The project will reduce poverty, sustainably improve land resources, increase food security and the health and nutrition of the community through enhancing the productivity of rainfed agriculture by efficiently managing rainwater, adopting improved and more adapted crop and livestock types/varieties/breeds, and management practices, by adopting sustainable land management (SLM) practices, and by introducing energy-efficient stoves and alternative energy sources.
SLM practices can make farming systems more resilient to the vagaries of climate change by restoring productive natural resources, increasing food production, and enhancing food security.
Adopting crop varieties and forages with increased resistance to heat stress, shock, and drought would reduce climate change impacts. Rainwater management/harvesting is an effective strategy to manage floods, droughts, and other climate change effects. Introducing energy-saving stoves and alternative energy sources would reduce forest and land degradation and remove dependence on biomass energy. The research outputs will be used by rainfed area extension services dealing with rural communities in enhancing small-scale poor-resources farmers’ agricultural productivity and conserving the fragile ecologies. Nevertheless, policymakers, development and extension workers, rural and urban consumers, seed producers, crop and livestock traders, graduating students, national and international researchers, and the country will benefit from the project outputs. At the household level, expected impacts will be increased crop and livestock production, reduced land degradation, and thus increased adaptation capacity to climate change. The project will enhance institutions' capacity to manage and rehabilitate rainfed systems' natural resources vis-à-vis livelihood improvement strategies.
