Reply on RC2

The Eastern Cape Province of South Africa is largely rural, with agriculture as the main livelihood for many households. However, the province has a semi-arid climate and reliance on rain-fed agriculture, which makes the region highly vulnerable to climate-related risks, particularly droughts. Smallholder farmers, who play a crucial role in food production and local economies, face significant challenges due to limited access to resources like irrigation, modern technology, and financial support, exacerbating their vulnerability to climate variability. These droughts cause severe losses in agricultural productivity, threatening food security, increasing poverty, and driving rural migration. Despite the potential benefits of adaptation strategies, many farmers lack the tools and knowledge to effectively cope with the increasing frequency and severity of droughts. This study examines how smallholder farmers in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province perceive, experience, and cope with drought risk and its food and nutrition security implications. Using structured questionnaires, the authors collected data from 160 smallholder farmers and employed statistical analysis techniques, including a multinomial logit model. The study found that smallholder farmers understand drought risk but continue to face high vulnerability to adverse effects such as water scarcity, crop failure, increased disease incidence, and rising temperatures. Socioeconomic and institutional factors significantly influenced the adaptation strategies chosen by smallholder farmers. This study suggests that a combination of localized and modern adaptation approaches, supported by various institutional, policy, and technological interventions, is essential to enhance the resilience of these farmers. Specifically, localized strategies such as using traditional water management systems and crop diversification were effective in addressing region-specific climate challenges. At the same time, modern approaches like climate-resilient crop varieties and early-warning systems provided broader, more scalable solutions. Institutional support measures, such as access to climate information and extension services, policy interventions promoting sustainable practices, and technological advancements in irrigation and seed technologies, were key factors in improving adaptive capacity and reducing vulnerability. There is an urgent need to provide comprehensive support and empower farmers to adapt effectively, protect their livelihoods, and contribute to broader food security and poverty reduction efforts. This study highlights the importance of understanding and addressing the perceptions and experiences of smallholder farmers facing drought risk to ensure sustainable food production, income generation, and poverty alleviation.

<p>Ongoing research to capture the socio-hydrologic feedbacks between human adaptation decisions and agricultural drought risk has brought agent-based modelling (ABM) tools to the foreground. We explored how such ABM can be used to integrate heterogeneous individual adaptive behaviour in a drought risk framework. Our ABM framework focuses on adaptation decisions (irrigation, land management) by individual farmers and their interaction with drought hazard, exposure and vulnerability. This framework enables us to more correctly reflect the dynamic nature of drought risk in time and space. Moreover, as the effectiveness of disaster risk reduction policies rests on the complexities of drought adaptive behaviour of the targeted group, we completed multiple data collection activities to understand the adaptation decisions of smallholder farmers under drought risk. These activities, inclusing smallholder farmer questionaires, choice experiments and stakeholder interviews, were based on behavioural theories and their links to socio-economic aspects in semi-arid Kenya, so we could assess what drivers and barriers determine the adoption of drought adaption measures in this context.  Moreover, people’s preferences towards ex-ante cash transfers, timely extension services, tailored early-warning systems, and access to credit markets were tested.</p><p>The framework and data collection results were used to calibrate the decision rules in a new ABM (ADOPT), to simulate small-scale agricultural adaptation decisions in response to drought risk in the past. The protection motivation theory is compared with scenarios of no adaptation dynamics and of economic rationality, so as to test different behavioral assumptions. Capturing the spatio-temporal feedbacks between bounded-rational adaptation decisions by smallholder farmers and seasonal weather conditions, ADOPT is capable of mimicking the evolution of heterogeneous adaptation decisions and trends in historic yields over time. We show the benefit of assessing drought risk (poverty, food security and aid needs) on an individual household level. Additionally, we adjusted ADOPT to simulate how smallholder farmers in Kenya respond to drought policy interventions by the government and (future) drought events, explicitly modelling adoption incentives and constraints and the social interactions among farmers. As such, the effect of pro- and reactive top-down decisions by governmental institutions on the household and community vulnerability to droughts could be evaluated in order to find maximized effects on drought resilience.</p>

This GIS study examines how climate change affects drought risk in semi-arid regions. Semi-arid regions are especially vulnerable to droughts due to rising global temperatures and changing precipitation patterns. The study analyses drought trends using diverse dataset, including climate projections, geographical information, and environmental parameters. The study incorporated temperature, precipitation, and moisture data, alongside land cover, soil type, and land usage information. Sabarmati River Basin residents and ecosystems need drought management and adaptation. We studied climate change using temperature, precipitation, and moisture data. Plant cover, soil type, and land usage indicated regional drought. GIS, meteorological, and environmental data projected drought. Drought risk model includes LULC, VCI, LST, SMI, and NDDI by integrating all parameters such as LULC, NDVI, Rainfall, etc. all meteorological and environmental data using GIS. Climate and land use changes increased drought risk in the study region. GIS-based drought indices and risk assessment models quantify and map drought intensity, frequency, and duration under different climate change scenarios. The results help semi-arid regions develop adaptive drought risk management strategies. This interdisciplinary approach emphasises the ability of GIS for assessing and mitigating climate-induced drought occurrences.

Supplementary material to "The effects of upstream water abstraction for commercial export farming on drought risk and impact of agropastoral communities in the drylands of Kenya"

Agricultural extension systems (AES) in developing countries face mounting pressure to reform, driven by chronic underfunding and institutional inefficiencies that hinder responsiveness to smallholder farmers’ needs. Advocacy for pluralistic and demand-driven extension services has grown significantly, mainly advocating for financing mechanisms based on the principle of those who benefit must pay. This study investigates smallholder farmers’ Willingness to Pay (WTP) for agricultural extension and advisory services (AEAS) with focus on those provided through Malawi’s public agriculture extension service (PAES). It aims to understand farmer demand for AEAS within a cost-sharing framework in a developing country context. Using cross-sectional survey data from 351 randomly selected respondents, the study employed an open-ended contingent valuation method to estimate WTP, explored preferences for designing a cost-sharing PAES, and utilized Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression with robust standard errors to identify determinants of WTP. The findings reveal that a majority (86.32%) of smallholder farmers are willing to pay for AEASs, with services such as disease and pest control, crop husbandry, livestock breeding and on-farm input production being the most demanded. Farm mechanization, livestock breeding, and farm mapping emerged as the most valued in terms of WTP price. The majority of the smallholder farmers would prefer to pay for AEASs through agricultural extension worker (45%) and mobile money transfers (40%) and receive the paid-for services in face-to-face interactions, with near even preferences between individual consultation (47.2%) and group-based sessions (38.7%). Key factors influencing WTP include gender, marital status, education, family size, landholding, and enterprise type. There is strong support among smallholder farmers in Malawi for cost-shared AEASs, provided delivery and payment systems are accessible and tailored to their socio-economic realities. Policymakers should design equitable financing models aligned with farmers’ capacities and preferences.

Ensuring food security amid increasing water scarcity poses a major challenge for rice-based agricultural systems in Southeast Asia. This study examines the determinants and impacts of adopting Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD), a climate-smart irrigation practice, on household food security among smallholder rice farmers in East Java, Indonesia. Using primary survey data from 360 households and a Conditional Mixed Process (CMP) estimation to address non-random technology adoption, the study identifies key factors influencing AWD adoption and estimates its causal effects on food security outcomes measured by the Food Consumption Score (FCS) and the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES). The results show that younger and more educated farmers, as well as those with access to climate information and stronger social networks, are significantly more likely to adopt AWD. Importantly, AWD adoption has a positive and statistically significant effect on both FCS and FIES, indicating improvements in dietary diversity and reductions in food insecurity. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that these benefits are strongest among smallholders, suggesting that AWD adoption may help reduce rural vulnerability and inequality. The findings highlight AWD’s potential to simultaneously achieve water conservation and food security objectives. Policy implications point to the need for scaling up AWD among smallholders through targeted extension services, peer-to-peer learning mechanisms, and improved irrigation coordination.

Arid and semi-arid regions are highly vulnerable to drought and depend heavily on rainfed agriculture. To minimize the impact of drought, a transition from crisis management to risk management is necessary, which requires a comprehensive risk assessment that accounts for not only drought hazard but also drought vulnerability and population exposure. However, integrated studies that account for socio-economic, agricultural, demographic, and climate factors are currently lacking in Iran. The objective of this study is to comprehensively assess the spatio-temporal changes in drought risk from 2000 to 2019 across Iran. We used the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) and multiple socio-economic and demographic data to compute drought risk. In particular, we used the SPEI to map drought hazard, an analytical hierarchical process method to assess drought vulnerability, and population density data to compute population exposure. Drought risk increased in 57% of the area of Iran, mainly in the northwest, west, and central regions, at a rate of up to 10% per year. In 21% of the area of Iran, drought risk declined by up to 10% per year, predominantly in the northern and southern regions of the Alborz Mountains, encompassing the provinces of Tehran, Gilan, Mazandaran, and Khorasan Razavi. Our results show that the spatial patterns of drought risk vary across Iran and are modulated by the interaction between climatic and socio-economic factors. The results of this study provide useful information for drought risk management and intervention in Iran.

This study contributes to the literature on the impact of farmer contact with agricultural extension services on farm productivity, drawing on a unique panel sample of households residing in three resettlement areas of rural Zimbabwe. It pays particular attention to the potential confounding effects of the biases identified by Birkhaeuser, Evenson, and Feder. Specifically, we exploit the longitudinal nature of our data to estimate the impact of extension on the value of crop production per hectare, with and without controls for unobservable household fixed effects. The attraction of this estimator is that the differencing process rids the specification of the correlation between extension and the disturbance term. We find that after controlling for innate productivity characteristics and farmers' ability using household fixed- effects estimation, access to agricultural extension services, defined as receiving one or two visits per agricultural year, raises the value of crop production by about 15%. This parameter estimate is statistically significant. Another unique feature of these data are, for a subsample, extension worker assessments of farmers' ability. We find that farmers with above-average ability are indeed more productive, producing 40%-50% higher output per hectare of cropped area. Controlling for innate productivity using locality dummies, farm plot characteristics, and farmers' ability using these assessments of ability, we continue to obtain a positive association between access to extension and productivity, an association that is equal in magnitude to our fixed-effects results. However, we also find considerable variability in these parameter estimates across individual crop years.

In 2016, approximately 815 million people were chronically undernourished globally. In recent years, food security has worsened in some parts of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa. In Zimbabwe, latest estimates show that about 45% of the total population are undernourished1. To address the challenge of growing food insecurity, effective social protection programmes must be implemented and scaled-up. Cash transfers are one such programme, the primary objectives of which often include poverty alleviation and food insecurity reduction. This research study utilized longitudinal data collected for the impact evaluation of Zimbabwe’s Harmonized Social Cash Transfer Programme (HSCT), an unconditional cash transfer that targets ultra- poor, labour-constrained households. It accomplishes two things: It provides evidence on the relative merits of using an aggregate consumption expenditure measure versus a food security scale, to assess household vulnerability and food insecurity; and it contributes to a growing literature on the effects of state-sponsored unconditional cash transfers in Africa on household behaviour and food security.

Rice farming in Senegal relies on small family farms and plays a crucial role in meeting food needs. However, local supply is insufficient and threatens food security in terms of availability, stability and accessibility. This justifies the generation and dissemination of Korean technologies aimed at increasing rice production. The objective of this study is to assess the impact of the project on small hold farmers’ food security. The treatment effect method was used with the double difference approach following a baseline study in 2015 on a random sample of 1200 households in the Senegal River Valley. The study shows that the project led to a 22% increase in yields and an 18% increase in rice production, with an impact of 19% on income from rice cultivation, which accounts for 62% of total household income. This produced an impact of 236,087 CFA francs or an increase of 34% on average household income with a very significant statistical difference. This impact is 22,256 CFA francs per capita and 31,371 FCFA per equivalent adult (UEA). The impact on food consumption is 293 kcal/UEA per day and induces a reduction of 10% in households at risk. The impact on income has also increased the means of managing health needs. As a result, the producers have benefited greatly from the productivity gains in rice production induced by technologies. This highlights the crucial role of bringing innovations into rice production. The policy decision makers must develop strategic options for the widespread dissemination of these innovations in order to improve income and reduce food insecurity in rural areas.

Knowledge and perceptions of smallholders about climate variability are essential for climate change adaptation and natural resource conservation. However, there are limited studies that consider the interplay of local perceptions, coping, and adaptation strategies to climate variability. Thus, this study aims to assess smallholders’ perceptions, coping, and adaptation strategies to climate variability in Konso. The study was based on survey data collected from 355 households, key informant interviews, and focus group discussions. The econometric models were used to examine factors influencing smallholders’ perceptions and adaptations to climate variability, while the chi-square test was employed to assess significant differences between the two agroecologies. The results indicate that smallholders perceived the late-onset, early cessation, and shortened rainy seasons as the most common types of climate variability manifestations in the study area. Additionally, smallholders reported recurring droughts, new weeds, pests, and heat-induced disease prevalence as a result of climate variability. Moreover, the binary and multinomial logit models demonstrated that education, access to credit, extension services, and climate information had a positive impact on smallholders’ perceptions, coping and adaptations to climate variability. Smallholders responded to climate variability by adopting terracing, agroforestry, manure, crop varieties, soil bunds, intercropping, reduced tillage, and irrigation. Thus, it is important to enhance smallholders’ adaptive capacity by facilitating access to reliable climate information, extension, and credit services. Finally, policy-driven interventions aimed at diversifying livelihoods into nonfarm/off-farm employment opportunities are suggested to reduce stallholders’ vulnerability to impacts of climate variability.

The environmental, economic, and social effects of climate change are expected to be profound for smallholder farmers, especially in developing countries like Zambia, whose way of life is largely dependent on the natural world. Many developing countries have realized that climate-smart agricultural practices such as agroforestry are a solution to existing problems caused by climate change. Agroforestry technologies incorporate tree crops in farming systems that benefit farmers with fodder for animals and fruits, reduce erosion, and reclaim soil fertility. This study investigated the impacts of agroforestry adoption on smallholder farmers’ crop productivity and household expenditure in Nyimba district, Zambia. The study further explored the factors influencing the adoption of agroforestry among smallholder farmers in the study area. Data was collected from July to August of 2022 from 325 randomly selected smallholder farmers’ households in four villages in the Nyimba district of Zambia. A binary logistic regression model was used in this study to determine factors influencing the adoption of agroforestry among smallholder farmers. The results revealed that smallholder farmers’ household head education level, access to extension services, household size, access to credit, farming experience, farmland size, and distance to the nearest market had an influence on agroforestry adoption. Propensity score matching was performed to determine the impacts of agroforestry adoption on smallholder farmers’ household expenditure and crop productivity. The results revealed that smallholder farmers’ household adopters had 1,929.040 kilograms of crop yield (Zea mays L.) higher than non-adopters by 817.43 kilograms. Household expenditure for smallholder farmers adopters was ZMW 8,873.47 higher than non-adopters by ZMW 5,617.91 in the study area. The findings imply that smallholder farmers’ households should implement agroforestry in the long term to improve their household welfare. Therefore, the study suggested that efforts should be focused concomitantly on the diffusion of agroforestry options and the lifting of their adoption barriers among smallholder farmers

Snow cover is an important earth surface characteristic because it influences partitioning of the surface radiation, energy, and hydrologic budgets. Snow is also an important source of moisture for agricultural crops and water supply in many higher latitude or mountainous areas. For instance, snowmelt provides approximately 50%–80% of the annual runoff in the western United States (Pagano and Garen, 2006) and Canadian Prairies (Gray et al., 1989; Fang and Pomeroy, 2007), which substantially impacts warm season hydrology. Limited soil moisture reserves from the winter period can result in agricultural drought (i.e., severe early growing season vegetation stress if rainfall deficits occur during that period), which can be prolonged or intensified well into the growing season if relatively dry conditions persist. Snow cover deficits can also result in hydrological drought (i.e., severe deficits in surface and subsurface water reserves including soil moisture, streamflow, reservoir and lake levels, and groundwater) since snowmelt runoff is the primary source of moisture to recharge these reserves for a wide range of agricultural, commercial, ecological, and municipal purposes. Semiarid regions that rely on snowmelt are especially vulnerable to winter moisture shortfalls since these areas are more likely to experience frequent droughts. In the Canadian Prairies, more than half the years of three decades (1910–1920, 1930–1939, and 1980–1989) were in drought. Wheaton et al. (2005) reported exceptionally low precipitation and low snow cover in the winter of 2000–2001, with the greatest anomalies of precipitation in Alberta and western Saskatchewan along with near-normal temperature in most of southern Canada. The reduced snowfall led to lower snow accumulation. A loss in agricultural production over Canada by an estimated $3.6 billion in 2001–2002 was attributed to this drought. Fang and Pomeroy (2008) analyzed the impacts of the most recent and severe drought of 1999/2004–2005 for part of the Canadian Prairies on the water supply of a wetland basin by using a physically based cold region hydrologic modeling system. Simulation results showed that much lower winter precipitation, less snow accumulation, and shorter snow cover duration were associated with much lower discharge from snowmelt runoff to the wetland area during much of the drought period of 1999/2004–2005 than during the nondrought period of 2005/2006.

ABSTRACTDry regions are primarily inhabited by smallholder farmers who have limited capacity to enhance agricultural productivity, particularly in crop production. These areas are characterized by low and erratic rainfall that does not support crops to maturity. This underlying study has been compiled by using a systematic review of papers published between 2020 and 2025. A total of 1200 papers were selected and screening was done to remove 790 duplicates, 195 had no proper information about climate‐smart agriculture (CSA), and 139 were published before 2020, leaving a total of 76 papers included in the study. The primary objective of this systematic review was to explore resilient agricultural technologies suitable for dry regions to improve food systems. Resilient agricultural practices suitable for dry regions include soil water conservation, irrigation, crop diversification, and cultivating climate‐resilient crops that include sorghum, cowpeas, and millets to enhance the food system. Growing climate‐resilient crops is regarded as a key option in drought‐prone areas that improves crop yields and food availability. Combining water management, soil conservation, and sorghum in low rainfall areas increased yield from 200 to 1140 kg ha−1 in Zimbabwe and from 250 to 5675 kg ha−1 in Kenya. An increase in other crops, such as maize, has also been reported with the use of crop rotation, irrigation systems, and agroforestry. Improvements in food systems reduce hunger and poverty, and empower smallholder farmers in dry regions to enhance their livelihoods. Similarly, examples of climate‐resilient agriculture options have also been presented, giving relevant examples. Smallholder farmers are recommended to adopt climate‐resilient agricultural practices to all farmers to mitigate climate change, reduce food insecurity, and improve rural livelihoods.

Food security in Africa was impacted as a result of supply chain disruptions and government lockdowns brought on by the Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. With participation from important actors in the agricultural value chain, the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA) assessed the effect of COVID-19 on agri-food system in Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, and Uganda. Farmers, agro-processors, private service providers, off-takers and merchants, input dealers, and Ministry of Agriculture Extension service personnel are among the value chain actors that took part in the study. The survey, which was held from April 13 to April 16, 2020, used semi-structured tools and questionnaires aimed at the different stakeholders. The study used a cluster sample technique. The data were analyzed using SPSS software, which included frequency counts, percentages, rank correlation, and categorical regression. Based on the severity of the lockdowns associated to COVID-19, the survey found that the outcomes differed by country. The analysis shows a negative association between e-extension and education during the COVID-19 epidemic, but a high and positive correlation (p < 0.01) between extension services and postharvest services, as well as credit availability. Factors such as transportation, labor availability, price fluctuations, output market activity, loan availability, and food and nutrition security were significantly and positively correlated with COVID-19 awareness. Additionally, the respondents indicated that price changes were favourably correlated with labour availability and transportation, and that farming activities were significantly and positively correlated with food and nutrition security, labour availability, and the output market. According to the perspective data collected in every country during the COVID-19 epidemic, postharvest services, agricultural input activities, and food and nutrition security all heavily relied on extension services, with postharvest services having a negative correlation with extension services. The results of the analysis show that COVID-19 impacted several variables that are associated with extension services across the four countries. For instance, the R2 value of the relationship between value chain variables and extension service delivery across Mali (0.485), Nigeria (0.621), Ethiopia (0.426), Uganda (0.529), and the combined countries (0.511) indicates that the variation of the dependent variables can account for 48.5% of the variation in the values of the independent variable (extension service delivery) in Mali, 62.1% in Nigeria, 42.6% in Ethiopia, 52.9% in Uganda, and 51.1% in the combined countries. Farmers' access to agricultural labour, credit services, inputs for agriculture, and output markets was restricted by the ban on travel and social gatherings. Smallholder farmers should employ digital solutions more to strengthen the agricultural value chain's actors' resilience against potential pandemics or conflicts, according to the study's implications for extension services. This will reduce the requirement for extensive personal touch and travel in the delivery of extension services. The study also highlights how crucial it is for extension services to show tangible outcomes and benefits in order to increase farming communities' and value chain actors' resilience in any difficult circumstances. Key words: COVID-19, food systems, extension services, value chain actors, output markets