IITA-led Policy Action on Climate Change project launched in Tanzania

Ms Madete, Deputy PS, Vice-President's Office at the launch 

The four-year project, Policy Action for Climate Change Adaptation (PACCA),  led by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change,Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)  was recently launched in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. 

Dr Yamungu, Agric ministry deputy PS welcomed the initiative 

The project which seeks to enhance the capacity of the Tanzania Government to develop and implement policies on climate change adaptation in relation to food security is being implemented in both Kenya and Tanzania. In Tanzania the lead partner is the Environmental Management Unit (EMU) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives.

The project was officially launched by the Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Vice President’s Office  Ms Angelina E.A. Madete at a stakeholders’ meeting that brought together different actors working in the area of climate change adaptation from the government, NGOs, and international and national research institutes.

Dr Ampaire giving an overview of the PACCA project

Ms Madete noted that the impact and vulnerabilities of climate change were undermining national and local strategies to achieve sustainable development. She observed that the country was particularly vulnerable to climate change due to its dependence on climate sensitive economic sectors such as agriculture and commended the project for tackling this global challenge that demands concrete mitigation and adaptation measures.

“We are all aware of the dangers climate change poses to our country. We have all witnessed heavy rains and floods; prolonged and severe droughts, and landslides. We need to develop and implement integrated strategies expeditiously in the country,” she said.

The project was also welcomed by the Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives,  Dr Yamungu Kayandabila, who officiated the closing ceremony of the workshop. He assured all the project partners of the full support of his ministry to tackle climate change and food security issues in the country. 

The project coordinator, Dr Edida Ampaire from IITA Uganda, said the project seeks to strengthen the cooperation between the scientific community and policy actors in formulating policies on climate change.

A cross section of the participants at the event

“The aim of the project is to understand the policy making and implementation processes in the area of climate change and food security in Tanzania and Uganda, identify any gaps, and suggest ways to overcome them. It will also identify appropriate mechanisms to facilitate generation and sharing of knowledge among the different actors working in the area of climate change within and between the two countries,” she said.

During the workshop, the participants identified some of the gaps and areas that the project should address to strengthen climate change policies in Tanzania. Top of the list was the lack of a comprehensive policy on climate change in the country. Currently, issues on climate change are handled under the environmental policy of 2004 under the Vice President’s Office and in the Environmental Management Unit (EMU of the Agriculture Ministry.

Participants at the PACCA-Tanzania chapter launch

Other challenges identified were a general lack of adequate coordination of the different actors working on climate change and food security issues, lack of sharing of knowledge and information, and a general low level of awareness of the importance of climate change across various sectors from the policy makers to the general public. Another gap was linked to inadequate human and financial resources put aside for climate change. The participants also identified the root causes of these problems and made recommendations for further action.

In Uganda, coffee and banana go better together

A field with coffee and banana inter-cropped  in Uganda

By Caity Peterson
You're hungry for pizza. Walking around the neighborhood, you find two pizzerias not far from each other. They're both selling pretty much the same thing - crust with cheese and tomatoes on top - and at the same price. But one offers you a free delicious ice-cold 2-liter soda to go with your hawaiian. That makes your choice easy, no?

Believe it or not, something similar is happening in Uganda. Only we're not talking about pizza, and the choice is a bit more complicated.

The comestibles in question here are two of the country's most important agricultural commodities. One, coffee, makes up 20-30% of Uganda's foreign exchange earnings and creates a cash boom for smallholders once or twice a year. The other, banana, is the country's principle staple crop, providing a small, steady food harvest all year long. In fact, Uganda was the 2^nd largest banana producer in the world in 2008, and the 11^th largest coffee producer.

By happy coincidence, both of these crops tend to grow at around the same altitude: from 800 to 2300 meters. Thus, considering growing human populations and farmers increasingly squeezed for space, it makes sense to grow them together, especially since coffee tends to produce more consistently when grown with a little bit of shade. Many farmers in Uganda are doing just that, intercropping banana and coffee to make good use of space in densely populated areas. Others are sticking with the old system or growing the two crops in separate plots, as used to be promoted by colonial extension services solely concerned with profits from the coffee cash crop and is often still promoted today, for apparent lack of a better option.

But which of these systems is actually the most beneficial for farmers? Until now, not much research has existed specifically targeting the relative advantages and disadvantages of different types of coffee growing systems. The result is that government agencies and other advisory bodies have trouble knowing what to promote, and farmers are even more in the dark.

Ongoing research by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Kampala, Uganda, in collaboration with other CGIAR centers (CIAT, ICRAF, and CIFOR), has attempted to evaluate the benefits of different types of systems, including co-benefits for climate change adaptation and mitigation and implications for pest and disease incidence.
 They have found that banana-coffee intercrop systems have the potential to be the most beneficial for farmers because they leave the yield of the coffee crop virtually untouched, while providing a little something extra in the form of more food for their personal use. Essentially, by combining the two crops farmers are greatly increasing the total yield value of a single plot of land, even if the yield for individual crops doesn’t change much. Bananas are to coffee crops what our free soda is to pizzerias – it doesn’t change the pizza, but it’s a nice bonus nonetheless.

Furthermore, including bananas in the coffee system spreads the farmers’ risk. If one crop fails or is decimated by a disease, they can still get a harvest from the other. Ugandan farmers have reported that the shade from the bananas also decreases their coffee’s susceptibility to drought and extreme weather events due to climate change. The residues from the trees provide in-situ mulch which would otherwise cost them much capital and labor to bring in. They say bananas also motivate them to better manage their coffee crops during the first 3-5 unproductive years, because the bananas are producing even when the coffee is not. This is especially true for the female half of the community, which often doesn’t see the money from a coffee sale come back to the household but can use the banana harvest for home consumption.

There are trade-offs, of course. The intercrop system removes larger quantities of nutrients from the soil, and, in the long-term, coffee can eventually out-compete banana. The system can also require larger inputs of labor and capital at the outset. Accordingly, the success of intercrop systems will require identification of major production constraints – principally soil fertility – and the development of site-specific recommendations to address them.

Recently, the IITA team has been taking a more climate-centric focus to their crop system analyses, collaborating on the development of suitability maps for East African coffee crops, pests, and diseases and investigating the mitigation potential of the coffee-banana intercrop system. For more info on past and current IITA work in Uganda – and parallel projects on cocoa systems in Cameroon and Nigeria – check out the following resources:

• Van Asten et al (2011) article in Agricultural Systems: Agronomic and economic benefits of coffee-banana intercropping in Uganda’s smallholder farming systems
• IITA policy brief: “Towards climate smart agriculture: Lessons from a coffee x banana case.”
• Building ‘climate smart’ East African coffee production systems: presentation by Rikxoort et al. at the CIALCA 2011 international conference.

See original story on CCAFs blog:  http://ccafs.cgiar.org/blog/uganda-coffee-and-banana-go-better-together