Transmitting satellite information to farmers’ mobile phones

Access to timely and precise weather information is critical for smallholder farmers to make informed decisions and improve their resilience to the impacts of climate change, such as droughts, high temperatures, floods and a rise in pests and diseases. This was a key message at the recent review of an on-going project to scale up climate-smart agricultural solutions to smallholder farmers in three countries in southern Arica region.

The road to climate-resilient cereal and livestock farming

Building climate-resilient cereal and livestock farming in southern Africa

Boosting agriculture through innovative lending partnerships

The growth of small-scale agriculture in developing countries is being held back by critical underfunding. To address this challenge, CTA was the organizer of an international conference which explored an innovative approach for agricultural finance – the blending of private, philanthropic and public funding to leverage capital flows into smallholder value chains. The Blending4Ag conference was held to improve practices in mobilising agricultural finance, and help forge new partnerships for mitigating and sharing risks in smallholder funding.

Rural finance key to agricultural development

Boosting agriculture through innovative public-private lending partnerships

Farmers across Africa embrace climate-smart innovations

Open data for smallholder weather information services

There is a range of current weather information that are available on the internet. Ready access to ‘open weather data’ means that there is a huge potential for embedding weather information into a variety of web and mobile applications that would be helpful to smallholder farmers. In November 2017, CTA brought together practitioners, policy makers and academics in The Hague to explore practical and strategic challenges in adapting open weather data for applications that smallholder farmers could exploit to drive productivity.

Insurance: incentive for climate resilience

Ensuring food and income security by making farmers resilient to climate change

by Busani Bafana

Reliable weather data impacting on farmers' yields