too complex to recommend a single solution. Other studies in Uganda have shown that selling livestock is widely used to deal with covariate natural disasters, but this did not account for individual climatic shocks (Helgeson et al 2013).…”

Societal transformation in response to global environmental change: A review of emerging concepts

“…I found that for about fifty percent of the reviewed articles 'transformation' was a prominent theme, but no clear conceptual basis was provided for its use, and the term was not defined at all in many cases (e.g., Kristjanson et al 2012;Pearson and Foxon 2012;van Vuuren et al 2012;Ferguson et al 2013). Transformation is rather used as a metaphor to convey the idea of fundamental, systemic, or radical change, e.g., in livelihoods (Huang et al 2012), finance (Gomez-Echeverri 2013), governance (Biermann et al 2013), energy markets (Aylett 2013), or agriculture (Reganold et al 2011).…”

Landscape-scale variability of soil health indicators: effects of cultivation on soil organic carbon in the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania

“…Major crops in the study area include maize, beans, potatoes, cassava, vegetables (such as tomatoes, cabbages, peppers), coffee and temperate fruits (such as avocados and peaches), which are grown for both home consumption and as cash crops (Lyamchai et al 2011). Despite the high diversity of crop production, food insecurity remains high (Kristjanson et al 2012). …”