DeSIRA - DESIRA: Climate Smart innovations to improve, productivity,profitability and Sustainability of Agriculture and Food System in Malawi through Multidisciplinary Research

The smallholder farmers’ agri-food system in Malawi faces persistent and new biophysical and socio-economic constraints resulting in low productivity and high production risks, endangering the food and nutrition security, income of smallholder farmers and the socio-economic growth of the country. Specific challenges include soil degradation, unpredictable rainfall characterized by droughts and floods (for instance the devastating floods in the Shire Valley in March 2019), limited access to agricultural inputs, increasing pressure from pests and diseases and limited skills and knowledge about the best practices among the farming communities. This situation is aggravated by climate change, and science-based strategies to increase resilience against climatic shocks are urgently needed. The proposed Action seeks to address these challenges by developing climate-smart, integrated technology options adapted to local conditions and the farmers’ realities, accompanied by a thorough understanding of socio-economic conditions that drive or hamper adoption through a multi-institutional and multidisciplinary research effort. Emphasis will be placed on technologies that increase resilience to climate change with specific attention to sustainable soil and water conservation, integrated pest and disease management and post-harvest options. Technological innovations will be designed and fine-tuned together with stakeholders and end-users in a participatory process involving innovation platforms, selection of technology options for on-farm testing by farmers, and farmer-managed on-farm experimentation and evaluation. Integrated action through collaboration among the diverse research partners and end-users will enable a holistic approach that considers the various aspects and dimensions of smallholders’ livelihoods.

). First, the Action will develop climate-smart integrated technological innovations that can contribute to enhanced resilience of agricultural and food systems under climate change in Malawi (S.O.1). Under this objective, innovations will be developed and tested to increase productivity and resilience of agri-food systems while risks related to the systems will be reduced through adoption of the appropriate management options (output 1), deal more effectively with pest and disease pressure (output 2) and improve post-harvest management (output 3). The second objective (S.O.2) will focus on gaining insights in pathways to adoption of technological innovation. This will be achieved through joint identification of the main challenges to be addressed in the Action together with stakeholders and using approaches of participatory design and evaluation of the tested innovations in innovation platforms (output 4). In addition, the Action will analyse the gap between technology awareness and adoption in Malawi and identify the conditions needed for increased technology uptake (output 5). Lastly, information that is of interest to policy makers and scaling partner will be generated and shared under specific objective 3 (S.O.3.). Impacts of technological innovations are evaluated through a participatory process that enables the identification of potential impact pathways and of synergies and trade-offs between sustainability outcomes, both at farmers and food systems levels (output 6). Finally, information and knowledge generated under output 1-6 will be shared with local, national, and international policy makers and scaling partners through and interactive process throughout the project (output 7).

The outcomes and impact on livelihoods of the majority of smallholder farmers in the country in the context of climate change will not be directly achieved during the proposed Action, but from follow-up Actions or scaling partners that will take the generated technological innovations to scale. Through combining the development of technological innovations with an improved understanding of impact pathways and conditions needed for technology uptake and an interactive process of sharing information and knowledge, we anticipate that at the end of the Action, policy makers and scaling partners will be equipped with the necessary information and tools to create an enabling environment for technology uptake and the best approaches to scale the technologies to smallholder farmers for wider adoption. Using this multidisciplinary approach, the proposed Action will maximize the probability that technological innovations developed in the Action will be appropriate to address the existing diverse, changing and complex challenges, be taken up by smallholder farmers, in turn resulting in enhanced climate change adaptation of agricultural and food systems in Malawi and improved productivity, reduced risks, and ultimately improved food security, nutrition, and income