Adopting Climate Smart Agriculture

ADOPTION OF CLIMATE-SMART
AGRICULTURE IN AFRICA
CONSTRAINTS, INCENTIVES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
(STYLE: TITLE) PROJECT NAME
(STYLE: SUBTITLE) REPORT TYPE
(STYLE: SUBTITLE) MONTH DAY, YEAR – MONTH DAY, YEAR
1
September 2016
This publication was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development. It
was prepared by Integra LLC.
ADOPTION OF CLIMATE-SMART
AGRICULTURE IN AFRICA
CONSTRAINTS, INCENTIVES, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
SEPTEMBER 2016
This study is made possible by the support of the American people through the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents of this study are the sole
responsibility of Integra LLC and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United
States Government.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary ................................................................................... 5
I. Introduction ............................................................................................. 7
II. Methodology .......................................................................................... 8
III. Framing of Climate-Smart Agriculture .............................................. 13
IV. Key Findings ....................................................................................... 17
V. Lessons Learned for CSA Adoption .................................................. 38
VI. Programmatic Recommendations .................................................... 46
VII. Additional Questions for Research ................................................. 58
VIII. Conclusion: Moving Climate-Smart Agriculture Forward ............ 60
References ............................................................................................... 61
Annex 1. Selected CSA Approaches ...................................................... 66
Annex 2: Factors of Adoption Framework ............................................ 69
Annex 3: Literature Review Methodology ............................................. 70
Annex 4: Expert Interview Methodology ............................................... 73
Annex 5: Farmer Survey Methodology .................................................. 76
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LIST OF ACRONYMS
CA Conservation agriculture
CCAFS Climate change, agriculture, and food security
CIAT International Center for Tropical Agriculture
CLI Crop-livestock integration
CSA Climate-smart agriculture
CSRP Climate smart rice production
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization
FFS Farmer Field School
FMNR Farmer managed natural regeneration
GIIF Global Index Insurance Facility
HURDL Humanitarian Response and Development Lab
ICT Information and communication technology
IWMI International Water Resource Management Institute
LC Local conventions
MCC Millennium Challenge Corporation
NGO Non-governmental organization
PES Payments for ecosystem services
SRI System for rice intensification
USAID United States Agency for International Development
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach to agriculture that can offer farmers in Africa
substantial benefits in terms of increased productivity and income, better risk management, and
improved resilience to climate change. As such, CSA has become a key development goal,
championed by donors and governments alike. Despite this focus, however, the adoption of
CSA approaches and practices by smallholder farmers has been slow, piecemeal, and largely
unsustained.
The common narrative is that adoption depends on accessibility, promotion and training around
specific CSA technologies and increased access to markets. However, this narrative misses a
number of key behavioral change factors, including the wider social, political, and institutional
environment in which agriculture is embedded. These include broader livelihoods, identity roles
and responsibilities (including gender), decision-making timeframes, and farmer risk
management perspectives. These factors all greatly shape the incentives to adopt CSA
approaches.
This report fills this knowledge gap by conducting a rigorous and systematic analysis of the
factors shaping the adoption of CSA. Initially, a literature review was undertaken to establish the
accepted state of knowledge on the key factors governing CSA adoption. This was followed by
interviews with technical experts to compare these factors with the current understanding of
CSA among practitioners. Finally, fieldwork was carried out in Burkina Faso and Kenya by local
teams in order to get perspectives directly from farmers, as well as from national officials and
experts. Through the qualitative triangulation of these data sources, the report was not only able
to identify the most common factors shaping the adoption of CSA in Africa, but also to highlight
key differences between common assumptions and farmer behavior.
Economics do matter to adoption but in a nuanced way.
The economic narrative is well known and includes barriers such as high initial cost, high long-
term cost, diseconomies of scale, and poor access to credit and inputs. Unsurprisingly, cost is
one of the top adoption factors across all data sources. However, disaggregating these costs
reveals some key and overlooked differences between farmer perspectives and the
conventional wisdom of practitioners. Farmers cite initial costs over twice as often as a barrier to
adoption than technical experts, while long-term costs are not a significant factor of farmers’
decision-making around CSA adoption. This points to the need for a better understanding on
behalf of practitioners of different CSA costs, as well as the seasonal decision-making
processes that underpin farmers’ livelihood and CSA decisions.
To be adopted, CSA needs to align with society and cultural values and norms.
Agriculture, as a livelihoods activity, is a deeply socially embedded endeavor and farmers
understand CSA through their own formal and informal systems and norms that govern factors
such as labor, gender, identity, and beliefs. As developed throughout this report, such factors
create often-unseen opportunities and risks for farmers that shape their CSA adoption but are
5
often overlooked by the CSA literature and expert interviews. The issue of short-term climatic
risk, for example, is the second highest cited barrier by farmers but is completely overlooked by
practitioners. Farmers may not adopt any CSA practice that lowers their capacity to address
immediate risks of climate variability, even if that practice might be well targeted at future
climate change.
Market forces and institutions form the foundation for CSA adoption.
In many African countries, structural constraints within markets and supporting institutions
severely constrain the adoption of CSA approaches. These constraints are not unique to CSA
but instead define and influence the entire agriculture sector. They include poorly functioning
markets, dysfunctional government institutions, and weak land tenure systems. In order for CSA
to be adopted in a sustained and collective way at a national scale, there are basic foundational
conditions and good agricultural practices that are required within the agriculture sector that go
beyond any specific farm technology. Achieving these conditions requires integrated
programming that draws upon wider efforts in democracy and governance, economic growth,
agriculture and food security, and disaster risk reduction.
CSA presents a unique and urgent opportunity to take a broader and more systematic view of
the constraints in agriculture in Africa. The issues of adoption and dis-adoption addressed in this
report help point the way towards interventions that might best unlock the potential of the
smallholder farming. Properly implemented, CSA can make significant contributions to
agricultural production and rural livelihoods, building resilience to current economic and
environmental stresses on agrarian livelihoods, while pointing the way to a more secure and
prosperous future of economic and social opportunity.
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I. INTRODUCTION
The dilemmas of climate change and agriculture in development are well known but worth
repeating. The world’s population has been projected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050.1 In line with
this population growth is the increasing global consensus that our agricultural practices need to
shift to improve the quality and quantity of food currently produced, particularly in sub-Saharan
Africa.2 These increases in production and shift in practices will occur on increasingly limited
land area, on increasingly marginal soils, and in the face of a changing climate that threatens to
negatively affect crop productivity and increase yearly variability.3 This will necessitate greater
adoption of ‘climate-smart’ strategies and technologies that increase production sustainably,
increase adaptive capacity of farming systems to climate change, and mitigate agriculture’s
sizeable contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions, all of which are components that the
approach of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) seeks to address directly.4
The purpose of this report is to conduct a rigorous and systematic analysis of existing evidence
for the factors shaping the adoption of a climate-smart approach to agriculture, with a view to
providing recommendations for United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
policy and programming. The report focuses on CSA approaches of direct relevance to
smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, the target demographic for this work.
The report addresses the following questions:
• What is known about the main factors driving the dis-adoption of CSA approaches?
• What incentives have proven to be effective in increasing adoption of CSA approaches?
• How should USAID and other development partners program CSA differently in order to
ensure greater success in investments?
Section II goes over the methodology for the data collection and analysis of the three
components of this study. Section III provides the broad framing of CSA, explaining what CSA
is, how it fits into the political economy of agriculture, and how farmers understand climate
change. Section IV presents our research and data collection findings from the literature review,
expert interviews, and case studies. The top factors impacting the adoption of CSA are
analyzed in Section V. Section VI presents a set of critical questions to assess the likelihood
that a CSA approach will be adopted. Programmatic recommendations are presented in Section
VII. Finally, section VIII provides questions for further research.
1
United Nations, 2012, World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision.
2
Steenwerth, Kerri, Amanda Hodson, Arnold Bloom, Michael R. Carter, Andrea Cattaneo, Colin Chartres, Jerry
Hatfield, et al. 2014. “Climate-smart agriculture global research agenda: scientific basis for action.” Agriculture &
Food Security 3:11.
3
Brown, M.E. et al. 2015. Climate Change, Global Food Security, and the U.S. Food System.
4
FAO. 2010. “Lessons from the field: Experiences from FAO Climate Change Projects.” Climate Change Workshop.
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II. METHODOLOGY
Given that CSA is an approach and not a list of practices, exhaustively covering all iterations of
agricultural practices, technologies, or interventions that could be climate-smart in a particular
context is neither appropriate nor helpful. In collaboration with USAID and technical experts, a
diverse range of CSA technologies and strategies were selected as a means of obtaining
detailed information on adoption constraints and opportunities that might inform a broader
understanding of observed patterns of CSA. The twelve climate-smart technologies and
strategies (hereafter referred collectively as “CSA approaches”) represent both field-level
technical technologies to agriculture and broader socio-economic and institutional strategies
that shape both agricultural practice and its market, institutional, and social environment. While
this report focuses on the 12 CSA technologies and strategies, it uses these heuristically as a
means of identifying and illustrating the barriers and incentives to adoption among smallholder
farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. The focal CSA approaches are detailed in Table 1 below and
explained in detail in Annex I.
Table 1: Focal CSA Approaches
CSA technologies and strategies assessed as part of this study
Field-level 1. Farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR)

2. Conservation agriculture (CA)
3. Climate smart rice production
4. Crop-livestock integration
5. Integrated water resource management (IWRM)
Institutional 6. Index (weather) based crop insurance
7. Payment for ecosystem services
8. Safety net programs
9. Property and procedural rights frameworks
10. Agriculture and climate services
11. Climate smart villages; climate smart landscapes
Community 12. Collective action
Developing a ‘Factors of Adoption’ framework

In agriculturally-oriented research and practice, there is a wealth of documentation and analysis
on the factors that influence agricultural decision-making and behavior change relevant to the
adoption of CSA. In order to sort and group these factors, this report developed a custom
‘Factors of adoption’ framework. This framework incorporated a number of existing theories and
approaches including Diffusion of Innovation Theory5, Sustainable Livelihood approaches6,
Nature, Wealth, and Power systems7, and Livelihoods as Intimate Government8 to group
5
Rogers, Everett M. 2003. Diffusion of Innovations. New York: Free Press.
6
DFID, 1999. Sustainable Livelihoods Guidance Sheets (1999)
7
USAID. 2013. Nature, Wealth and Power 2.0, Leveraging Natural and Social Capital for Resilient Development.
8
adoption factors into four categories. The four categories are as follows: economic and
production characteristics; agro-ecological environment; social and cultural context; and
enabling environment (markets, institutions, and policy). These categories were further broken
down into 49 individual factors (see Annex 2: Factors of Adoption Framework). These 49 factors
provided a uniform and comprehensive framework for the examination of constraints to and
incentives for the adoption of the CSA approaches outlined above.
Components of the study

The study included three main approaches to data collection and analysis. These components
were phased and designed to be complementary. Each dataset served as a point for the
triangulation of findings from the other approaches and their datasets. This interpretative
triangulation was anchored in the initial systematic literature review, which was undertaken to
better understand the state of knowledge on CSA adoption and narrow the scope of research
for this report. This was followed by interviews with technical experts. Finally, fieldwork was
carried out in two countries by local teams in order to get narrative-based perspectives directly
from farms and national officials and experts.
(1) Systematic literature review: The goals of the literature review were:
1) To establish the accepted state of knowledge on CSA adoption, particularly for the 12
technologies and strategies selected for this report, and
2) To identify experts from which to build a sample for interviews on CSA adoption.
The study team utilized several databases, including USAID’s Development Exchange
Clearinghouse, Web of Science, Scopus, Eldis, ResearchGate, Education Resources
Information Center, Internet search engines, Google Scholar, and EBSCO Academic Search
Premier. In addition to academic databases, our team conducted a series of interviews with
agricultural development practitioners to identify additional resources. Those interviews included
technical experts from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), World
Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Catholic Relief Services (CRS), and the World Bank.
Documents were selected through a two-step process. First, abstracts or executive summaries
were read to determine if the document was relevant to the research and were ‘tagged’ with
relevant keywords (such as the CSA technology/strategy, location of the study, and author) in
the online research and citation management tool Zotero. Second, assessment team members
reviewed each document for quality and relevance. Through this process, 476 documents
passed the critical appraisal test for their relevance to CSA and were included in our analysis.
These documents were then analyzed for barriers and incentives to CSA adoption, pulling out
patterns and commonalities between the adoption factors for the focal CSA approaches. To
conduct this analysis, the Integra team worked closely with the Humanitarian Response and
Development Lab (HURDL) at Clark University. Forty-nine potential barriers or incentives
(collectively called “factors”) emerged from this standardized and comprehensive review. These
8
Carr, Edward R. 2013. “Livelihoods as Intimate Government : Reframing the Logic of Livelihoods for
Development.” Third World Quarterly 34(1) 77-108.
9
factors were then re-applied to the literature to identify their impact on CSA across each of the
focal technologies and strategies. A short list of the most commonly cited factors was developed
to guide additional steps of the research (Components 2 and 3, see below). The full
methodology for the literature review is included in Annex 3.
Figure 1 – Literature Review Process
Ardcles idendﬁed through orthogonal keywork search process
Abstracts / execudve summary reviewed
Keywords tagged on Zotero
Documents reviewed for quality and relevance
476 documents passed 'cridcal appraisal' test
Selected documents analyzed for factors to CSA adopdon
49 potendal factors emerged
Literature re-analyzed according to 49 potendal factors
(2) Interviews with Technical Experts: The second part of the study involved interviews with
international technical experts to establish the state of knowledge for CSA adoption, as an
approach, among practitioners. This was necessary because the academic literature can lag
current practices and evidence by months to years. This component had two primary goals:
1) To triangulate expert opinions with the key findings from the literature review, and
2) To compare and contrast expert opinions across different stakeholder groups.
Stakeholders were selected to reflect a balance of different stakeholder groups and
geographical experience. The first experts were identified through the literature review, and then
a snowball sampling technique9 was employed. The goal was to interview at least ten members
of each stakeholder group, though this was not always possible (particularly with private sector
agribusinesses, who were difficult to engage with this research). In total, 43 stakeholders were
interviewed from across USAID, other development partners and implementers, government
officials, non-government organizations, researchers, agribusinesses and farmers’ unions.
These interviews were conducted predominantly by phone using a questionnaire developed by
the team based on the findings of the literature review. Questions were open-ended to facilitate
discussion (a sample questionnaire is included in Annex 4).
9
Snowball sampling is a non-probability sampling technique where existing study subjects recruit future subjects
from among their acquaintances.
10
(3) In-Country Farmer Interviews: The final part of the study involved in-country field visits.
These field visits had three primary goals:
1) To triangulate farmer responses with the key findings from the literature review and
technical expert interviews,
2) To directly explore with farmers their decision-making processes under changing
climates, including the potential synergies/trade-offs between production and resilience,
3) To observe the degree of CSA adoption, as an approach, at the local level, as well as
the constraints and opportunities for specific climate-smart technologies and strategies.
In April and May of 2016, fieldwork was carried out in two countries: Burkina Faso in
Francophone West Africa and Kenya in Anglophone East Africa. Two sites (varying primarily in
rainfall) were visited in each country: Dano (wet) and Ouahigouya (dry) in Burkina Faso and
Wote (wet) and Kibwezi (dry) in Kenya. Site selection in each country was guided by six criteria
developed by the assessment team in consultation with USAID:
1) Area where several CSA technologies and/or strategies were present, and there were
already documented and anticipated climate change impacts,
2) Area that reflects USAID priority programming, namely Feed the Future and Food for
Peace,
3) Potential for value-addition to the literature review,
4) Ease of access,
5) Advice from technical experts, and
6) Areas where our team had significant field experience.
Each team was comprised of three members. The Kenya team was entirely female and the
Burkina Faso team included one female. Data was collected at the household and village level
through four complementary sampling techniques:
1) Direct observation,
2) Household surveys,
3) Focus group discussions, and
4) Interviews with government officials and project implementers.
Different qualitative methods were employed depending on the cultural context of the study
sites. In Dano, for example, farmers were gathered in the public square of the villages for group
interviews while in Ouahigouya, a door-to-door interview survey approach was adopted. One
hundred forty-six (146) interviews were conducted in Burkina Faso, and 80 interviews were
conducted in Kenya. A little over half (53 percent) of interviews were with women.
Triangulation of findings
Each aspect of the research described above is a partial picture of CSA adoption. The literature
review, while presenting a comprehensive review of the current state of largely academic
knowledge on CSA uptake, can only reflect the current focus and biases of that literature.
Although the expert interviews cover a large number of individuals and relevant organizations,
11
they are not statistically representative of the entire CSA Assessment Team:
expert population. The field interviews, which speak clearly Jon Anderson, Team Leader,
to farmer concerns and interests, cover only four sites in Independent Consultant
two disparate countries, leaving out many context-specific Dr. Edward R. Carr, Senior Advisor,
challenges in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Clark University
Additionally, sampling within the sites followed a snowball Dr. Boubacar Barry, West African
Science Service Center on Climate
method that is best at capturing dominant narratives in a
Change and Adapted Land Use, IWMI
given population. In totality, what this data provides are
James Ozols, Research Associate,
three dominant narratives of CSA adoption emerging from Integra
three critical information sources: that of the literature, that Dr. Susan Chomba, Research Fellow,
of the technical experts, and that of the farmers. Independent Consultant
David Quinn, Project Director, Integra
When combined, each of these methods and data plays a
Miguel Menez. Project Specialist,
critical role in developing a coherent, rigorous narrative that Integra
triangulates these three dominant narratives. Our goal was Dr. Sheila Onzere, Research Scientist,
to capture the main factors shaping CSA adoption and dis- Clark University
adoption in sub-Saharan Africa. By triangulating the results William Collier, Advisor, Clark
of the three components, we were able to identify emergent University
factors shared across all components, as well as carefully
include factors where there is strong agreement among just two components. Further, we can
address discontinuities between the datasets that can highlight further areas of research or
have implications for CSA programming. The results below, and in the appendices, reflect the
triangulation of these datasets.
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III. FRAMING OF CLIMATE-SMART
AGRICULTURE
This section provides an introduction to the key concepts surrounding CSA. This includes
defining CSA, understanding smallholder farmers and their characteristics, recognizing that
CSA is part of a socially and politically embedded system, understanding the timing of decision-
making and past experience, and discussing the extent of adoption of CSA in Africa.
CSA should be viewed as an approach and not a set of practices.

CSA is a conceptual framework that helps address ways to: 1) sustainably increase agricultural
productivity and incomes, 2) adopt and build resilience to climate change, and 3) reduce and/or
remove greenhouse gas emissions, where appropriate.10 In other words, CSA is about moving
agriculture from its present state to one where productivity is higher, risk to farmers and the food
system is lower, and agricultural activities make smaller contributions to factors that exacerbate
climate change. This report recognizes that CSA is more than a list of practices and must be
conceived holistically and systematically. It is an approach to agriculture. Despite clear benefits,
ranging from the mitigation of climate change to the growth of agricultural income, the actual
adoption of CSA by smallholder farmers has been slow, piecemeal, and largely unsustained.11
While this report focuses on a limited subset of CSA technologies and strategies, it uses these
heuristically to identify and illustrate the barriers to adoption generally of a climate-smart
approach to agriculture among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.
Smallholder farmers share a number of common characteristics that

impact CSA adoption.
This report focuses on ‘smallholder farmers’ - the majority of sub-Saharan African farmers who
are generally poor, farm relatively small areas (e.g., a few hectares), use minimal amounts of
mechanization and inputs, and live at or near subsistence level. Smallholder farmers are a
diverse demographic that encompass a host of social differences, including gender, age,
income/livelihoods, ethnicity, religion and other factors. Some of these differences cut across
the discussion of decision-making below, and permeate our understanding of CSA adoption.
Despite this heterogeneity, smallholder farmers share several characteristics in terms of their
decision-making and behavior change around new ideas related to their livelihoods.
10
Food Security 3:11; Giller, K.E. at al. 2009. Conversation agriculture and smallholder farming in Africa: the heretics’
view. Field Crops Research, 114: 23-34; Knowler, D. and B. Bradshaw. 2007. Farmers’ adoption of conservation
agriculture: A review and synthesis of recent research, Food Policy 32(1): 25-48; FAO. 2015. Climate-Smart
Agriculture: A call for action, FAO RAP Publication.
11
Food Security 3:11
13
Smallholder farmers have complex livelihoods. Few farmers are totally dependent on farming.
Agriculture is usually one of several activities that the typical “farmer” engages in the course of
their livelihoods. Many combine farming with other activities like animal husbandry, petty
trading, craft-making, and seasonal migration for wage labor (and not only in the off-season).12
Smallholder farmers also tend to be highly risk-averse. This risk aversion is linked to the
various stresses and shocks they face, and the limited set of resources upon which they can
draw to mitigate the impacts of these stresses and shocks.13 The diversified and networked
nature of their livelihoods is both an effective risk management strategy and a potential
suboptimal strategy in a specialized world. On one hand, this diversification and networking
creates significant opportunities for farmers to reach new consumers and identify new sources
of income and food from which to draw. On the other, these networks can directly connect
distant shocks into local agricultural and livelihoods systems, as was seen during the food price
spikes in 2008.14
Smallholder agriculture is deeply socially embedded and is about much more than the mere
production of food. Smallholder agriculture, as an aspect of agrarian livelihoods, serves to
structure social orders at scales from the household to the ethnic group.15 Thus, agriculture
encompasses various roles and responsibilities in a household, community, and broader
society, roles and responsibilities that are often quite durable and will greatly shape decisions
about the adoption of CSA.16
Given the realities of African smallholder farmer livelihoods, and the place of agriculture in those
livelihoods, we must understand the diverse and networked lives of farmers if we are to identify
and implement programs and specific interventions to promote CSA that lead to long-term,
sustained adoption of a modified approach to agriculture.
12
Carr, E.R., 2006, Postmodern conceptualizations, modernist applications: Rethinking the role of society in food
security. Food Policy, 31(1), 14-29; Watts, M. J., & Bohle, H. G. 1993. Hunger, Famine and the Space of
Vulnerability. Geojournal, 30(2), 117–125; Maxwell, S. 1996. Food security : a post-modern perspective. Food
Policy, 21(2), 155–170; Gladwin, C. H., Thomson, A. M., Peterson, J. S., & Anderson, A. S. 2001. Addressing food
security in Africa via multiple livelihood strategies of women farmers. Food Policy, 26, 177–207.
13
IFC. 2013. Working with Smallholders: A Handbook for Firms Building Sustainable Supply Chains; Carr E.R. 2011.
Delivering Development: Globalization’s Shoreline and the Road to a Sustainable Future.
14
Brown, M.E. et al. 2015. Climate Change, Global Food Security, and the U.S. Food System.
15
16
For examples, see Benjaminsen, Tor A. 2010. “Enclosing the Land: Cotton, Population Growth and Tenure in
Mali.” Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift - Norwegian Journal of Geography 56 (1): 1–9; Förster, Till. 1998. “Land Use and
Land Rights in the West African Savannah: The Senufo in Northern Côte d’Ivoire.” GeoJournal 46: 101–11; Assé,
Rainer, and James P. Lassoie. 2011. “Household Decision-Making in Agroforestry Parklands of Sudano-Sahelian
Mali.” Agroforestry Systems 82 (3): 247–61. doi:10.1007/s10457-011-9395-2; Koenig, Dolores. 2013. “Social
Stratification and Labor Allocation in Peanut Farming in the Rural Malian Household.” African Studies Review 29
(3): 107–27.
14
There is a significant mismatch between the timeframes in which farmers
make decisions versus the timeframes where CSA benefits are realized.
The decision-making process that underpins investments in farming systems and the adoption
of CSA is influenced by complex and interrelated economic, political and social dynamics. This
process is highly context-specific, individually-driven, and rarely perfectly predictable. A
significant challenge for the adoption of CSA is the mismatch between the timeframes in which
farmers as individuals and as groups generally make decisions and those across which any
particular program or intervention demonstrates benefits. These mismatches range across
timescales, from hours to decades:
• Hourly - Farmers face significant livelihood decisions that must be made in a matter of
hours. These include health-related decisions, where one must decide if selling off produce
or an asset to access healthcare is necessary, and if so, what to sell. Women are often less
empowered than men to make these short-term decisions.17 In the absence of social safety
nets, CSA interventions that reduce farmer flexibility in addressing such challenges or which
draw down assets that might otherwise be mobilized in such situations are unlikely to be
adopted. Who is responsible for such decisions varies depending on context and may
depend on the decision at hand: for example, among matrilineal groups, caring for a sick
child may fall to the mother and her extended family (as the children “belong” to this family)
rather than the father and his family. Thus, how to address children’s illnesses may be a
decision that impacts women’s livelihoods more than men’s in these settings. In other,
patrilineal, groups, the children may “belong” to the father’s family, and thus become a factor
in his livelihood decisions.18
• Seasonal - A vast number of farmer decisions are made at the seasonal temporal scale.
These decisions incorporate information about the likely environmental and social conditions
(e.g., school fees), as well as market conditions that influence both production and produce
sales. CSA interventions that address seasonal stresses or shocks, such as those
generated by climate variability, will buttress farmer decision-making. Interventions that
reduce the options farmers have for negotiating these changes, such as an intervention that
forces farmers to focus on a single crop or set of crops, are likely to result in farmer dis-
adoption when market conditions introduce price stresses on those crops. Again, the
identity, roles and responsibilities of the farmer will vary depending on context, which means
decision-making processes and outcomes for particular activities or crops can change from
community to community, or even between households within a community.
• Project - For the development partner or implementer, a project lifespan is usually three to
five years. This creates pressure to produce measurable on-farm outcomes over this
timeframe, whereas the most meaningful outcomes are only likely to emerge over longer
timescales. “Quick win” projects that are rapidly adopted may work to address short-term
17
UN Women. 2011. Enabling Rural Women’s Economic Empowerment: Institutions, Opportunities, and
Participation.
18
15
issues but do so because they fit into existing agricultural decision-making and social
structures that might impede adaptation over longer timescales.
• Long term - As some climate change impacts will be realized only across decades, some
adaptations may not have immediately-realized benefits for farmers. With limited stocks of
assets and with limited resources to protect those over more than a year, if that, farmers
may not see the point of interventions or projects aimed at addressing climate change
impacts that will occur twenty or more years in the future. In addition, social differences
within a population can affect long-term decision-making. For example, if women are not
allowed to have secure land tenure, they are unlikely to adopt the planting of drought-
tolerant tree crops that take years to mature, and produce food for many years after the
fact.19 This discrepancy underscores the importance of implementing CSA interventions with
interlinked short, medium, and long-term benefits that reinforce one another.
• Historical - CSA must also consider past interventions to understand farmer decisions and
therefore the likelihood they will adopt any particular approach or, ideally, a suite of climate-
smart approaches. When making decisions, farmers weigh their engagement with previous
development programs, the market and the state (e.g., previous contact with agricultural
extension services). These interactions impact social capital and levels of trust which can
strongly impact engagement with new projects. Programming that does not take into
consideration history will likely not overcome barriers to CSA adoption or provide effective
incentives.
The extent of adoption of CSA in Africa

Agriculture production in Africa has increased significantly over the past couple of decades.
However this increase is mainly due to the significant increases in areas under cultivation rather
than increases in the productivity per hectare. The lack of widespread adoption of improved
practices, particularly by smallholders, across the African landscape indicates the relatively poor
productivity performance of agriculture in Africa.
As a newly defined approach, the data on CSA is limited and difficult to interpret. There is some
qualitative and anecdotal evidence emerging of “success stories” in CSA adoption.20 Aside from
the significant issues raised above about adoption itself, there are large issues with consistency
of data (e.g., the unit of measurement - hectares, households, farmers, crops, agro-ecosystems,
etc.), which is influenced by the definition of adoption as well. There are also significant issues
with ex post facto definitions of certain practices as contributing to climate-smart agriculture.
19
For example, see Carr, Edward R. 2011. Delivering Development: Globalization’s Shoreline and the Road to a
Sustainable Future. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
20
CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security. 2013. Climate-smart agriculture
success stories from farming communities around the world.
16
IV. KEY FINDINGS
The core document of this report is the literature
review. The 476 documents it represents are
representative of the state of the literature on CSA
adoption, especially with regard to 12 common
strategies and technologies (hereafter, CSA
approaches). It is therefore the cornerstone of our
methodological triangulation, as it represents the most
broadly held understanding of CSA adoption available.
Triangulation of data sources is a commonly-utilized
tool in social scientific analysis to test the rigor and
validity of findings generated through a single data
source or a data source that cannot be subjected to
statistical analysis or to answer questions that rely on
more than strong associations between cause and
effect in the data. Taken together, these disparate
methods and the data they yield can be woven
together into a single, coherent, rigorous narrative of
CSA adoption that can inform future intervention
selection and design.
Part 1. Literature Review

As outlined in the methodology section, 49 different potential barriers or incentives (collectively,
“factors”) emerged from this standardized review. These factors were then cross-walked with
the literature specific to the focal CSA approaches to identify those with the highest impact on
adoption. For each factor, an impact score from 0 – 3 was awarded across each of the 12 focal
CSA strategies/technologies based on a summary of the literature for that strategy/technology.21
A summary of the analysis is presented in Table 2. The table uses ‘+’ to indicate a score of one,
‘++’ to indicate a score of two and ‘+++’ to indicate a score of three.
Out of a total potential score of 36, those factors that scored greater than 20 were deemed to be
high impact. Those factors that scored greater than 10 were deemed to be medium impact,
while factors that scored below 10 were deemed to be low impact. While the data collection and
analysis is based only on the 12 focal approaches, it is used heuristically to identify those
factors with the highest impact on adoption across all climate-smart approaches.
21
The impact score was decided based on an average score from the members of the assessment team reviewing
each CSA approach.
17
Table 2: Most commonly cited factors of adoption of CSA approach
Payment for Ecosystem
Agriculture and Climate
EFFECT ON ADOPTION
Resource Management
Climate Smart Villages

Property & Procedural
Index (weather) Based
Natural Regeneration
Safety Net Programs
Rights Frameworks
Climate Smart Rice
Categories of
Collective Action
Integrated Water
and Landscapes
Farmer Manager
Crop Insurance
factors
Crop-livestock
Conservation
influencing Factors
Agriculture
Production
Integration
adoption
Services
Services
Long term cost +++ + + +++ + +++ ++ +++ ++ ++ + ++ High
Initial cost +++ +++ ++ +++ ++ +++ ++ +++ + ++ ++ ++ High
Transaction ++ + +++ ++ +++ +++ +++ + + + +++ + High
costs
Opportunity
++ + ++ ++ + + + + ++ + Med
costs
Flexibility +++ ++ + ++ ++ ++ + ++ ++ ++ Med
Multi-objective +++ + + ++ ++ + + + +++ + ++ ++ High
Perishability + + + + Low
Impact on yield + + +++ + ++ ++ + ++ +++ + + ++ High
Impact on
+ + +++ + + + + ++ ++ + + + Med
farmer income
Size of farm + ++ + ++ + + +++ + + +++ Med
Economic and Access to
Production ++ ++ ++ ++ +++ + + + + + + Med
external inputs
Characteristics Labor + ++ ++ ++ ++ + + Med
availability
Access to credit ++ + +++ ++ ++ + + + + Med
Land availability + ++ + + + + + + + Med
Private sector + + + + ++ + + Low
Asset protection
+ + + + +++ +++ + ++ Med
and insurance
Market + ++ + + ++ + + + + Med
availability
Asset value + + + + ++ + ++ +++ + + Med
Population + + ++ + + + + + Low
density
Intensification/ + + ++ + + + + + + Med
extensification
The Agro- Rainfall zone + + + + + Low
Ecological Topography + + Low
Environment Soils + ++ Low
Values local +++ ++ + ++ ++ + ++ + + ++ +++ High
knowledge
Social and Farmer

Cultural familiarity with +++ + + +++ ++ ++ ++ + + + ++ Med
Context practice or
similar practices
Access to + + + + ++ + + + ++ + Med
information
18
Compatibility
with existing +++ + ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ + + + ++ High
systems
Communication
channels of ++ ++ + + + +++ + + + + ++ Med
information on
practice
Climate ++ + ++ + + Low
services
Extension + + + + ++ + ++ ++ + + Med
services
Cultural and
gender aspects + + + ++ + + ++ + + ++ +++ Med
relevant to
decision making
Risk +++ + + + +++ +++ + +++ +++ ++ +++ High
management
Local
organizational
+ + ++ + ++ ++ + + + + ++ Med
capacity and
collective action
Local
discretionary +++ + ++ + + + ++ + ++ + ++ +++ High
decision
making
Local social
+ + + + + + + +++ + Med
capital
Perceptions and
+ +++ ++ + + +++ + ++ + + Med
Attitudes
Access to + ++ ++ + + +++ ++ + + Med
markets
Market ++ + + + + + + ++ Med
regulation
Institutional +++ + +++ + +++ ++ +++ +++ ++ + +++ + High
relations
Subsidies + + + + + + Low
Policy ++ + ++ ++ ++ + + + ++ Med
framework
Land ++ + + ++ + + ++ + + Med
rights/tenure
Governance Inclusion in
+ ++ + ++ + + ++ ++ Med
Frameworks decision-making
Access to ++ + + + +++ ++ + + ++ Med
recourse
Impact on + + + + +++ ++ + + +++ ++ Med
resilience
Social inclusion + ++ ++ + ++ + + ++ Med
Environmental ++ + + + + + + Low
footprint
Rights over + + ++ + +++ + +++ + ++ Med
resources
Conflict +++ ++ + ++ + ++ +++ ++ ++ ++ +++ High
‘+++’ means high impact on adoption, ‘++’ medium impact, ‘+’ low impact, and a black space means no impact.
19
Based on the analysis of the factors of adoption contained in Table 2, a total of 11 factors were
deemed to have a high impact on adoption. Five of these factors were economic and production
characteristics, four factors were social and cultural, and two factors were in the enabling
environment category. There were no factors with a high impact of adoption in the agro-
ecological environment category.
Table 3: List of top factors with a high impact
Categories Factors
Long-term cost
Initial cost
Economic and Production Characteristics Transaction cost
Multi-objective
Impact on yield
Values local knowledge
Compatibility with existing livelihood system
Social and Cultural Context
Risk management
Local discretionary decision-making
Enabling Environment (Markets, Institutions Institutional relations
and Policies) Conflict
Category 1: Economic and Production Characteristics

Across the literature, factors related to the socio-cultural context were found to have a medium
impact on CSA adoption decision. When deciding on the adoption of new technology, farmers
generally seek to maximize the returns on their investment. One of the most tangible factors in
these cost-benefit calculations are initial costs, which cover the resource inputs that a farmer
needs in order to begin adoption of any given CSA technology or strategy or combination.
Another factor is transaction costs, which cover the time and non-physical resources spent by
farmers in activities such as training or managing committees. When considering initial and
transaction costs, it is important to distinguish between the different inputs, or production
factors, required by multiple CSA technologies and strategies, as well as their availability to
farmers. Certain ones, such as Conservation Agriculture and Farmer Managed Natural
Regeneration, are heavily reliant on labor, making them more accessible to smallholder farmers
with many labor-ready family members or with other ways to easily access labor.22 Initial costs
can also come in the form of monetary inputs, which constrains CSA adoption when farmers’
access to credit and ready cash is lacking.23 Most often, initial costs are a much larger barrier
for women, although where strong microfinance programs targeting women, men may be more
disadvantaged. Ways to overcome high initial costs can come in the form of tax credits on
equipment, machine rentals, cost-sharing programs and direct subsidies. These kinds of direct
22
Hassan. 2008. Determinants of African Farmers’ Strategies for Adapting to Climate Change.
23
Ibid.
20
assistance are most effective where CSA adoption is not feasible from an individual farmer’s
perspective, and assistance makes adoption an affordable and profitable option.24
Initial costs are only part of the full considerations of costs and benefits that farmers take into
account when deciding to take up CSA approaches. Long-term costs cover the continuous
management inputs and resources required for a farmer to maintain adoption of a CSA
approach. Long-term costs were found to be crucial in the uptake of CSA as many approaches
can take years before benefits are realized.25 When long-term costs cannot be maintained, such
as when a subsidy is removed, CSA dis-adoption occurs. In Zambia, for example, the
discontinuation of government subsides led to large-scale dis-adoption of Conservation
Agriculture.26
Impact on yield and multi-objectivity are also noted in the literature as factors that affect the
adoption of CSA. Unsurprisingly, CSA technologies and strategies that can provide increased
and stable yields, such as Climate Smart Rice Production and Integrated Water Resource
Management, are likely to have a greater impact on adoption. In addition, given that farmers
have limited resources, technologies and strategies that serve to meet a range of local needs,
such as production, diversification and risk management, have a positive impact on adoption.27
In the case of Malawi, the ability of agroforestry to increase yields, as well as provide alternative
food and fuel production methods was found to be a key driver of adoption.28
Category 2: The Agro-Ecological System

Agro-ecological factors, including rainfall zones, topography, and soil quality were not found to
have a positive or negative impact on adoption rates. This category of factors was thus removed
from the factors table for the expert interviews and farmer surveys.
Category 3: Social and Cultural Context
Within the literature, factors related to the socio-cultural context were found to have a high
impact on CSA adoption. Smallholder agriculture is deeply socially embedded and about much
more than the production of food. Smallholder agriculture, as an aspect of agrarian livelihoods,
serves to structure social orders at scales from the household to the ethnic group. Thus,
agriculture encompasses various roles and responsibilities in a household, community, and
broader society, roles and responsibilities that are often quite durable and will greatly shape
decisions about the adoption of CSA. For example, in Sudanean and Sahelian West Africa, the
oldest man in the household or extended family typically controls access to land and is
24
Arslan et al. 2014. Adoption and Intensity of Adoption of Conservation Farming Practices in Zambia.
25
McCarthy, et al. 2011. Climate Smart Agriculture: Smallholder Adoption and Implications for Climate Change
Adaption and Mitigation.
26
Arslan, et al. 2013. Adoption and intensity of adoption of conservation farming practices in Zambia.
27
FAO. 2014. Climate-Smart Agriculture & Resource Tenure in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Conceptual Framework.
28
Kaczan, et al. 2013. Climate-Smart Agriculture? A review of current practice of agroforestry and conservation
agriculture in Malawi and Zambia.
21
responsible for making the agricultural decisions for everyone under his authority29. Therefore,
decisions to implement CSA will tend to flow through these senior men if they are to be
accepted locally. In coastal Ghana, on the other hand, men and women of the same household
are, according to local land tenure norms, autonomous agricultural decision-makers on their
respective farms.30
The importance of risk management also came out very clearly in the literature review. Where
there are dynamic and robust systems of societally-based risk management (including those
supported by good governance), the goals of producers are likely to reflect profit maximization.
Where these systems are not in place, such as in Africa, producers are more likely to be
concerned about risk management than profit maximization. In these cases, farmers are likely to
forego opportunities to increase yields or profit, unless they also serve the goal of risk
management. Thus, CSA approaches that do not include risk management components are
less likely to be adopted.31
There is a strong consensus that a CSA approach that is compatible with existing livelihoods
and leverages local knowledge is critical to facilitating adoption. Specific climate-smart
technologies and strategies often differ from conventional farming traditions and knowledge in
terms of soil preparation, seeding, fertilizer application, water management, etc. In regions
where approaches are informally passed from generation to generation, several specific
technologies and strategies within CSA appear too new to be easily holistically assimilated into
African farming cultures.32 Approaches that are foreign to local communities appear to require
more effort and more time to adopt, as they can upset social relations,33 or place a significant
strain on the time and attention of farmers that detracts from current production. The converse
explains the success of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration and Local Conservation
strategies. Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration, for example, starts with resources farmers
29
Carr, Edward R, and Kwame N Owusu-Daaku. 2016. “The Shifting Epistemologies of Vulnerability in Climate
Services for Development: The Case of Mali’s Agrometeorological Advisory Programme.” Area 48 (1): 7–17.
doi:10.1111/area.12179; Carr, Edward R., Grant Fleming, and Tshibangu Kalala. 2016. “Understanding Women’s
Needs for Weather and Climate Information in Agrarian Settings: The Case of Ngetou Maleck, Senegal.”
Weather, Climate, and Society 8 (3): 247–64. doi:10.1175/WCAS-D-15-0075.1.
30
Carr, Edward R. 2008. “Between Structure and Agency: Livelihoods and Adaptation in Ghana’s Central Region.”
Global Environmental Change 18 (4): 689–99; Carr, Edward R. 2008. “Men’s Crops and Women’s Crops: The
Importance of Gender to the Understanding of Agricultural and Development Outcomes in Ghana’s Central
Region.” World Development 36 (5): 900–915; Carr, Edward R. 2011. Delivering Development: Globalization’s
Shoreline and the Road to a Sustainable Future. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
31
FAO. 2016. Managing Climate Risk Using Climate Smart Agriculture.
32
Forum for Research in Africa. 2015. Barriers to Scaling Up / Out Climate Smart Agriculture and Strategies to
Enhance Adoption in Africa.
33
Carney, Judith A. 1996. “Converting the Wetlands, Engendering the Environment: The Intersection of Gender
with Agrarian Change in The Gambia.” In Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements,
edited by Richard Peet and Michael Watts, 220–34. London: Routledge; Schroeder, Richard A. 1999. Shady
Practices: Agroforestry and Gender Politics in the Gambia. Berkeley: University of California Press; Schroeder,
Richard A. 1997. “Re-Claiming’' Land in the Gambia: Gendered Property Rights and Environmental Intervention.”
Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87 (3): 487–508.
22
already have, builds on local knowledge, and can be practiced on a large scale without ongoing
government or development partner support.34
A CSA approach that is aligned with local discretionary decision-making is more likely to be
adopted. In southern Mali, for example, the most senior man in the family serves as the principle
decision-maker.40 A drought or other event that compromises agricultural yield is not only a
threat to the material well-being of the individual, household, family, and community but also a
threat to the social standing of the senior man who makes agricultural decisions for his
extended family. Therefore, in southern Mali, the adoption of CSA technologies and strategies is
likely to be heavily mediated by the degree to which that bundled approach reinforces social
standards, as opposed to addressing only agrometeorological risks.41
Why did gender not emerge as a high factor influencing adoption?

USAID places top importance on the role of gender dynamics across its development work and
there has been increasing recognition of the importance of gender dynamics in understanding
CSA adoption. However, gender did not emerge as a top factor influencing adoption in the
literature. A focus on a select number of specific factors, while vital to understanding CSA
adoption, tends to under-emphasize cross-cutting issues such as gender, which underpin all
actions by farmers.
All farmers engaged in agriculture in Africa are exposed to a number of interrelated risks,
including weather and climate, markets and prices, institutions and policies. The literature
indicates that women are often exposed to different risks than men, and indeed different women
are exposed to different risks, depending on their roles and responsibilities with regard to
agricultural production and livelihoods.35 In certain contexts, social norms also limit women’s
ability to diversify their income through off-farm activities, thus constraining investment
decisions. Accordingly, women face different perspectives, capabilities, and decision-making
processes for adapting CSA approaches than men.36 In Kenya, for example, levels of
awareness of a CSA approach or particular climate-smart technologies or strategies are
significantly lower for women than for men.37
There is no silver bullet for ensuring that climate-smart agriculture is also gender-smart.38 If CSA
can
34 lower the labor burden on women, it has the potential to empower women to make their
World Vision International. 2012. Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration: An Effective Approach to Restoring
own anddecisions, which leads
Improving Agricultural, to and
Forested more equitable
Pasture Lands. outcomes. Conservation Agriculture is an
35
example of a CSA technology that represents considerable labor-saving benefits through
World Bank, 2015, Gender in Climate-Smart Agriculture: Module 18 for the Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook.
36
Fisher, Monica,
minimum and Edwardlabor-smart
tillage. However, R. Carr. 2015.CSA“The Influence of in
technologies Gendered Roles andare
of themselves Responsibilities
not enough on the
to be
Adoption of Technologies
gender-smart. Policies That
and Mitigate Droughtconstraints
institutional Risk: The Case
thatof disproportionately
Drought-Tolerant Maize Seed in
impact Eastern
women,
Uganda.”insecure
through Global Environmental
land tenure Change 35. Elsevier
or access Ltd: 82–92.
to credit, must also be addressed.39
37
Beuchelt et al. 2013. Gender and Institutional Aspects of Climate-Smart Agricultural Practices: Evidence from
Kenya, Working Paper No. 79, CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security.
38
Taivalmaa, S. 2015. Is Climate-Smart Gender-Smart, World Bank Voices Perspectives on Development.
39
World Bank, 2013, Improving Access to Land and Strengthening Women’s Land Rights in Africa, Annual World
Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2013.
40
Grigsby, William J. 2002. “Subsistence and Land Tenure in the Sahel.” Agriculture and Human Values 19 (2): 151–
64.
41
For a parallel finding related to climate services, see Carr, Edward R, Sheila Onzere, Tshibangu Kalala, Kwame N
Owusu-Daaku, and Helen Rosko. 2015. Assessing Mali’s l'Agence Nationale de La Météorologie's (Mali Meteo)
23
Category 4: Enabling Environment (Markets, Institutions, and Policy)
Within the literature, factors related to the enabling environment were found to have a high
impact on CSA adoption. Institutional relations have a high impact on CSA adoption.
Smallholder farmers may look to the state for at least three important functions: 1) the provision
of public goods and services such as health, education, information, and infrastructure; 2) a
source of risk management through disaster relief and social safety nets; and 3) insurance of a
stable and fair set of rules for governing a market economy. In much of sub-Saharan Africa,
however, the ability of the state to deliver these functions is limited.42
Paradoxically, local natural resource conflicts seem to be facilitators of the adoption of new
strategies. Particularly true of ‘soft’ strategies, such as Local Conventions, conflicts over natural
resources can create opportunities for the establishment of new rules of the game.
Why did land tenure not emerge as a high factor influencing adoption?
For similar reasons as detailed above for gender, as a cross-cutting issue, tenure only shows up
as having a medium impact on adoption even though it is a central pillar of development. Land
tenure defines how property rights are to be allocated within societies, how these rights can be
used and transferred, and under what conditions. Land tenure may be well defined and
enforceable in a formal court or informally applied through customary structures in a
community.43 Only 10 percent of rural land in Sub-Saharan Africa is formally registered, while
the majority of land is undocumented and vulnerable to land grabs and expropriation.44
Smallholders may be able to cultivate land but are unable to rent, sell, or use it as collateral.
Their rights to the land may be limited because informal rights are not recognized by authorities,
smallholder farmers can’t afford paperwork and administrative costs, or simply because they are
unaware of their rights.45
Even in settings where informal tenure is relatively secure, land tenure may be uncertain for
particular groups, especially for women who must access land through men in their households
or extended families, creating a disincentive for investment in agricultural improvements,
including overall CSA.46 In cases where little upfront investment is needed, secure land tenure
may not impact the adoption of CSA. However, where there is a significant upfront capital
investment (i.e. purchasing seedlings to start agroforestry) or labor investment (i.e. terracing),
tenure security becomes a key factor. As such, farmers are less likely to invest in CSA if they
have less certainty that they will be able to directly benefit from their effort.47
42
Acemoglu, Daron and James Robinson. 2013. “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty.
43
FAO, What is Land Tenure? http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y4307e/y4307e05.htm.
44
http://allafrica.com/download/resource/main/main/idatcs/00070465:a47aeca2fdbddaa064c23fb0fec0d706.pdf
45 th
USAID. 2014. Land Tenure and Food Security, Presented by Karol Boudreaux on the 18 February 2014.
46
Carr, Edward R. 2008. “Men’s Crops and Women’s Crops: The Importance of Gender to the Understanding of
Agricultural and Development Outcomes in Ghana’s Central Region.” World Development 36 (5): 900–915.
47
USAID. 2015. Land Tenure & Climate-Smart Agriculture, USAID Issue Brief.
24
Part 2. Key Findings from the Technical Expert Interviews
The second component of this study involved interviews with technical experts. The goal of this
component was to 1) triangulate expert opinions with the key findings from the literature review,
and 2) to compare and contrast export opinions across different stakeholder groups (i.e.
government, development partners, private sector, civil society, and research institutes). In-
person or phone interviews were conducted with a wide range of experts using a questionnaire
that was refined and targeted as a result of the literature review. In total, responses from 43
experts were analyzed. To refine and validate the findings from these interviews, a focus group
of Washington D.C. based experts met periodically over the study to discuss progress and
preliminary results.
To add an additional level of analysis from the literature review, which looked at the level of
impact on different factors on adoption, the expert interviews separated out the concepts of
barriers and incentives to adoption. The literature seemed to draw a strong alignment between
barriers and incentives (i.e. if lack of access to finance is a barrier, then the provision of credit
should be an incentive). The assessment team wanted to test the hypothesis that the
amelioration of a barrier would have a measurable positive impact on adoption. Table 4 displays
the highest barriers to adoption disaggregated by expert stakeholder group.
Table 4. Barriers to Adoption of CSA as identified by Technical Experts
Development
Civil Society
Government
Sector (n=2)
Total (n=42)
Categories of
Research
Institutes
factors
Partners
Barriers
Private
influencing
(n=14)
(n=13)
(n=9)
(n=4)
adoption
Long term cost 14% 0% 67% 50% 50% 26%
Initial cost 29% 8% 56% 0% 0% 24%

Economic and Transaction costs 7% 8% 11% 0% 0% 7%
Production
Characteristics Opportunity costs 21% 0% 0% 0% 0% 7%
Size of farm 36% 31% 11% 50% 50% 31%
Access to external inputs 14% 8% 33% 25% 100% 21%

Extension services 14% 8% 22% 25% 100% 19%
Social and
Risk management 14% 15% 11% 25% 50% 17%
Cultural Context
Access to information 64% 8% 33% 0% 50% 33%
Access to markets 7% 15% 11% 0% 0% 10%
Enabling Institutional relations 0% 62% 22% 75% 0% 31%

Environment
(Markets, Subsidies 7% 15% 0% 75% 50% 17%
Institutions, and
Policies) Policy framework 14% 8% 0% 0% 50% 10%
Land rights/tenure 7% 15% 0% 25% 0% 10%

*Underlined quantitative results are those that fall in the upper quartile of the results.
25
The results of the expert interviews seem to align with traditional wisdom that lack of adoption is
mainly due to cost of multiple or any individual strategy or technology, as well as the absence of
information, technologies and training. Overall, 68 percent of respondents noted cost in
general as the greatest barrier to adoption. When broken out by our adoption factors, initial
cost was noted by 24 percent of respondents and long-term cost was noted by 26 percent of
respondents. Access to information was the second most common barrier, noted by 33 percent
of respondents. The farm size (i.e. diseconomies of scale) and institutional relations are the
joint second highest cited barriers, noted by 31 percent of respondents.
Although some stakeholder group sizes are too small for any rigorous statistical comparison,
there are some notable trends between groups. Government stakeholders (n=4) regarded
ineffective subsidies as a major barrier (75 percent), serving only to reinforce political
patronages, while development partners (n=14) only noted this as a barrier 7 percent of the
time. In contrast, development partners noted access to information as the major barrier at 64
percent, while no government stakeholders cited it as a constraint. Civil society (n=9) noted
initial costs and long-term costs as the highest barriers at 56 percent and 67 percent
respectively. In contrast, researchers (n=13) noted institutional relations as the top barrier at
62 percent.
Table 5. Incentives to Adoption of CSA as identified by Technical Experts
Private Sector (n=2)

Research Institutes
Civil Society (n=9)
Government (n=4)
Partners (n=14)
Categories of
Development
factors
Total (n=42)
Incentives
influencing
adoption
(n=13)
Economic and
Production Flexibility 36% 38% 44% 50% 50% 40%
Characteristics
Private sector 29% 15% 33% 0% 50% 24%
Size of farm (Large) 0% 0% 0% 25% 0% 2%
Access to credit 21% 8% 22% 0% 100% 19%

Farmer familiarity with practice 29% 23% 33% 25% 50% 29%
or similar practices
Social and Extension services 14% 8% 11% 50% 50% 17%
Cultural Context Risk management 57% 8% 55% 0% 100% 38%
Local discretionary decision 29% 46% 11% 50% 50% 33%
making
Enabling Access to markets 29% 15% 22% 50% 100% 29%
Environment Institutional relations 57% 46% 67% 50% 100% 57%
(Markets, Secure land rights/tenure 36% 23% 33% 0% 100% 31%
Institutions, and
Subsidies 71% 0% 44% 0% 100% 38%
Policy)
26
Table 5 presents the incentives to adoption
identified by the different expert stakeholder
groups. Institutional relations is the most
commonly-mentioned incentive for CSA
adoption, cited by 57 percent of respondents.
This incentive was highlighted by the two
respondents in the private sector (100 percent)
and most of the nine respondents in civil society
(60 percent). Institutional relations was also
highlighted as a major barrier to CSA adoption,
which suggests that addressing this barrier may
have a direct impact on adoption. The flexibility
of the CSA approach was found to be the
second highest incentive influencing adoption,
cited by 40 percent of respondents. This
suggests that where farmers can choose from a
basket of options, or to switch between choices,
they are more likely to adopt a CSA approach.
The potential for mitigating risk, along with the
provision of subsidies, were the joint third
highest incentives at 38 percent each. This latter
incentive was highlighted most by the private sector (100 percent, n=2) and development
partners (71 percent, n=14). As did institutional relations, subsidies showed up as both a barrier
and an incentive. This suggests that subsidies may be a useful mechanism for facilitating
adoption but are rarely implemented correctly.
While there were many points in this analysis that showed convergence between a stated
barrier and a stated incentive to adoption, it appears that even the expert community has not
fully thought through the relationship between incentives and barriers to CSA uptake. Across
these tables, there is convergence around the potential value of addressing initial costs
(barrier) with subsidies (incentive), access to external inputs (barrier) with subsidies and
access to credit (incentives), and the need to address inadequate extension services
(barrier) with more and better extension (incentive). However, mismatches also occur. For
example, incentives like flexibility and improved local discretionary decision-making are
solutions without a clear problem on the barrier side of the equation. This does not mean these
incentives are invalid, only that the practitioners do not seem to have traced the value of such
incentives back to particular barriers they might address. Similarly, a large percentage identified
secure land tenure as an incentive to adoption without citing it as a barrier, again suggesting
that not all of these experts have systematically thought through why certain incentives work,
and what issues those incentives address.
27
Part 3. Key Findings from the In-Country Farmer Interviews
The third component of this study involved field-level interviews and observations with African
farmers. Two sites in Burkina Faso and two sites in Kenya were selected to provide case
studies of how CSA is being adopted in practice. Site selection was guided by a number of
criteria to present as broad a representation of African CSA as possible: Site selection in each
country was guided by six criteria:
7) Area where multiple CSA technologies and strategies were present and there was
already documented and anticipated climate change impacts,
8) Area that reflects relevant USAID priority programming, namely Feed the Future and
Food for Peace,
9) Potential for value-addition to the literature review,
10) Ease of access,
11) Advice from technical experts, and
12) Areas where our team had significant field experience.
In total, 147 interviews were conducted in Burkina Faso and 81 interviews were conducted in
Kenya (see Table 6) Interviews were complemented by field observations to local government
offices, implementers’ facilities and demonstration plots, local private sector agricultural
operators, farms, and villages.
Table 6: Agro-characteristics of field sites
Site location Climate Average Main crops grown Dates of Total Number of
rainfall study Number of women
interviews interviewed
Kenya
Wote Wet 600mm Maize (82.7 percent) April, 2016 81 48
Beans (79 percent)
Kibwezi Dry <600mm Sorghum (23.5 percent)
Fruit (23.5 percent)
Burkina Faso
Dano Wet Wet 900 – Millet (79.6 percent) May, 2016 147 30
1200 mm Maize (61.2 percent)
Ouahigouya Dry 600 – Sorghum (57.1 percent)
Groundnuts (47.6 percent)
900 mm
Beans (47.6 percent)
Rice (34 percent)
28
Farmers’ perceptions of climate change
Table 7: Climate Perceptions by Study Site
Table 7 shows climate perceptions between the
countries studied. Farmers are aware of changes Increase Increase Increased
in Temp in Rainfall Drought
in overall patterns of temperature and Burkina
precipitation in their lifetimes, and have also Faso 97% 82% 77%
noted changing patterns of climate extremes and (n=147)
variability. Farmers in Burkina Faso and Kenya all
Kenya
reported increases in rising temperatures, as well 99% 95% 91%
(n=81)
as increases in drought and rainfall, depending
on the time of year. Total
98% 86% 82%
(n=228)
One important finding from the interviews is that
while smallholder farmers have awareness that weather patterns are changing, they are
unfamiliar with terminology and root causes of climate change (see Figure 2). This is in spite of
what appears to be much publicity and communication efforts from international and national
levels. The assessment team interviewed farmers link climate change to development projects,
while others believe in trends that run counter to the state of international scientific knowledge
being propagated. Some agree with the general evidence of change but interpret the changes
within the narrative of desertification and not climate change. When asked to talk about what it
will be like twenty years from now, many interviewees drew from the learned narratives of
desertification and said that it will be hotter and drier because of abusive tree cutting and bush
fires and would not be reversed if more trees were not planted. This supports findings from the
literature which suggests that smallholder awareness of climate change, at least anthropogenic
change over long periods of time, is
low.48 This insight has important Figure 2: Farmers’ views of climate change:
implications for understanding farmers’ “Yes I heard about it but I think that program ended
motivations for CSA approaches. last year.” (Kenya)
Without a long-term understanding of “It’s seasonal.” (Kenya)
climate change, from a risk
management perspective, smallholder “Things are getting wetter and cooler.” (Burkina Faso)
adoption decisions regarding CSA are “Things are getting drier and hotter.” (Burkina Faso)
driven almost exclusively by short-term “It’s caused by bushfire and illegal woodcutting.”
risk assessments. This also implies that (Burkina Faso)
CSA programming should build upon
“It’s because people are acting immorally.” (Burkina
the risk management foundations that
Faso)
farmers already have in place.
48
Akponikpe, P.B.I. et al. 2010. Farmers’ perception of Climate Change and Adaptation Strategies in Sub-Sahan
nd
West-Africa. In ICID +1: 2 International Conference: Climate Change, Sustainability and Development in Semi-arid
Regions; Tschakert, P, 2007, Views from the Vulnerable: Understanding climatic and other stressors in the Sahel,
Global Environmental Change, 17 (3-4), 381-396.
29
Farmers’ diversification strategies
In our field sites, and more broadly in large parts of Africa, farmers have very diversified
livelihoods. Activities that build on the processing and sale of agricultural products (such as
alcohol production) and activities that are largely unrelated to agriculture (such as itinerant
labor) are important means to diversify production. In addition, farmers operate diversified
production regimes. These include farming a range of crops, cultivating multiple varieties of the
same crop with traits that control for different climatic or market conditions, and farming crops
for both market sale and subsistence consumption.49 Farmers interviewed in Burkina Faso and
Kenya often had upwards of five annual crops per growing season, a range of perennials, plus
several different types of livestock. This is not unusual in sub-Saharan Africa. This
diversification, as in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, is a risk management and resilience
strategy. Farmers in both sites indicated that agricultural diversification was, in part, an effort to
manage weather and climate-related risk as crops have different characteristics, timing and
rainfall tolerances.
Farmers’ barriers to adoption
In keeping with the analysis of the expert interviews, constraints and incentives were separated.
Table 8 provides the main factors cited by farmers as barriers to CSA adoption. Two data sets
are provided. First, the top factors noted by farmers as a barrier to adoption are presented.
Second, a weighted average of farmers noting factors as either a high, medium, or low impact is
presented.50 This provides for an analysis of not just main barriers faced by farmers but also
how much of an influence that barrier has on adoption.
49
For discussion of African livelihoods and their diversification, see de Haan, Leo J. 2005. How to Research the
Changing Outlines of African Livelihoods. Rotterdam. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/22832/; Ellis, Frank, and M
Kutenguke. 2003. “Livelihoods and Rural Poverty Reduction in Malawi.” World Development 31 (9): 1495–1510.;
Scoones, Ian. 2015. Sustainable Livelihoods and Rural Development: Agrarian Change and Peasant Studies. Rugby,
UK: Practical Action Publishing; Bryceson, Deborah Fahy. 2002. “Multiplex Livelihoods in Rural Africa: Recasting the
Terms and Conditions of Gainful Employment.” Journal of Modern African Studies 40 (1): 1–28.; Bryceson, Deborah
Fahy, C Kay, and J Mooij. 2000. Disappearing Peasantries? Rural Labor in Africa, Asia and Latin America. London:
Intermediate Technology Publications; Bryceson, Deborah Fahy. 2002. “The Scramble in Africa: Reorienting Rural
Livelihoods.” World Development 30 (5): 725–39.
50
To get a meaningful sense of the importance/severity of a barrier or incentive, responses were assigned on an
ordinal scale (0=not a barrier/incentive, 1=low barrier/incentive, 2=medium barrier/incentive, 3=high
barrier/incentive). A weighted average “score” for each barrier, giving an overall sense of the respondents.
30
Table 8: Barriers to CSA adoption as identified by farmers
Percentage of Farmers Noting Weighted Impact of Barriers to
Barrier to Adoption Adoption
Burkina Burkina
Kenya Total Kenya Total
Faso Faso
(n=81) (n=228) (n=81) (n=228)
Categories Factors (n=147) (n=147)
High High High
Initial cost 68% 68% 68%
(2) (2) (2)
Low Medium Low
Flexibility 1% 12% 5%
(0) (1) (0.5)
Labor availability Low Medium Medium
14% 43% 25%
Economic and (lack of) (0.5) (1.5) (1)
Production Size of farm
Characteristics Low Medium Low
(having a small 3% 21% 10%
(0) (1) (0.5)
farm)
Medium High Medium
Access to credit 32% 59% 42%
(1.5) (2) (1.5)
Access to
Low Low Low
external inputs 12% 16% 13%
(0) (0.5) (0)
and infrastructure
Access to Low Medium Medium
13% 35% 21%
Social and Cultural information (0.5) (1.5) (1)
Context Climatic risk / Medium High High
37% 79% 52%
uncertainty (1.5) (2.5) (2)
Access to Low Low Low
30% 38% 33%
markets (0.5) (0.5) (0.5)
Governance
Frameworks
Institutional
(Markets,
relations (lack of Medium Medium Medium
Institutions, and 19% 31% 23%
government (1) (1.5) (1)
Policy)
support)
Initial cost was the most frequently cited barrier to adoption, mentioned by 68 percent of
farmers, with negligible differences between Burkina Faso and Kenya. These farmers also
found it to be not only common, but also a barrier with a high negative impact on adoption
(potentially a driving factor leading to non-adoption). This finding matches the literature review
and the expert interviews.
The second highest factor was climatic risk / uncertainty51 with 52 percent (this figure was
substantially higher in Kenya with 79 percent than Burkina Faso with 37 percent). Interestingly,
paralleling the rates of reporting, farmers in Burkina Faso saw this as a medium barrier to
adoption, while those in Kenya saw climate risk and uncertainty as a high barrier to adoption
(see text box).
51
Climatic risk/uncertainty in this case refers to both intra- and inter-seasonal and intra- and inter-annual issues.
These encompass both weather-related (short-term changes) and climatic (longer-term patterns) dynamics.
31
Perspectives on climatic risk: understanding the disconnect between CSA literature,
experts, and farmers
Issues of climate variability do not emerge in the literature or the responses in the expert
interviews as barriers to CSA adoption but were strongly cited in the farmer surveys. The
explanation for this apparent disconnect may stem from the ways in which the two groups view
climate variability and change and the contribution of CSA to their livelihoods. The literature on
CSA and CSA experts generally think of CSA as inherently addressing issues of climate
change, and therefore, questioning whether or not climate variability and change is a barrier to
adoption seems nonsensical.
The problem with this reasoning is that the CSA literature, and many experts, fail to recognize
that current smallholder agricultural practice is already developed to guard against weather-
related risk, particularly variability in the timing and amount of rainfall. When a new practice is
introduced, if that practice lowers the capacity of farmers to address the immediate risks of
climate variability, the farmers will not adopt it because current variability is too great a risk
(see above for discussion on timeframes). Thus, CSA technologies or strategies addressing
long-term climate change will not be taken up unless they either incorporate existing
approaches aimed at the management of short-term climate risk, or they can replace those
short-term risk management tools with new tools. Additional research is needed across
different field sites in sub-Saharan Africa to better unpack and verify this finding.
Access to credit was the third most-frequently cited barrier, referenced by 42 percent of
respondents (this figure was substantially higher in Kenya with 59 percent than Burkina Faso
with 32 percent). It was weighed as a medium barrier in Burkina Faso and a high barrier in
Kenya. In both countries, farmers saw this as a medium barrier to adoption. Labor availability
(25 percent), institutional relations (23 percent), and access to information (21 percent)
were also noted as barriers. Each of these factors was seen as a medium barrier to adoption by
farmers, suggesting that while these may be common barriers, they may not be the most critical
barriers shaping CSA uptake.
Farmers’ incentives to adoption
Table 9 provides the main factors cited by farmers as incentives to CSA adoption. Two data
sets are provided. First, the top factors noted by farmers that are incentives to adoption are
presented. Second, a weighted average of farmers noting these incentives as either a high,
medium, or low impact is presented. This provides for an analysis of not just main incentives of
farmers but also how much of an influence that incentive has on adoption.
32
Table 9: Incentives to CSA adoption as identified by farmers
Percentage of Farmers Noting Weighted Impact of Incentives to

Incentives to Adoption Adoption
Categories Factors
Burkina Burkina
Faso Kenya Total Faso Kenya Total
(n=147) (n=81) (n=228) (n=147) (n=81) (n=228)
Low Medium Low
Flexibility 0% 20% 7%
(0) (1) (0.5)
High Medium Medium
Access to credit 64% 28% 51%
Economic and (2) (1) (1.5)
Production Access to external
Medium High Medium
Characteristics inputs and 37% 70% 49%
(1.5) (2) (1.5)
infrastructure
Low Medium Low
Farm size (Large) 3% 17% 8%
(0) (1) (0.5)
Risk management Low Low Low
1% 11% 5%
(potential for) (0) (0.5) (0.5)
Asset protection Low Low Low
1% 3% 2%
and insurance (0) (0.5) (0)
Local
Low Medium Low
Social and Cultural discretionary 0% 9% 3%
(0.5) (1) (0.5)
Context decision making
Collective action
and local Low Medium Low
13% 35% 21%
organizational (0.5) (1.5) (0.5)
capacity
Access to Low Medium Medium
16% 43% 25%
information (1) (1.5) (1)
Medium Medium Medium
Access to markets 32% 40% 35%
(1) (1.5) (1)
Enabling
Institutional Medium Medium Medium
Environment 19% 31% 23%
relations (1) (1.5) (1)
(Markets,
Access to Low Low Low
Institutions, and 0% 17% 6%
recourse (0) (0.5) (0.5)
Policy)
Inclusion in Low Medium Low
1% 19% 8%
decision making (0) (1) (0.5)
33
Farmers most frequently cited access to credit (51 percent) as an incentive to CSA adoption,
although there were differences between Burkina Faso and Kenya. Farmers in Burkina Faso
cited access to credit as an incentive 70 percent of the time and saw this as a high incentive,
whereas only 28 percent of farmers in the Kenya sample noted this incentive and when they did,
they saw it as having a medium incentive. This finding is aligned with the barriers noted by
farmers in Table 8, where 32 percent of farmers in Burkina Faso and 59 percent of Kenyan
farmers noted access to credit a barrier, and both saw this as a medium barrier. This strong
alignment suggests that the barrier of access to credit (which itself limits access to inputs and
other needed assets) can be addressed with the proper provision of credit.
Similarly, there was a big difference in the perception of the second-most commonly cited
incentive: access to external inputs and infrastructure. Farmers in Kenya cited this factor 70
percent of the time, seeing it as a high incentive for adoption, compared to 37 percent in Burkina
Faso, who saw it as a medium incentive. Interestingly, access to external inputs and
infrastructure was infrequently cited as a barrier in either Kenya or Burkina Faso. Therefore,
while farmers may represent access to external inputs and infrastructure as an incentive for
CSA uptake, this desire for access may reflect a broader desire for greater access to inputs and
infrastructure, regardless of the CSA component of agriculture. This would explain why neither
group of farmers listed access to inputs and infrastructure as a significant CSA-specific barrier
to the uptake of an agricultural practice, as it is a barrier to all agricultural practice. The case of
greater access to inputs and infrastructure requires greater unpacking to identify the CSA-
specific inputs and infrastructural incentives that might drive adoption.
The third highest incentive was access to markets, which was cited by 32 percent of farmers in
Burkina Faso and 40 percent of farmers in Kenya. While this is very similar to the percentages
of farmers who identified access to markets as a barrier to adoption in both sites, in both cases
this was cited as a low barrier to adoption. Much as with external inputs and infrastructure, it
appears that a wider demand for access to markets transcends CSA-specific interventions and
practices and therefore this response may reflect wider demand for agricultural incentives. This
is unclear and will require greater unpacking to determine the CSA-specific aspects of market
access that serve as incentives for adoption, and whether or not they address the market
barriers to adoption identified by farmers.
In both cases, the data suggests that access to information and addressing institutional relations
might be a larger issue for the Kenyan farmers, and therefore a productive means of enhancing
CSA adoption, while in Burkina Faso such efforts would be aimed at a much less important
barrier, and therefore be likely to have a much smaller impact on adoption.
Farmers’ barriers to adoption disaggregated by sex
Not all farmers in a particular place will have the same roles and responsibilities, and therefore
they will likely perceive different barriers and incentives for the adoption of CSA. While the
particular identities relevant to these roles and responsibilities varies by place and usually
34
engage more than one aspect of identity e.g., gender and seniority or religion and livelihood)52,
the data in this study does not allow for this sort of analysis. However, it is worth disaggregating
the data by gender to explore the degree to which incentives and barriers can vary within a
single population and the need for gender-sensitive CSA interventions. Table 10 displays the
response rates of farmers identifying barriers to adoption of CSA approaches, disaggregated by
sex and study site. While overall trends remain the same as shown in Table 8, women and men
differ in their assessments of constraints and therefore are likely to differ in deciding whether or
not to adopt any given CSA approach.
Overall, the differences between the perceptions of men and women are common enough to
demonstrate that female farmers may perceive or experience barriers differently than male
farmers, which impact their adoption decisions. This finding is broadly commensurate with the
literature on gender and agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. Further, these findings suggest
important contextual differences between the two sites, which means that the identification and
treatment of barriers to CSA adoption must be addressed through programming in a
contextually aware manner. Such awareness includes knowing how past policies, programs,
and interventions impact current CSA adoption both due to the political economy of the place
and the nature of the interventions/CSA approaches themselves.
Table 10: Farmers barriers to CSA adoption

Burkina Faso Kenya
Categories Factors Male Female Male Female

(n=117) (n=30) (n=33) (n=48)
Initial cost 64% 83% 82% 77%

Flexibility 2% 0% 12% 13%
Economic and Labor availability (lack of) 21% 10% 42% 35%
Production
Size of farm (small) 3% 3% 12% 19%
Characteristics
Access to credit 32% 33% 70% 52%
Access to external inputs and
13% 7% 24% 19%
infrastructure
Social and Cultural Access to information 9% 30% 33% 29%
Context Climatic risk / uncertainty 34% 47% 61% 73%
Enabling
Access to markets 27% 40% 39% 46%
Environment
(Markets,
Institutions, and Institutional relations (lack of
14% 17% 24% 42%
Policy) government support)
* Underlined quantitative results are those that fall in the upper quartile of the results
52
Carr, Edward R., and Mary C. Thompson. 2014. “Gender and Climate Change Adaptation in Agrarian Settings:
Current Thinking, New Directions, and Research Frontiers.” Geography Compass 8 (3): 182–97.
35
In Burkina Faso, female farmers report initial cost as a barrier to adoption at a significantly
higher rate than male farmers (83.3 percent compared to 64.1 percent in Burkina Faso), while
the reported rates of concern for this barrier are much closer between men and women in the
Kenyan sample (81.8 percent to 77.1 percent). This likely reflects different roles and
responsibilities of women and men in these two contexts with regard to agricultural investment,
and thus creates very different levels of incentives for men and women. This conclusion is
supported by a very similar pattern in the patterns of reporting knowledge as a barrier to
adoption. In Burkina Faso, 30 percent of female farmers in Burkina Faso reported knowledge as
a high barrier compared to 8.5 percent of men, while in Kenya around 30 percent of men and
women reported this factor.
Another example highlighting the two points above is access to credit. For this barrier, the
pattern was reversed. In Burkina Faso, around 30 percent of men and women reported this as a
barrier. However, in Kenya men reported credit as a barrier to adoption more frequently (69.7
percent) than women (52.1 percent), suggesting that 1) access to credit is a larger part of the
agrarian livelihoods in the Kenyan study area, and 2) within those Kenyan livelihoods, women’s
access to credit is somehow different than that of men, perhaps as an outcome of credit
schemes targeted at women smallholders.
Farmers’ incentives to adoption disaggregated by gender
Table 11 displays the response rates of farmers identifying ‘high barriers to adoption’ of CSA
approaches, disaggregated by gender and study site. While the overall trends for all farmers
remain the same as Table 9, there are interesting differences in the response rates.
Table 11: Farmers incentives to CSA adoption

Burkina Faso Kenya
Categories Factors Male Female Male Female
(n=117) (n=30) (n=33) (n=48)
Flexibility 0% 0% 15% 23%
Economic and Access to credit 60% 80% 42% 19%
Production Access to external inputs and
Characteristics 35% 47% 67% 73%
infrastructure
Farm size (Large) 3% 0% 18% 17%
Risk management (potential for) 2% 0% 9% 13%
Asset protection and insurance 1% 3% 6% 2%
Local discretionary decision
Social and Cultural 0% 0% 9% 13%
making
Context
Collective action and local
14% 10% 36% 33%
organizational capacity
Access to information 15% 20% 42% 44%
Enabling Access to markets 27% 50% 46% 35%
Environment Institutional relations n/a n/a n/a n/a
(Markets,
Access to recourse 0% 0% 15% 19%
Institutions, and
Policies) Inclusion in decision making 1% 3% 18% 19%
36
As with barriers, there are clear differences between men and women that, while perhaps not
surprising from the perspective of the literature, serve as important reminders of the role of
identity in shaping the perception and experience of incentives among farmers in a particular
place. Further, there are contextual differences that once again highlight the need for
contextually-aware programming that identifies and leverages such incentives to change rates
of CSA adoption.
Male farmers, for example, report access to credit as an incentive at a significantly higher rate
than women in Kenya, but at a significantly lower rate in Burkina Faso, This reinforces the
conclusion that in the Kenyan sample, credit is much more central to livelihoods than in the
Burkina Faso sample, and that men are somehow more concerned with access to credit in the
Kenyan sample than are women, whether because of the crops they grow, their specific roles
and responsibilities, or the outcomes of previous interventions aimed at providing credit to
women. In contrast, female farmers report access to inputs as an incentive at a higher rate
than men, but on the whole this incentive is mentioned far more often than it is as a barrier.
37
V. LESSONS LEARNED FOR CSA
ADOPTION
This chapter provides a triangulation of common findings and differences across the literature
review, expert interviews, and in-country case studies and offers a narrative explanation for the
root of similarities and discrepancies.
Table 12: List of top factors influencing adoption across all data sources
Barriers Incentives
Literature
Categories Factors Review
Technical Farmer Technical Farmer
Experts Surveys Experts Surveys
Long-term cost High 26% 0% 0% 0%
Initial cost
High 24% 68% 0% 0%
Transaction cost High 7% 0% 0% 0%
Multi-objective High 0% 0% 0% 0%
Flexibility Medium 0% 5% 40% 7%
Economic and Impact on yield 0%
High 0% 0% 0%
Production
Characteristics Opportunity cost Medium 7% 0% 0% 0%
Private sector Low 0% 0% 24% 0%
Size of farm Medium 31% 10% 2% 8%
Access to external inputs & 21%
Medium 13% 0% 49%
infrastructure
Access to credit Medium 0% 42% 19% 51%
Labor availability Medium 0% 25% 0% 0%
Values local knowledge High 0% 0% 0% 0%
Access to information Medium 33% 21% 0% 25%
Farmer familiarity with
Medium 0% 0% 29% 0%
practice or similar practices
Compatibility with existing
High 0% 0% 0% 0%
livelihood system
Social and Risk management High 17% 52% 38% 5%
Cultural Local discretionary
High 0% 0% 33% 3%
Context decision-making
Local social capital Medium 0% 0% 0% 0%
Extension services Medium 19% 0% 0% 0%
Asset protection and
Medium 0% 0% 0% 2%
insurance
Collective action and local
Medium 0% 0% 0% 21%
organizational capacity
Institutional relations High 31% 23% 57% 23%
Conflict High 0% 0% 0% 0%
Policy framework Medium 10% 0% 0% 0%
Enabling
Land tenure Medium 10% 0% 31% 0%
Environment
(Markets, Impact on resilience Medium 0% 0% 0% 0%
Institutions Access to recourse Medium 0% 0% 0% 6%
and Policies) Inclusion in decision
Medium 0% 0% 0% 8%
making
Access to markets Medium 10% 33% 29% 35%
Subsidies Low 17% 0% 38% 0%
38
Economic and Production Characteristics
The first category concerns the economic and production characteristics of CSA approaches.
These are the familiar constraints to the adoption of technologies by farmers that are often
found in the literature. They include cost, familiarity and access to information, flexibility, and
farm size. While the factors themselves are fairly well known, the report helps to identify relative
importance. The list is not comprehensive, but does capture the most commonly reported
barriers.
Unsurprisingly, cost appears to be the greatest factor governing adoption, although
there are significant differences between farmers and the CSA literature / experts on the
impact of initial costs versus long term costs.
As might be expected, cost is often one of the first barriers mentioned in the general agricultural
adoption literature. Our literature review also confirms this is a barrier for CSA. Costs were also
ranked very highly in the expert interviews and farmer surveys. Cost has many dimensions that
require disaggregation, if we are to address them appropriately in development programming.
The review identified initial costs, long-term costs, and transaction costs as key factors of
adoption.
Initial costs were the top barrier identified in the farmer surveys, cited by 68 percent of farmers.
Approaches that come with high initial costs, such as equipment, inputs and services (as in the
case of Conservation Agriculture) require access to credit or subsidies to encourage farmer
adoption. These resources are often absent or not well linked to CSA interventions. Long-term
costs were cited as barriers to adoption in the literature and expert interviews, but interestingly
did not emerge as a top constraint by farmers. Given the typical temporal frame of farmer
decisions (usually seasonal), this finding makes a great deal of sense. Farmers are most
concerned with the immediate costs facing their livelihoods in the short term, over planning for
long-term shifts.
Some approaches seem to neglect or to under-estimate transaction and opportunity costs,
failing to recognize that farmers have diverse livelihoods and other demands on their time and
resources. These costs seem significant for many specific CSA approaches, such as Climate
Smart Villages and Payment for Environmental Services. On the other hand, it appears that
Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration, with its reliance on familiar practices, flexibility and
local organizations and tenure regimes, has low local transaction costs, which seems to be a
large factor in its adoption.
Access to credit and accessing external inputs and infrastructure is noted as a factor of
adoption by all three data sources but may be underestimated by the CSA literature and
technical experts.
Supporting the results that show costs as prominent barrier to adoption are complementary
findings on access to credit. In our farmer surveys, access to credit was the second highest
barrier to adoption (42 percent), and the highest ranked incentive to CSA adoption (51 percent).
Access to credit was found to be have a medium impact on adoption and was cited by 19
39
percent of experts as an incentive to adoption. This suggests that while the common narrative is
aware of the importance of finance, it may be underestimating its impact.
Access to credit helps farmers overcome the initial costs that the adoption of CSA practices
demands. It is important to note that for effective adoption, access to credit also needs to be
sustained and reliable over a long period of time. This allows farmers to fully realize the benefits
of CSA adoption and pay off their financial obligations. Strong credit systems also help mitigate
long-term, transactional and opportunity costs, which can force farmers into dis-adoption. In the
Burkina Faso case study, farmers stated that a more accessible local bank would serve as a
high incentive in adopting CSA practices. Having a local brick-and-mortar financial institution, or
even some kind of mobile-money service helps facilitate continued access to credit and lowers
their transportation cost and time (transactional and opportunity costs), allowing farmers to
spend more time and resources increasing their resilience and productivity.
Similarly, access to external inputs and infrastructure featured strongly as a factor affecting
adoption throughout the research, cited as a medium factor in the literature review and as an
incentive by 21 percent of experts interviewed. Among incentives to CSA adoption discussed in
the farmer interviews, access to external inputs and infrastructure scored second highest (49
percent), following access to credit. Lack of access to external inputs and infrastructure can
drastically increase the cost of the necessary materials and tools, stopping poor farmers from
adopting practices or disincentivizing adoption for farmers with higher levels of capital and
resources. Where key inputs or infrastructure are just not available, the option for adoption of
certain input-heavy CSA practices, such as Integrated Water Resource Management or
Climate-Smart Rice Production is removed entirely. In both Kenya and Burkina Faso, farmers
responded that various forms of increased access (through greater availability, government
subsidies, and / or reduced prices) to the proper inputs, specifically fertilizers and pesticides,
would serve as a great incentive to the adoption of CSA practices.
Farm size may have an impact on adoption of certain CSA approaches, but may be less
important than commonly believed.
The small size of farms in Africa appears to be a constraint to agricultural development in
general and therefore to CSA. Small farms lack economies of scale, making larger investments
difficult. Further, their negotiating position within markets is weaker. Farm size was highlighted
as a major constraint to adoption in the literature review, and this was supported by our expert
interviews. In contrast, it seemed to be less of a concern during our farmer interviews, with only
10 percent of farmers believing farm size was a constraint to adoption.
Critical to addressing size constraints is some type of collective action, and this often comes
with costs (transaction and opportunity) and requires a significant understanding of the local
social context in which this collective action takes shape. Approaches like Conservation
Agriculture seem to require larger holdings to generate outcomes that promote the sustained
adoption of this approach, which may constrain adoption by additional farmers, whereas
approaches that mitigate the constraints of small size seem to have better adoption rates.
Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration, for example, requires minimal upfront investment and
40
its input packages are capable of being downscaled to small plots, allowing for the cost of this
investment to be scaled to the size of the farm.
Social and Cultural Context

Just as important as ensuring the economic feasibility of CSA approaches is ensuring that these
approaches are aligned to the broader social and cultural aspects relevant to livelihood
decision-making. As developed throughout this report, farmers understand CSA through their
own formal and informal systems and norms that govern factors such as labor, gender, identity,
and beliefs.
Farmer familiarity and access to information are key factors to farmer adoption.
Taken together, findings emphasize the importance of linkages between climate smart
approaches and established practice in CSA adoption. The literature review pointed towards
farmer familiarity as a key factor of adoption, and experts interviewed (27 percent) mention that
valuing local knowledge is important.
The case study also point to lack of information is a critical constraint. Farmer responses show
us that 25.4 percent of farmers believe that access to information positively affects CSA
adoption, and 20.6 percent believe that the lack of information negatively affects adoption of
CSA approaches. This was reinforced by the expert interviews, which mentioned information as
the second most important barrier to adoption after cost (33 percent). Women often face greater
constraints in accessing information than their male
counterparts, as a result gendered constraints in
terms of literacy and access to mobile “I blame increased commercializa-
53
technologies. tion for fragility. Thirty years ago we
were told that sorghum was a poor
CSA approaches and practices that reduce risk man’s crop, that we should plant
and improve resilience are likely to have maize, plow in straight lines, clean
greater adoption by smallholder farmers, but our fields and take trees out of our
risk and resilience must be understood in the fields. We did that. Now we are
context of existing livelihood and social being told that we need to move to
systems. more drought resistant crops like
sorghum, that we shouldn’t plow –
Most agrarian livelihoods systems in sub-Saharan minimum tillage, that we should
Africa are framed around the avoidance of plant trees, that we should go back
catastrophic risk, such as monsoon failure in West to the mulching techniques we used
Africa during large El Niño events.54 Formal risk traditionally.”
management mechanisms are less well developed,
- Discussion with a local government
forcing smallholder farmers to manage their own
environmental officer in Kenya
risks through their household agricultural and
livelihoods strategies. Across the board, risk
53
Antonio, A and David Tuffley. 2014. The Gender Digital Divide in Developing Countries.
54
Carr, Edward R. 2011. Delivering Development: Globalization’s Shoreline and the Road to a Sustainable Future.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
41
management was found to be crucial for adoption of CSA approaches. It emerged as a high
adoption factor in the literature review and was cited by 38 percent of technical experts as an
incentive to adoption. This was also reinforced by the farmer surveys.
While the literature review noted a range of risks, including biophysical, market, and institutional,
technical experts commonly referenced market risk as a constraint to adoption. Diversification is
critical strategy for mitigating market risk.55 Farmers in Kenya indicated they cultivated a
diversity of crops because they were not sure what the crop prices would be at the end of the
growing season. By diversifying, they were hoping to get a least one crop that had a good price
that year. Similarly, farmers surveyed in Burkina Faso farm short-cycle grains and groundnuts in
an effort to gain a harvest during the hungry season, when prices for these crops are highest.
CSA approaches that do not explicitly recognize and build on existing risk management efforts,
or include some form of new risk management tools or opportunities to replace those that might
be impacted by the intervention, are less likely to be adopted.
Somewhat surprisingly, 52 percent of farmers noted climatic risk as a factor impacting CSA
adoption. While a focus on climatic this may seem counterintuitive, as explained earlier in this
report, farmers do not have a robust understanding of the terminology and root causes of
climate change and thus climatic uncertainty limits all investment decisions, even if these
decisions could help mitigate this uncertainty. Interestingly, the case study interviews found that
most farmers (95 percent) did not see offerings of asset protection and insurance as incentives
to adopt CSA approaches, possibly due to distrust of institutions that would offer such services.
This finding requires greater attention in the future to identify the causes of the low rate of
interest in asset protection, and how that relates to high rates of concern for risk management
and resilience among these same farmers.
Finally, to design effective CSA interventions, we must understand the ways in which they relate
to existing livelihood and social systems. Production plays an important role in this wide framing
of resilience, but increased production alone does not always increase resilience. In southern
Ghana, for example, men are expected to earn more money than their wives. Failure to do so
can result in men losing social status, which in turn can result in diminished access to
agricultural land. Allowing women to farm even slightly increased areas of land would
dramatically boost household food production and income, but at the risk of allowing women to
earn more than their husbands. Empirical data across three agricultural seasons demonstrates
that when such income thresholds were approached, men pulled back the amount of land their
wives were allotted. While this ensured that men would maintain social status in the community,
it also reduced the amount of food and money available to these households.56 In this case, a
change in agricultural practice that, by improving women’s production or incomes, might
increase resilience for the entire household is unlikely to be adopted because of the ways in
which it would challenge the stability of the social order and attract sanctions.
55
FAO. 2008. Managing Risk in Farming – Farm Management Extension Guide.
56
Carr, Edward R. 2011. Delivering Development: Globalization’s Shoreline and the Road to a Sustainable Future.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
42
Enabling Environment (Markets, Institutions, and Policy)
This category of factors deals with the larger issues of market and institutional constraints. This
category goes beyond the technological and economic field-level factors to address the formal
and informal “rules of the game” that make it difficult for smallholder farmers to invest in and
adopt CSA approaches. For markets, these factors go beyond physical access to markets and
information, for example, to underline the pervasive issues of market allocation, information
manipulation, collusion, monopsonies and monopolies. In terms of institutional failure, the
factors go beyond the classical lack of extension and lack of inputs to include lack of contract
enforcement, lack of appropriate means of recourse, nonexistent risk management and social
protection programs, and corruption and patronage in farm subsidies and other state programs.
These market and institutional constraints discourage production and stifle the adoption of CSA
approaches.
Agricultural markets do not present a level playing field for smallholder farmers.
Customer demand is cited as a positive force in influencing the adoption of technology, as
farmers with the ability to market and increase incomes have a strong incentive to adopt
technologies that increase production. However, smallholder farmers face considerable
challenges in the market and often perceive the market to be a source of risk, unpredictable and
often operating to their disadvantage. Access to markets featured as a factor shaping CSA
uptake across the study, cited in our expert interviews primarily as an incentive to adoption (29
percent). Results from the case study echo this, with farmers seeing proper access to markets
as an incentive (35 percent) to adoption, and lack of access to markets as a barrier (33
percent).
There are several well-known challenges associated with markets that farmers face. One that is
often cited is that of physical access to markets.57 Rural farmers in Africa live in areas where
transportation infrastructure is very limited and unreliable. This increases the cost of getting
production to market and contributes to the loss of crops due to spoilage, forcing farmers to
seek higher margins to compensate. Women often face greater challenges in accessing
markets than men, particularly when it comes to cross-border trade.58
Another well-documented problem is access to market information.59 Information asymmetries,
with the farmer consistently on the poor information side, means that farmers are at a
negotiating disadvantage relative to middlemen and buyers that cuts into profit margins. As with
weak transportation systems, such loss of margins serves as a disincentive to increase
production and market engagement. Market information systems have been designed and
implemented that at least partially address this problem.
57
Brookings Institute. 2013. Building Opportunities: Addressing Africa’s Lack of Infrastructure.
58
USAID. 2012. Women in Cross-Border Trade, Enabling Agricultural Trade Project Policy Brief.
59
FAO. 2013. Smallholder Integration in Changing Food Markets.
43
Price spikes are another well-known and well-described
issue.60 Prices for agricultural commodities can change
Running in place:
dramatically and for reasons well beyond the control of
”The kind of problems we now
African farmers. The highly integrated global food system
have with farming here [in Wote]
distributes the impact of production-related stresses and
can be compared to a runner
shocks across a global market, thus minimizing the acute who is stuck at one point, not
effects of such issues across the system. Normal volatility making any progress. We have a
in prices does not result in undue stress on producers (at lot of technologies, and when we
least as measured in the rate of food-price related have had good rains, we produce
conflict), but price spikes are deeply problematic and can enough for consumption and
result in conflict within communities and even countries.61 sale… but the prices are so low
that we make nothing. We are
When farmers talk about the market, however, a whole not moving forward anymore,
range of additional issues come up. In some instances and any slight push like
they describe the market process as “throwing away their prolonged dry periods will take us
production”. They encounter on a regular or frequent backwards to where we started.”
basis low prices because of the need to sell urgently for - Julius Sila Mwangangi, Mulani
an emergency, the breach of contract by buyers, collusion village, Wote, Kenya
among buyers, control of the physical space of markets,
and corruption and patronage in subsidies. These events
can seem sporadic and infrequent but they are part of a
pattern that inhibits farmers from engaging in activities that would otherwise be profitable.
Farmers’ cash needs oblige them to enter the market, but since these institutions are extractive
they discount their returns very steeply, as the return on any investment must be high in order to
compensate for the risks involved. For example, the assessment team encountered a farmers’
group in Kenya that lost $22,000 through breach of contract with a buyer. The group now must
spread this cost over all additional market interactions. Approaches that increase production
above subsistence must have tremendous rates of return in order to compensate for the risk of
market failures to be attractive. Few approaches can meet this high bar. As a result, farmers
feel that their production has little market value, and thus they tend to devalue market
engagement.
Adoption is significantly constrained by dysfunctional government institutions.
Institutional relations was highlighted as a key factor to CSA Adoption across all of our research
fields, ranking high in the literature review and seen as a barrier and incentive to CSA adoption
in our farmer interviews (23 percent for both). Experts felt strongly about the importance of
institutional relations in CSA adoption, with 31 percent viewing it as a key barrier and 57 percent
stating that institutional relations were a strong incentive to farmer adoption, making it the
highest mentioned factor among incentives in the expert interviews.
60
Oversees Development Institute. 2013. Looking Back, Peering Forward – What has been Learned from the Food-
Price Spike of 2007-2008.
61
Bellemare, Mark F. 2015. “Rising Food Prices, Food Price Volatility, and Social Unrest”, American Journal of
Agricultural Economics.
44
Farmers’ perceptions and relationships with the state influence their behavior, including
investment and adoption of improved techniques. Critically, farmers often see the state and its
institutions as not only failing to address risk management, but actually being an important
source of risk for some farmers. Farmers do not know if inputs will be available on time and at
what price. They are fairly certain that they will get little advice, particularly on their staple crops.
If they have a contractual or agreement issue with a buyer or provider, they have little
confidence that state institutions will intervene.
In both the Kenyan and Burkina Faso sites, for example, farmers viewed the state as largely
absent. While there is evidence of extension support for some export crops such as cotton,
extension services for staple crops is lacking, extension staff are often poorly trained, poorly
equipped and unable to visit farmers on a regular and useful basis. When extension does exist,
it is often repetitive and unresponsive to actual need and demand. Extension services, such as
plowing in rows, are sometimes done year after year whether the farmers have understood and
adopted it or not. This ineffectiveness limits the long-term benefits of CSA approaches, thus
providing a significant risk of dis-adoption.
Removing bad policy is more important than making new policy
It was somewhat surprising across the literature review, expert interviews, and field studies that
new policy or CSA specific policy was not regarded as a major factor in the adoption of CSA
practice. Policy was only regarded as a constraint to adoption by ten percent of our expert
interviews. This may be because policy frameworks in general are weak, especially in sub-
Saharan Africa, and there is little relationship between policy and practice. Given the tenuous
connection of the state to those in many rural areas, the question of the influence of policy on
agricultural approaches may be moot because there is little governmental infrastructure to
convert these policies into practice. However, in some sectors impacting agrarian livelihoods
there is evidence for the negative impact of bad policies, suggesting they might impact CSA
adoption. For example, the rescinding of restrictive and prescriptive policies on tree and forest
management (and its implementation) in the early 1980s in the Sahel, for example, seems to
have allowed local initiatives and approaches to flower and facilitated the adoption of Farmer
Managed Natural Regeneration. There may be lessons here for types of policy approaches in
general (enabling versus prescriptive) within the push to develop national CSA policies and
frameworks. There also seems to be a plethora of overly prescriptive CSA policy development,
such as requiring conservation farming, which is largely ineffective or have perverse effects.
Land tenure is identified as a medium impact factor to CSA adoption in the literature; however, it
was only cited by less than 10 percent of farmers in the case study (with women farmers three
timed as concerned about tenure than men). This reflects the differential impact of traditional
land tenure systems on women and men, where generally men control access to agricultural
land and women must access it through husbands or other male members of their families.
Therefore, while men might have some concerns for more secure tenure, women will be the
members of a community who most acutely feel the impacts of their insecure tenure, and will
have that insecurity most clearly manifest in their decisions to take up CSA interventions.
45
VI. PROGRAMMATIC
RECOMMENDATIONS
This report conducted a rigorous and systematic analysis of existing evidence for the factors
shaping the adoption of a climate-smart approach to agriculture, with a view to providing
recommendations for USAID and other implementers of CSA programming. This assessment
includes three main approaches to information gathering and analysis. Initially, a (1) literature
review was undertaken to better understand the state of knowledge on the adoption of CSA and
narrow the range of research from a wide universe of approaches to a manageable number of
representative approaches. This was followed by (2) interviews with technical experts to capture
the current state of knowledge from those programming and implementing CSA in the field.
Finally, (3) fieldwork was carried out in two countries by local teams in order to get perspectives
directly from farmers, as well as from national officials and experts.
Through the qualitative triangulation of the data gathered through these three efforts, the
assessment was able to identify the most common factors shaping the adoption of CSA across
the representative approaches surveyed in this report (see Section V). These factors are divided
into three categories: economic factors, social and cultural factors, and market and institutional
factors. Economic factors are the most commonly understood factors shaping CSA adoption,
and include initial cost, long-term cost, transactions cost, flexibility of the approach, and multi-
objectivity. Social and cultural factors go beyond production and economic perspectives to
understand the often unseen, socially embedded opportunities and constraints for farmers that
shape their CSA uptake. These include farmer familiarity with particular technologies and
strategies, the ways in which those leverage and reference local agricultural knowledge, the
roles and responsibilities associated with identity (including, but not limited to, gender), and the
ways in which a CSA approach impacts existing means by which farmers mitigate different risks
in their livelihoods. Enabling environment factors address the broader formal and informal
‘rules of the game’ that make it difficult for smallholder farmers to invest in and adopt CSA.
This section builds on this analysis to provide programmatic recommendations to USAID and
other CSA implementers on how to increase the adoption of CSA in Africa. Using the USAID
Climate Resilient Development framework62, it is structured around five distinct phases: 1)
Scope, 2) Assess, 3) Design, 4) Implement and Manage, and 5) Evaluate and Adjust (see
Figure 3).
62
USAID Global Climate Change Office. 2014. “Climate-Resilient Development. A Framework for Understanding
and Addressing Climate Change,” March: 1–40. http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pbaaa245.pdf.
46
Figure 3: USAID’s Climate-Resilient Development Framework
Phase I: Scope
The first step is in deciding to provide programmatic support to promote CSA as an approach is
to define the scope of the problem. This requires establishing the development context (that is,
the context into which agriculture fits) and assesses the vulnerability of the development goal of
the target population to various stressors, climate and non-climate, that may put key inputs or
enabling conditions for these goals at risk. Criteria for defining the scope of the problem are
47
included in Table 13 below. This step is critical to establish not just the context around a focal
geographic area but also determine the extent of need for a CSA approach within development
efforts.
Table 13: Criteria for defining the scope of the problem
Category Key Questions
Geographic area How large is the area to be addressed, how well connected is it to markets
and other resources?
Primary objective(s)/development Productivity, income generation, food security, resilience, and/or climate
goals change mitigation)
The characteristics of the primary What is the size and composition of the population in the area, what are the
beneficiaries most common livelihoods activities associated with this population and how
do they differ between women and men, what are the trends in population
size, composition, and income at the community and household levels, and
what are the gender dynamics within the composition and income trends?
Climatic conditions, including What sorts of activities are possible under the climatic regime, what
shocks and stressors climate-related shocks and stressors affect agriculture in the area?
Non-climatic shocks and stressors What sorts are activities are possible under current non-climatic shocks
and stressors (such as crime and violence, lack of enforcement of
regulations, pollution, economic shocks)
Available financial and technical What sort of support is possible to launch an intervention, and for how
resources available for the program long?
Available CSA approaches What are the available CSA approaches that have the potential to address
the site-specific climate stressors?
Phase 2: Assess
If Phase 1 determined that CSA programming is critical for development, the next step is to
identify the sources of vulnerability identified in the scoping stage. For example, if farmers are
concerned with low farm incomes, the assess phase considers if the cause of such low incomes
was constraints on production, access to markets or other forms of uncertainty. This, in turn will
enable the design and implementation of interventions in Phase 3. Criteria for defining the
scope of the problem are included in Table 14 below.
Table 14: Criteria for assessing the causes of identified problems problem
Criteria Key Questions
By what means can we learn about What methodologies are available to identify root causes? What are their
root causes? relative strengths and weaknesses? What information can each
methodology yield?
Root cause of problem What is the underlying driver/drivers of the problem identified under
scoping?
Social context of the problem Who identifies this issue as a problem? How does this identification
proceed from their locally-specific roles and responsibilities?
48
Phase 3: Designing and implementing sustainable interventions to support
CSA adoption.
Assuming that there are specific and/or bundled CSA technologies and strategies that might
address the key sources of vulnerability to lives and livelihoods in the target population, a
careful design process can help to maximize the adoption and impact of CSA. The
recommendations are grouped to reflect the three categories of factors found to have the
highest impact on CSA adoption: economic factors, social and cultural factors, and market and
institutional factors. While these recommendations focus on adoption and not scaling of
particular approaches, any exercise in scaling is inherently a question of adoption, and therefore
the issues addressed in this phase of the project will carry over into any future scale-up efforts.
3.1 Program design interventions to improve economic feasibility of a CSA
approach.
The first set of recommendations addresses the locally specific constraints that impact the
economic feasibility of a CSA approach. This report highlighted the strong impact that factors
such as initial cost, long-term cost, and compatibility with existing livelihoods have on CSA
adoption. As such, interventions that can positively impact these factors will increase the
adoption of the CSA approach. These interventions have a programmatic advantage in that they
can be targeted to remove specific barriers in specific places, with measureable impact. To
ensure the design process takes these factors into account, we suggest the following questions
be answered:
Table 15: Assessing the economic feasibility
Key question Yes/No
Is there an evidence-base that this approach can address a critical need?
Is the approach realistically affordable for smallholders?
Are there short-term benefits to adoption that outweigh the cost of adoption?
Are there long-term benefits to adoption that outweigh ongoing transaction costs?
Is there flexibility in the approach (i.e. can it be partially adopted, adopted over time, or adopted on
only part of a producer’s land)?
Is the approach scalable to a large number of smallholder farmers once it has been piloted?
The questionnaire above highlights potential key barriers and critical incentives for CSA
adoption that should be integrated into CSA programming. The findings of this report suggest a
number of ways to address economic barriers or create economic incentives for CSA adoption.
Overcome high initial costs to CSA adoption by 1) ensuring access to appropriate
financial mechanisms and 2) using an approach that guarantees short-term benefits.
There was a clear consensus across the different data gathered by this report that initial and
cost is a significant barrier to CSA adoption and sustainability. As such, efforts to boost CSA
adoption by addressing these barriers should consider interventions (or a portfolio of
interventions) that couple short and long-term benefits. In addition, projects should consider
financial mechanisms as an important component of their CSA interventions. Appropriate
49
mechanisms will vary by context, and implementers will have to identify those most appropriate
for their project by engaging any of a number of organizations and projects involved in providing
financing for CSA. One useful place to research innovative models for CSA financing is the
Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance.63 The Climate Finance Lab screens proposals from
around the world to identify instruments that have the potential to drive investment in developing
countries at scale. It includes partners from governments including the U.S., pension funds,
investment banks, and development finance institutions.
Provide extension support to ensure benefits from CSA overcome long-term costs.
The majority of common climate-smart technologies and strategies require implementation
training or advice for farmers. A common failing of development assistance in CSA promotion is
that, given the short funding cycle of projects, extension support has often focused on initial
start-up or installation support. The USAID Partnering for Innovation project, for example,
worked with Netafim in Kenya to provide technical assistance to install and use drip irrigation
systems, but no long-term technical assistance was provided on how to better grow crops within
this system.64 This is a problem because sustained adoption of CSA is dependent on ensuring
that the long-term benefits to the farmer exceed the long-term cost. Accordingly, any support for
the introduction of any new individual or portfolio of CSA technologies and strategies needs to
be tied to ongoing technical assistance to ensure that farmers are maximizing the efficiency of
the system through the application of good agricultural practices.
In resource-constrained environments such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, the adoption and
scaling of a CSA approach requires reaching a large number of farmers to maximize the impact
of funding spent on training and extension, or the willingness to create structures to organize the
farmers into smaller, more accessible groups. This can be costly. In achieving this scale, it may
be easier to partner with actors who have already put structures in place, rather than starting
from scratch. Possible partners could include large agribusinesses, input suppliers, NGOs, or
government extension programs. The assistance provided must carefully consider the needs of
different farmers, in terms of their identities and/or their locations. Whether donor-financed, or
supported by other entities, any program of support must be sustainably financed to ensure this
outreach continues to be delivered over time.
Support farmer awareness and access to information through demonstration plots and
the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICTs).
Farmer familiarity and access to information were highlighted as highly important adoption
factors across the literature review, expert interviews, and farmer interviews. Farmer
awareness, such as through on-farm demonstration plots, can be an integral element in scaling
CSA approaches, practices and technologies. In Nepal, for example, the performance in
demonstration plots was found to be the key reason for the interest of farmers, many of which
had initially withdrawn from CSA training programs.65 The rise of ICTs in Africa also offers many
63
http://climatefinancelab.org/
64
Fintrac. 2016. Drip Irrigation Technologies: Lessons Learned when Working with Smallholders, Food Analytics
Briefing Series.
65
https://www.feedthefuture.gov/article/farmers-increase-food-security-climate-smart-agriculture-methods.
50
important avenues for boosting CSA adoption through access to information. ICTs can provide a
range of different information services, including market prices, weather information, financial
services, advisory services for agricultural extension, and early warning systems for disaster
prevention. In Senegal, for example, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-
Arid Tropics and the national meteorological agency are providing seasonal rainfall and long-
term weather forecasts to over seven million people.66
However, it is important to remember, as demonstrated above, that different farmers will have
different barriers and incentives to CSA adoption, both in terms of the roles and responsibilities
associated with their identity, and across contexts. As recent work on the design and evaluation
of climate services has shown, the provision and use of agricultural information is unequal,
particularly with respect to gender, and can even reinforce existing inequalities within a
household, community, or state. Therefore, the use of innovative communications technologies
must be attentive to existing information flow and the causes of those patterns of flow, before
identifying means of communicating with farmers.
Phase 3.2: Support interventions to address social and cultural factors affecting
CSA adoption.
Just as important as ensuring the economic feasibility of a CSA program is to ensure that the
portfolio of strategies and technologies within are aligned to the broader social and cultural
contexts of livelihood decision-making. These contexts can often present hidden barriers to
adoption, such as social roles or responsibilities. If these contexts are challenged or changed,
sanctions could result for those farmers who defy expectations and adopt a new practice. To
identify such barriers, and to identify an appropriate CSA portfolio and implement it in a manner
that addresses such barriers, we recommend answering the following questions:
Table 16: Assessing the social and cultural feasibility
Key question Yes/No
Is the approach compatible with local customs, social norms and traditions?
Does the approach promote farmer autonomy and independence (i.e. non-reliance on
development assistance, external inputs, or ongoing financial support)?
Does the approach enhance risk and resilience among smallholders?
Once these questions have been answered, and barriers and incentives identified, the data
collected in this study suggests a number of possible design strategies that will maximize the
uptake of CSA interventions.
Align CSA programming with the local culture, social norms and traditions.
This report shows that farmers’ understanding of specific CSA technologies and strategies
within their own cultural context is a key determinant in CSA adoption. For example, the
Training-the-Trainers program of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change and Food
Security (CCAFS) trained a core group of elected women who then took the message to more
than 1500 additional women across India. As the women trainers knew what the other women
66
CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security, 2015, Reaching More Farmers:
Innovative Approaches to Scaling Up Climate-smart Agriculture.
51
could work on, they were able to convey this information in a manner that was understood
clearly, in this case by turning it into songs, as that is how many of the women conveyed,
shared and remembered important information.67
Ongoing USAID work on climate service design and provision employs an innovative livelihoods
approach to assess local livelihoods decision-making structures and better understand how a
given intervention will/will not fit into existing practices and structures.68 Practices which are
closely aligned with local structures and culture are likely to be quickly adopted but less likely to
have a transformative effect on agriculture and livelihoods as they largely reinforce existing
structures. Transformative interventions, on the other hand, may encounter high barriers to
acceptance as they call into question existing social, economic, and power relations, even if
they are likely to provide clear benefits in the short and long term.69 Implementers will have to
weigh carefully their goals (the temporal scale of the challenge to be addressed, short term
versus long term impacts of the intervention, etc.).
Ensure access to risk management tools.
As noted throughout this report, there is a lack of cost-effective, inclusive, and targeted risk
management programs available to farmers in Africa. As a result, their livelihoods, including
agricultural activities, are set up to manage the various shocks and stressors they encounter.
Thus, any attempt to promote a CSA approach must consider the ways in which that the
portfolio of strategies and technologies might disrupt or augment existing risk management
efforts by the farmers in question.
It is important to note here that both the risks and risk management tools used by farmers may
not relate directly to agricultural practice or to weather and climate, as they are managing
multiple stressors through their livelihoods. Therefore, the consideration of disruption needs to
look beyond the farm and the climate if it is to be accurate. If the practice is disruptive of existing
risk management efforts, uptake will be greatly enhanced if it is matched with risk management
or mitigation tools, lest it disrupt existing risk management efforts and leave farmers more
vulnerable to shocks and stresses than they were before the intervention.
One potentially useful tool that may become more readily marketable in the future is index
insurance. Index insurance programs are one potential intervention that can address the
insurance gap in Africa.70 The programs ‘index’ measurable environmental conditions or
production targets (such as rainfall or yields) to insurance payouts. When an index exceeds a
certain threshold, farmers receive a fast payment (sometimes delivered via mobile phones).
This is particularly powerful because it is not prescriptive, and therefore farmers can tailor it to fit
67
CGIAR. 2015. Climate Smart Villages: https://ccafs.cgiar.org/climate-smart-villages#.VgX1IZ2qqko.
68
Such as the work in Carr, Edward R, Sheila Onzere, Tshibangu Kalala, Kwame N Owusu-Daaku, and Helen Rosko.
2015. Assessing Mali’s l'Agence Nationale de La Météorologie's (Mali Meteo) Agrometeorological Advisory
Program: Final Report in the Farmer Use of Advisories and the Implications for Climate Service Design. Washington,
DC; and ongoing work under the Mali Climate Change Adaptation Activity funded by USAID/Mali.
69
Development.” Third World Quarterly 34 (1): 77–108.
70
FAO. 2010. Climate-Smart Agriculture – Policies, Practices and Financing for Food Security and Adaptation.
52
their livelihoods decision-making and particular means of risk management, two major factors
shaping uptake of CSA. In other words, it presents a hedge against risk that allows farmers to
identify other activities, including CSA opportunities, that are now plausible risks and for which
they have resources and interest. One useful resource on index insurance is the Global Index
Insurance Facility (GIIF) run by the World Bank.71 GIIF supports the development and growth of
local markets for index insurance in developing countries, and provides a number of
partnerships, projects, and resources on its website.
3.3. Support interventions to address market and institutional structural barriers
as factors to CSA adoption
As also noted in this report, structural constraints within markets and supporting institutions in
many African countries severely constrain the adoption of CSA. These constraints are not
unique to climate-smartness but instead define and influence the entire food security sector. As
such, addressing these constraints requires an approach that goes beyond the mandate of
being responsive to climate change to create the conditions necessary for agricultural markets
that work for the poor and to build more accountable and inclusive public services. This will
require integrated programming that draws upon wider efforts in democracy and governance,
economic growth, agriculture and food security, and disaster risk reduction. To identify these
issues, we suggest answering the following questions:
Table 17: Assessing the market and institutional feasibility

Key question Yes/No
Does the farmer have credible and legitimate means of mitigating risk in case the approach fails?
Does the approach integrate mechanisms that help farmers deal with market failure and allow for
both market entry and market withdrawal?
Is there complementarity or compatibility between this approach and existing approaches?
Does the institutional environment (both local and national) support, or at the least not constrain,
adoption of the approach?
Does the existing land tenure arrangements support, or at the least not constrain, adoption?
Are financial instruments available?
Are dispute resolution mechanisms present, legitimate, and enforceable?
Once issues related to market and institutional barriers and incentives have been identified, the
data gathered in this report suggests several means of addressing these challenges.
Layer a systems approach onto CSA programming

The market and institutional factors to CSA adoption are not specific to one CSA technology or
strategy or even one value chain. They cut across the whole agricultural sector. As such, the
single-value chain approach that influences so much of Feed the Future programming is too
narrowly focused to address the these factors of adoption. The market systems approach has
been recently promoted by USAID’s Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO) project, which
71
https://www.indexinsuranceforum.org/.
53
can be adapted to CSA72 and overall, a system approach has risen in prominence under the
2017-2021 Global Food Security Strategy.
Support economy-wide good agricultural practices

In Table 18 below, guidelines for agriculture sector reform are developed. These practices are
not presented as direct programmatic recommendations, as there is no one-size-fits-all-solution
to structural change. In addition, as these market and institutional barriers are systemic, these
reforms are not unique for CSA though they are fundamental to unlocking farmer adoption of
CSA.
Reform is a continuous system of change, not a linear process with starting and end points. The
first step to effective and sustainable reform depends on a credible analytical understanding of
the systemic constraints. Two useful methodologies currently utilized by USAID can be helpful
in this regard. The first methodology is the Agribusiness Commercial Legal and Institutional
Reform (AgCLIR) diagnostic. AgCLIR is designed to look at the laws that are in place in the
agricultural sector, who is responsible for implementing them, and what are the cultural and
social dynamics that may prevent these actors from fulfilling their duties. It provides an in-depth
analysis of the key constraints to profitably starting and running an agribusiness and provides
actionable recommendations to remove these constraints.
The second methodology is the Institutional Architecture for Food Security Policy Reform
diagnostic (‘Institutional Architecture’). Institutional Architecture provides a framework for
mapping the institutional landscape, analyzing possible systemic constraints, and highlighting
areas to improve the capacity and performance of the institutions involved in the policy change
process. Six distinct and interrelated components are examined: Guiding Policy Framework,
Policy Development and Coordination, Inclusivity and Stakeholder Consultation, Evidence-
Based Analysis, Policy Implementation; and, Mutual Accountability. Each component has its
own questionnaire and set of indicators, which determines the capacity of a specific component
of the policy change process.
72
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54
Table 18: Guidelines for agriculture sector reform
Investing in more • Help uncover and address the formal and informal barriers to market integration by
inclusive markets small farmers (the cost of doing business);
• Facilitate increased competition to avoid monopsonies and monopolies in the
agriculture sector;
• Help overcome the barriers that women and other marginalized populations face in the
marketplace, for example through improved transportation to market for their crops.
• Develop tools that monitor and increase the transparency of market transactions,
including ICT for agriculture;
• Monitor the development and impact of monopolies and monopsonies in agricultural
markets, both local and at the level of the state and beyond, to ensure farmers can
compete in those markets and get the best possible prices for their crops
Investing in the • Help develop and implement cost-effective and equitable means of enforcement of
socially inclusive agriculture contracts, agreements, regulations and rules;
governance of • Improve the performance of property and procedural rights for small farmers,
agriculture
especially for women.
• Develop and implement cost effective and equitable recourse platforms and
processes, e.g., development of local accountable agriculture ombudsman;
• Strengthen farmers’ rights by supporting the participation of apex groups at national,
regional, and local levels.
• Improve the accountability for public agriculture services, for example by asking for
farmer feedback on the quality and relevance of services provided, making that data
public, and using that data to adjust such services;
• Drive field-level investments and approaches through a bottom up farmer driven
approach.
Conduct further • Further integrate democracy, rights, gender equality, and governance approaches into
research on the agriculture;
political economy of • Better apply and customize the tools and approaches of political economy to improve
agriculture and the the performance of agriculture;
processes to • Create an “observatory” organization that tracks performance of male and female
develop inclusive farmers in the market place for better transparency, enforcement, and monitoring &
agricultural evaluation.
institutions
Improve • Invest in roads, markets and aggregation centers;
infrastructure and • Invest in versatile ICT/”ICERT” development and deployment, using information-
transport systems sharing platforms such as cloud-based GIS;
• Invest in efficient irrigation systems that are more resilient to projected climatic and
hydrological instabilities;
• Invest in precision agriculture, including support ICT infrastructure;
• Invest in gender-inclusive knowledge networks among farming communities,
researchers/practitioners, policy makers, public service providers and donors.
Improve property • Invest in gender-equitable land administration systems;
and access rights • Invest in intellectual property rights systems that, while protecting the intellectual
frameworks property rights do not choke off innovation by farmers and other small actors in the
economy;
• Improve both male and female farmers’ access to decision-making, information, and
collective action through, for example, climate information services that consider the
different needs of different farmers in their target populations, and which deliver
information relevant to that range of needs instead of a single subset.
55
Reinforce locally • Create/reinforce local and gender equitable recourse mechanisms and
responsive ombudsmen;
devolution
• Create/reinforce local capacities and rights over budgets and revenue generation;
• Develop local contract enforcement mechanisms.
Help streamline, • Resist the temptation to develop specific and narrow CSA policies. CSA is a suite
simplify and control of practices that has sweeping impacts on life and livelihoods in agrarian settings
overly restrictive that goes beyond yield, income, and food security. Successful CSA programs will
policies that impact
address the broad benefits of and challenges associated with CSA to ensure its
rural areas
sustainable uptake;
• Link CSA to ecosystem-based adaptation at landscape levels;
• Review economic policies that impact the rural sector and agriculture markets to
identify sites that might favor the formation and activities of monopolies and
monopsonies, and work to contain the influence of both
• Amend policies as needed to improve gender-equality, while working with
communities and governments (especially with women in both) to identify pathways
of social change that are viable and will bring about desired changes.
Phase 4: Implement, Monitor and Evaluate

In this report, we condense the final two steps of the Climate Resilient Development framework
into a single step: Implement, Monitor, and Evaluate. Effective CSA programming requires
understanding not merely if farmers have taken up an approach, but which farmers, to what
end, and with what impact.
Who has taken up a CSA approach, and how many have taken it up?
Any responsible project management will carefully measure the rates of uptake in a target
population and evaluate who is taking up a CSA approach. As CSA is an approach that
encompasses multiple strategies and technologies, adoption for CSA must go beyond
measuring uptake of any one strategy or technology. If uptake is very low,or if it is concentrated
in the hands of a small subset of farmers, it is critical to return to the design stage of the project
and identify the factors producing these outcomes. For example, interventions that only
appearto be taken up by senior men might be one too narrowly focused on a small set of crops
controlled by these men and over which women have no authority or responsibility. Farmers
might add crops to the roster to adjust such an intervention.
To what end have interventions been taken up?
While adoption is an important component of project success, it is critical to understand why
farmers are taking up a specific or the portfolio of climate-smart technologies and strategies. For
example, farmers might adopt not for climate-smart aspects but because a climate-smart
approach improves yield in the short term. Men might adopt a practice not because it has any
tangible agricultural benefit but because it reinforces their status in the community and
household such they can maintain their control over women’s work. Understanding the
motivations behind the uptake of interventions is critical to identifying their likely future impacts
and future conditions under which altered components of a CSA approach might be adopted.
One approach to identifying the motivations for uptake is the Livelihoods as Intimate
56
Government approach73, which has been employed to assess livelihoods decisions and climate
services uptake in several sub-Saharan African contexts74.
What impact have the interventions had?
When discussing impact, there are two major types that must be disaggregated. The first is the
establishment of impact on agricultural and livelihoods outcomes, such as yields, incomes, and
broader framings of resilience and vulnerability. Obtaining such data can be labor intensive, and
must be carefully controlled for the influence of other factors like climate variability or shifts in
markets. Also, it is critically important to measure such impacts against counterfactuals – that is,
if there was no intervention, what would the outcome have been. It may be that CSA
interventions brings no new production to the table, but they strongly buffers production against
shocks and stressors, making agrarian livelihoods more resilient to climate variability and
change and market uncertainty – undoubtedly a positive impact, even without greater yields.
The other area of impact to be considered is behavioral. While the rapid uptake of interventions
is often shaped by their compatibility with existing social structures and livelihoods approaches,
that compatibility can, in some contexts, reinforce practices or behaviors that will not 1) result in
the achievement of development goals, such as gender equality and 2) may not bring about
transformations in practice necessary to manage likely future climate and market regimes.
Therefore, any study of impact should assess the degree to which interventions have impacted
the way members of the target population make agricultural and livelihoods decisions. Work
involving the Livelihoods as Intimate Government approach has already started to address just
such a need in the context of climate services via efforts to establish “behavioral baselines” that
capture agricultural and livelihoods decision-making at the outset of a project, and which can
then be compared to re-assessment data at the end of the project to identify any changes in
decision-making structures that can be associated with the intervention. Such efforts can help
identify the motivations for uptake, as well as the likelihood the inteventions in question will
address projected long-term climate-related challenges to development goals among the target
population. These efforts remain nascent, and are an area into which much greater research is
needed
73
Development.” Third World Quarterly 34 (1): 77–108.
74
Examples of this work include Carr, Edward R, Sheila Onzere, Tshibangu Kalala, Kwame N Owusu-Daaku, and
Helen Rosko. 2015. Assessing Mali’s l'Agence Nationale de La Météorologie's (Mali Meteo) Agrometeorological
Advisory Program: Final Report in the Farmer Use of Advisories and the Implications for Climate Service Design.
Washington, DC.; Carr, Edward R, Grant Fleming, and Tshibangu Kalala. 2015. Assessing Climate Service Needs in
Kaffrine, Senegal: Livelihoods, Identity, and Vulnerability to Climate Variability and Change. Washington, DC; Carr,
Edward R., ed. 2014. Assessing Mali’s Direction National de La Meteorologie Agrometeorological Advisory
Program: Preliminary Report on the Climate Science and Farmer Use. Washington, DC: United States Agency for
International Development; Carr, Edward R, Daniel Abrahams, Arielle T. De la Poterie, Pablo Suarez, and Bettina
Koelle. 2015. “Vulnerability Assessments, Identity and Spatial Scale Challenges in Disaster-Risk Reduction.” Jàmbá:
Journal of Disaster Risk Studies 7 (1): 1–17. doi:10.4102/jamba.v7i1.201.
57
VII. ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS FOR
RESEARCH
1) What is farmer decision-making vis-a-vis uncertain and predatory markets and state
structures? We know that farmers often opt for agricultural and livelihoods approaches that
allow for the withdrawal from markets under conditions of stress and uncertainty,75 but we
know less about the specific conditions in the market they seek to avoid or the best means
by which we might address those conditions so they might capitalize on market advantages
without succumbing to significant market risks.
2) When is incremental change in approaches the best path to climate-smart outcomes,
and when is a larger transformation necessary? We need to better understand how to
assess when working within an existing system and getting quick outcomes is the best
outcome versus those situations where much broader change is necessary, and working
within systems is likely to reinforce existing approaches and social norms, slowing such
change.
3) How do we identify the different groups of relevant actors in a given context to
assess their specific barriers and incentives to CSA adoption? It is clear that starting
from preconceived categories is likely to overlook important contextually specific differences
in a particular population.76 However, only a few cases have started to explore how to
identify such populations after arriving in the field.77 Much more could be done to add new
approaches or efforts that are cost- and time-effective.
4) What are the greatest risks affecting farmers in sub-Saharan Africa today? This is a
deceptively complex question, as it inherently asks, “Which farmers are vulnerable to what?”
which brings identity and geography into the analytic frame. Evidence, while present from
numerous high-quality studies, remains geographically spotty and uneven in its focus on
different social groups, limiting the general lessons that might be drawn from the existing
literature.
75
e.g Scott, James. 2009. “The Art of Not Being Governed an Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia.” New
Haven : Yale University Press; Carr, Edward R. 2011. Delivering Development: Globalization’s Shoreline and the
Road to a Sustainable Future. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
76
Carr, Edward R., and Mary C. Thompson. 2014. “Gender and Climate Change Adaptation in Agrarian Settings:
Current Thinking, New Directions, and Research Frontiers.” Geography Compass 8 (3): 182–97.
77
e.g Carr, Edward R., Grant Fleming, and Tshibangu Kalala. 2016. “Understanding Women’s Needs for Weather
and Climate Information in Agrarian Settings: The Case of Ngetou Maleck, Senegal.” Weather, Climate, and Society
8 (3): 247–64; Onzere, Sheila N, Tshibangu Kalala, Kwame N Owusu-Daaku, and Edward R Carr. 2015. Piloting
Intersectional Gender Assessments in Malawi: Challenges and Lessons Learned. Washington, DC; Carr, Edward R,
Sheila Onzere, Tshibangu Kalala, Kwame N Owusu-Daaku, and Helen Rosko. 2015. Assessing Mali’s l'Agence
Nationale de La Météorologie's (Mali Meteo) Agrometeorological Advisory Program: Final Report in the Farmer Use
of Advisories and the Implications for Climate Service Design. Washington, DC.
58
5) How might a CSA approach be best integrated with other development activities? As
noted throughout this report, CSA programming cannot be stand-alone, and instead much to
integrated across a range of economic, social, and enabling environment approaches.
Further research is needed on how this might be achieved, such that CSA becomes part of
a suite of activities that address the full range of agrarian shocks and stressors and
productively contributes to the resilience of agrarian populations.
6) Why are farmers more concerned with the impact of state dysfunction and
institutional failure on CSA adoption than experts in CSA? It is likely that the impacts of
state dysfunction may be hard to see without direct investigation and attention, as the state
can impinge on many factors that shape livelihoods decisions and outcomes. Farmers are
likely to be more aware of these impacts than experts who are focused more narrowly on
agricultural practice alone.
7) Why do farmers appear to identify both access to external inputs and infrastructure,
and access to markets, frequently as barriers to CSA adoption, but have relatively
little interest in the provision of inputs, infrastructure, and access to markets as
incentives to CSA adoption? This will require unpacking the general incentives and
barriers faced by all farmers in a given place, whether engaged in CSA or not, by
understanding the wider political economic and agro-ecological context of agriculture in that
place.
59
VIII. CONCLUSION: MOVING CSA
FORWARD
This report fills a key knowledge gap on CSA by conducting a rigorous and systematic analysis
of key barriers and incentives to adoption in sub-Saharan Africa. It challenges the common
narrative across CSA literature and technical experts that adoption depends largely on issues of
accessibility, promotion, and training.
The report recognizes there are three main pathways to increasing the adoption of CSA in
Africa. The first stays within the conventional economic narrative of adoption showing what can
be done to increase efficiency and effectiveness. This narrative is well known and includes
factors such as initial cost, long-term cost, diseconomies of scale, and access to credit and
inputs.
Just as important as ensuring the economic feasibility of the approach is making sure that it is
aligned to the broader social and cultural aspects relevant to livelihood decision-making.
Agriculture, as a livelihoods activity, is a deeply socially embedded approach and farmers
understand CSA through their own formal and informal systems and norms that govern factors
such as labor, gender, identity, and beliefs.
A third critical pathway to increasing CSA adoption requires addressing broader market and
institutional failures. In many African countries, structural constraints within markets and
supporting institutions severely constrain the adoption of CSA. These constraints are not unique
to CSA but instead define and influence the entire agriculture sector. As such, addressing these
constraints requires integrated programming that draws upon wider efforts in democracy and
governance, economic growth, agriculture and food security, and disaster risk reduction.
CSA presents a unique and urgent opportunity for a larger and more systematic view of the
constraints in agriculture in Africa, and the issues of adoption and dis-adoption addressed in this
report help point the way towards interventions that might best unlock the potential of the
smallholder farming. Properly implemented, a climate-smart approach to agriculture can make
significant contributions to agricultural production and rural livelihoods, building resilience to
current economic and environmental stresses on agrarian livelihoods, while pointing the way to
a more secure and prosperous future of economic and social opportunity.
60
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World Agroforestry Centre. 2013. Making Climate-Smart Agriculture Work for the Poor.
World Bank. 2015. Gender in Climate-Smart Agriculture: Module 18 Gender in Agriculture
Sourcebook.
World Bank, 2013, Improving Access to Land and Strengthening Women’s Land Rights in
Africa, Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2013.
World Vision International. 2012. Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration: An Effective

Approach to Restoring and Improving Agricultural, Forested and Pasture Lands.
65
ANNEX 1. SELECTED CSA
APPROACHES
Given that CSA is an approach and not a list of practices, exhaustively covering all iterations of
agricultural practices, technologies, or interventions that could be climate-smart is neither
appropriate nor helpful. As such, a diverse range of practices was selected collaboratively with
USAID and technical experts as a way to get detailed information on adoption constraints and
opportunities representative of the wide spectrum of a CSA approach.
The twelve approaches selected for are outlined in the following table:
Field Level Approaches
Farmer FMNR is a low-cost and sustainable land regeneration system that can be used to rapidly and
Managed efficiently return degraded croplands and grazing lands to productivity. FMNR involves
Natural supporting the regeneration of trees, as well as sustainable management to support crop and
Regeneration livestock production, provide sustainable supplies of fuel wood, and non-timber products such as
(FMR) edible seeds and leaves. It is used to combat poverty and hunger mainly amongst poor
subsistence farmers by increasing food and timber production, and resilience to climate
extremes.
Conservation CA refers to a suit of practices that are complementary and focus on increasing organic matter in
Agriculture (CA) the soil and reducing tilling of crop residues. CA includes no till or reduced till, crop rotation or
intercropping, and soil cover/mulching. It may or may not include the use of improved or hybrid
varieties, and inorganic fertilizers and herbicides.
Climate Smart Climate smart rice production (CSRP) in sub-Saharan Africa has focused on an integrated
Rice Production approach that has included making rice production systems more resilient while simultaneously
(CSRP) contributing to reducing greenhouse emissions. The two core elements of CSRP are the
introduction of improved rice varieties and agro-ecological techniques / practices associated with
the system for rice intensification (SRI). Since 2013 improved varieties tolerant to abiotic
stresses, including water and temperature stress, iron toxicity and salinity have been released.
SRI, which encourages farmers to transplant early, optimize plant spacing, mechanically aerate
soil and increase organic soil matter, has also been scaled up. Both CRSP aspects theoretically
present a “triple win” for agriculture, climate security and food security by aiming to increase
productivity and incomes, improve the resilience rice farming systems to climate change and
variability, and reduce the contribution of rice to greenhouse emissions.
Crop-Livestock CLI is an integrated practice that is commonly found to in most of Sub-Saharan Africa. Keeping
Integration farm animals represents a way for farmers to improve nutrition and diversify incomes. CLI
represents an approach to improving the efficiency between livestock and crop “sectors” of
livelihoods. This includes a number of practices including improved fallow, push-pull pest
management, manure and biogas digestion, and others.
Integrated Water IWRM includes an integrated and coordinated approach to the management, utilization and
Resource development of water resources. IWRM integrates socio-economic, environmental and technical
Management aspects into a single framework with the aim of maximizing economic use without compromising
the sustainability of the ecosystem. The practice also includes a number of water conservation
and management techniques such the non-indigenous of plowing, ridge tillage, hilling, soil
scarifying, sand dams and subsurface dams etc. and more traditional techniques such as stone
rows, contours earthen bunds, zaï, half-moon, straw mulching.
66
Institutional Approaches
Index (Weather) Index (weather) based crop insurance provides insurance protection to farmers against specific
Based Crop perils or events (deficit and excess rainfall, drought, flood). Contracts are written against specific
Insurance perils or events (e.g. area yield loss, drought, hurricane, flood) that are defined and recorded at
regional levels (e.g. at a local weather station). Indemnifications are triggered by pre-specified
patterns of the index, as opposed to actual yields, which eliminates the need for in-field
78
assessments. Index based crop insurance has been regarded a major institutional innovation
that could revolutionize access to formal insurance for millions of smallholder farmers and
related individuals. It may also prove to be a valuable tool for unlocking rural credit and hence
79
improving rural livelihoods.
Payment for PES, also known as payments for environmental services (or benefits), are incentives offered to
Environmental farmers or landowners in exchange for managing their land and resources to provide some sort
Services of ecological service such as clean water, biodiversity or carbon sequestration. They are in
essence an attempt to deal with environmental externalities. In most cases they deal with
carbon, water and biodiversity. Development partners have noted PES as a promising
i
instrument to address challenges to sustainable natural resource management in Africa. It has
the potential to help raise new sources of sustainable finance, improve the efficiency of
conservation actions, secure the flow of environmental services for businesses and
infrastructures that rely on it, and ultimately provide benefits for poor, rural populations.
Safety Net Social safety nets or social protection programs refer to cash or in-kind transfer programs that
Programs seek to reduce poverty through redistributing wealth and/or protect households against income
shocks. Social safety nets seek to ensure a minimum level income, a minimum level of nutrition,
80
or help households manage risk. Safety nets help vulnerable households be protected against
livelihoods risks, maintain an adequate level of food consumption and improve food security.
They also help prevent them from adopting damaging coping strategies and depleting their
assets. In the context of agriculture, they might also alleviate liquidity constraints for
smallholders, boost demands for farm products, foster income-generating strategies, and create
multiplier effects throughout the local economy and allow for the adoption of practices that
81
otherwise would seem risky. Social safely nets have proven positive impacts on the adoption of
82
improved technologies because it helps mitigate the risk of investing in something new.
Agriculture and This broad practice is primarily centered on information and knowledge management in support
Climate of a more productive rural sector. These approaches aim at enabling farmers to make informed
Services decisions, better manage risk, take advantage of favorable climate conditions and adapt to
change. Because this area is so broad, this report focused in on the Farmer Field School (FFS)
approach. FFS is a large-scale, decentralized program of education and facilitation for farmers
wherein they become “experts” in managing the ecology of their fields. The educational concepts
underpinning the FFS approach are drawn from adult non-formal education. FFS was first
introduced in Sub-Saharan Africa in 1993.
78
Hazell, P. et al. 2010. The Potential for Scale and Sustainability in Weather Index Insurance for Agriculture and
Rural Livelihoods. Rome: International Fund for Agricultural Development.
79
Carter et Al. 2015.
80
FAO, “Lessons from the field: Experiences from FAO Climate Change Projects.” FAO Climate Change Days
Workshop (June 2010).
81
Devereux et al. 2008 cited in FAO 2011.
82
FAO, “Climate-Smart Agriculture: A call for action” FAO RAP Publication (2015).
67
Property and Tenure security can be differentiated and includes land as well as trees and other natural
Procedural resources. Tenure is a bundle of rights including right to exclude, access, transfer, manage and
Rights the security if benefits. The link between increased land tenure security and increased
83
Frameworks investment in agriculture is fairly well established in the literature. However, there remains a
dearth of empirical evidence on the exact mechanisms by which strengthened property rights
and tenure security can spur adoption of CSA practices. It is also clear that increasing property
rights and tenure security alone are often not sufficient to stimulate investment.
Climate Smart A number of approaches have been tried in order to scale up CSA by looking at the village or
Villages and landscape as the operational entity. Climate-Smart Villages are villages where the promoters
Landscapes work at the village level to plan and develop activities. They are sites where multiple actors
collaborate to identify the most appropriate climate-smart interventions in agriculture. Climate-
smart landscapes are also multi-actor platforms encompassing multiple villages were higher
level planning and implementation occur aiming at land-use that is better suited to climate
concerns. In general these are externally convened approaches that can create new institutional
forms.
Community Approaches
Collective Collective action refers to action taken together by a group of people whose goal is to enhance
Action through their status and achieve a common objective. Theoretically there are clear advantages to
Local collective action in economic, risk management and political terms. As the field of collective
Conventions action is so broad, we have focused on local conventions as an example. Local Conventions
(LCs) are local arrangements designed and elaborated by local communities in order to better
manage natural resources. They often develop from a context of resource conflict or resource
degradation and the communities desire to improve the situation. They seek to formalize rules
and regulations, as well as sanctions against various actors for non-performance. LCs often
involves the state, which acts as a mediator and enforcer of sanction agreements. Among their
other qualities they are often seen as ways to mitigate conflict and hence mitigate risk and build
resilience.
83
Deininger, Klaus and Feder, Gershon. 2009. "Land Registration, Economic Development, and Poverty Reduction".
Property Rights and Land Policies, eds. Ingram, Gregory K., and Yu-Hung Hong. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute
of Land Policy.
68
ANNEX 2: FACTORS OF ADOPTION
FRAMEWORK
Categories of factors influencing adoption Factors
Economic and Production Characteristics Long-term cost
Initial cost
Transaction cost
Opportunity cost
Flexibility
Multi-objective
Product perishability
Impact on yield
Impact on farmer income
Size of farm
Access to external inputs and infrastructure
Labor availability
Access to credit
Land availability
Private sector
Asset protection and insurance
Market availability
Asset value
Population density
Intensification / extensification
The agro-ecological environment Rainfall zone
Topography
Soils
Values local knowledge
Social and cultural context Farmer familiarity with practice or social practices
Access to information
Compatibility with existing livelihood system
Communication channels of information on practice
Climate services
Extension services
Cultural and gender aspects relevant to decision making
Risk management
Local organizational capacity and collective action
Local discretionary decision making
Local social capital
Perceptions and attitudes
Governance frameworks Access to markets
Market regulation
Institutional relations
Subsidies
Policy framework
Land rights / tenure
Inclusion in decision-making
Access to recourse
Impact on resilience
Social inclusion
Environmental footprint
Rights over resources
Conflict
69
ANNEX 3: LITERATURE REVIEW
METHODOLOGY
To conduct the literature review for the Climate-Smart Agriculture Uptake Study, the
assessment rigorously reviewed the available literature on the 12 different practices. We
identified documents through comprehensive keyword searches and filtered our results through
multiple stages of review, ensuring that the final documents included were relevant and of high
quality. We then we extracted information from these documents and analyzed it for barriers to
and incentives for CSA adoption. This work resulted in the practice summary tables presented
in Appendix 1. These were then synthesized to prepare the summary report. All told, the
literature review involved five steps:
2. Screening 3. Cridcal 5. Report

1. Searching for ardcles for appraisal of 4. Data wridng and
ardcles extracdon
relevance data quality synthesis
Searching and Initial Screening:
We used several databases of our document search. These were: Web of Science, Scopus,
ELDIS, Research Gate, ERIC, USAID’s DEC, EBSCO Academic Search Premier, Google
Search, and Google Scholar.
In these databases we used the following keywords: Africa, Climate-Smart, Agriculture, Farm
Field Schools, Climate Services, Crop-Livestock Integration, Index Based Insurance, Irrigation,
Water Management, Soil Management, Conservation Agriculture, Collective Agriculture, CA,
Conservation Farming, Conventions Locales, Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration, FMNR,
Agroforestry, Rice, Alternate Wet Dry, Improved Varieties, Local Decision Making, Property
Rights, Tenure, Integrated, Climate Smart Landscapes, Extension Services, Barriers,
Incentives, Property and Procedural Rights, tenure, irrigation, water drip.
Once we had the results we would begin to screen the articles for relevance. We did this in a
two-step process. First, if the title appeared at all relevant then we would read the abstract or
executive summary to determine whether or not an article was related to our research. If it
appeared relevant we would then download the article and import it into Zotero, our citation
management application, and Box, our cloud storage service.
Based on the abstract and introduction, each document was “tagged” in Zotero with initial
keywords to help classify it. These tags were taken from the abstract and when possible
included, author keywords, location of the study, our 12 practices, and any other helpful
identifying information at the discretion of the reviewer. Examples of discretionary tags include
ICT, language of document (if not English), or environmental conditions such as drought.
70
Besides using academic databases to find articles, we also relied on our African team members.
An added benefit was that Dr. Barry and Dr. Oladele were able to use their graduate students to
find and evaluate gray literature.
Additionally, our Washington-based team members, Jon Anderson and Jim Ozols, conducted a
series of interviews with agriculture development practitioners and solicited gray literature
directly from them. These sources include, but are not limited to, World Bank, ICRAF, Catholic
Relief Services, IFPRI, and more. Articles obtained from interviewees were added directly to
Zotero.
Critical Appraisal:
After a document passed our initial review and was uploaded onto Zotero and Box and tagged,
it was assigned to a team member for review. Team members were assigned to review all
articles tagged with a certain CSA practice. From here that team member would decide if and
article should remain in Zotero or be removed from it based on quality and relevance. In some
instances, documents that were judged to be promotional rather than academic were retained in
the database as evidence that certain practices were promoted in certain ways.
As part of this appraisal additional tags would be added to documents that were not included as
part of the initial tags in the searching and screening.
In the end, 476 documents are currently in Zotero, meaning that they have passed the critical
appraisal. Our database includes over 250 tags.
Data Extraction and Synthesis:
As team members read the documents that corresponded to specific practices, they populated a
table, one per practice, that examined how 52 different potential barriers or incentives
(collectively, “factors”) were represented in the literature. By using these 52 factors we
examined the 12 practices in a uniform and comprehensive manner. We also identified gaps in
the literature for each one. In addition to the tables, each team member was tasked with writing
an introduction explaining the different practices and summarizing the results of the table,
highlighting the most important themes.
Based on this work we were able to complete a meta-analysis of the different practices,
examining commonalities between them in terms of barriers and incentives. This led to the
identification of key themes across types of practices. To conduct this analysis, the team worked
very closely with our subcontractors at the Humanitarian Response and Development Lab at
Clark University.
Results of the Review:
By entering search terms into the search engines listed previously, we returned 740 documents.
Dr. Barry sent 163 documents and Dr. Oladele sent in 85 documents. No more than 25
documents came from interviewees in Washington. All told, this means that our team reviewed
at least 1,013 documents (note: we do not know how many documents our African team
members reviewed in whittling their collection down to 163 and 85, respectively). Of these over
71
1,000 documents reviewed, 476 passed the test of critical appraisal and remain in Zotero.
The following table presents the number of tags by CSA practice. Note that the total number of
tags differs from the total number of documents, as many documents pertain to multiple
practices and therefore have more than one tag.
Agriculture services focusing on Farmer Field Schools 95
Climate smart rice production 15
Conservation agriculture (CA) 41
Collective action focusing on local conventions (LC) 18
Crop-livestock integration (CLI) 28
Farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR) 45
Index (Weather) based crop insurance 50
Integrated water resource management (IWRM) 59
Climate smart villages, climate smart landscapes (CSV/CSL) 10
Payment for environmental services (PES) 11
Property and procedural rights frameworks 12
Safety net programs 19
72
ANNEX 4: EXPERT INTERVIEW
METHODOLOGY
Approach
For the second phase of our research, we interviewed 63 technical experts from different
stakeholder groups. This included USAID, other development partners and implementers,
government officials, non-government organizations, researchers, agribusinesses and farmers’
union (a full list of interviewee organizations is presented in Table 4). These interviews were
conducted using a questionnaire guide developed by the team based on the findings of the
literature review, an example of which is provided at the end of this Annex, and included barriers
and incentives to adoption, costs, risks, institutional relationships, farmer flexibility and
familiarity, farmer decision-making, farm tenure and size, and procedural rights.
Organizations ACDI/VOCA, APEX, EEAF EU, Concern Worldwide, CCAFS / University of Vermont,
Surveyed CSAP, CRS, DFID, Ecoagricultural Partners, FSDA Africa, Government of Kenya,
Individual Consultants, ISRA, Lead Analytics, MSU/FAO, National Farmer
Federation, NORAD, Senegalese Association for the Promotion of Grass Roots
Development, Reconcile, The Nature Conservancy, USAID, VACCID Africa, World
Bank Project Consultants, WRI
Example Questionnaire
Below is an example transcribed questionnaire filled out by a team member during one of the
expert interviews. All identifying information has been removed for privacy. All of our interviews
were transcribed removing names and identifying information for analysis.
CSA uptake study: Questions
Note: Please begin the interview by reading the following two paragraphs to the interviewee
We are conducting a study on behalf of USAID/Washington’s Africa Bureau on the uptake of
Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) by smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. As part of this
study we have completed a literature review. We are now conducting interviews in an effort to
help us validate our findings. Further, these interviews will help narrow down our selection of
locations for two upcoming case studies. We hope to present a rigorous and thorough report to
USAID that will assist in driving programs over the next few years.
Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) is the intersection of three main objectives: productivity,
resilience and climate change mitigation. There is no definitive list of CSA practices but rather it
is an approach that promotes these three primary goals. It seeks to ensure farm stability during
periods of climate change and it may help to alleviate climate change through mitigation of
greenhouse gasses.
73
Date:
Interviewer name:
Interviewee name:
Location:
Type of stakeholder: (circle one): Donor, Academic, Community member/farmer, End user,
Private sector, NGO
For our study we chose to focus on 12 practices within CSA that cover a wide variety of
practices. They include both hard and soft technologies, i.e. both biophysical practices and
those that relate to the enabling environment.
What CSA practices have you been involved in or researched?
CSA Practices included in this study Check all that apply
1. Farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR)
2. Conservation agriculture (CA)
3. Climate smart rice production
4. Crop-livestock integration (CLI)
5. Integrated water resource management (IWRM)
6. Index (weather) based crop insurance
7. Payment for environmental services (PES)
8. Safety net programs
9. Property and procedural rights frameworks
10. Collective action focusing on local conventions
11. Agriculture services focusing on Farmer Field Schools
12. Climate smart villages; climate smart landscapes (CSV/CSL)
13. Other:
1. What are the barriers to adoption of the practice(s)? Are these barriers indicative of the
barriers to adoption of the CSA approach in general? (see definition in introduction to
questionnaire). If not, what other barriers are important to CSA in general?
2. What incentive(s) would facilitate adoption of both the practices you’ve worked on and the
CSA approach in general?
3. What are some important ways that you perceive CSA practices to interact with one
another?
4. Describe the impact of costs on adoption of CSA practices: How important is long-term
cost? How important is initial cost of adoption? How important are opportunity costs (The
loss of potential gain from another practice including business as usual or working off farm)
and transaction costs (The cost of doing business. Ex: Attending extension or farm group
meetings, or extra time and travel associated with marketing a product)? What kind of
financial tools and economic incentives can be used to increase adoption? Credit?
Insurance? Subsidies? Describe the impact of risk on adoption? What are the bio-physical
risks associated with CSA? How do they impact adoption of CSA? What are the market risks
in terms of CSA practices? Do markets work well for farmers? What are the market
imperfections that factor into farmers’ approach to risk? What are the state risks? How does
the government support adoption of CSA practices? Subsidies? Safety nets? Policy?
74
Regulation? Market? Other? How does the farmer mitigate risk? How important is risk
management to adoption? How important is the potential impact of resiliency (the capacity
to address and manage change) on adoption?
5. How important are the quality and quantity of institutional relations (from the farmers’
perspective) to adoption? Relations with Government? Relations with private sector orgs?
Relations with NGOs? Relations with other communities?
6. As part of our study, one area we are interested in is farmer flexibility and familiarity with
practices and what are the impacts of wholly outside ideas versus those that build on the
farmers existing knowledge. Also as part of this we are interested in whether or not a
farmer’s ability to adopt a practice over time, partially adopt or adapt a practice in a different
way affects their long-term adoption? How important is the ability of the farmer to
manipulate, phase, partially adopt, or otherwise modify the practice to adoption? How
important is farmer familiarity and local knowledge?
7. How important is it that a practice impacts local discretion and decision-making processes?
How can a practice encourage expanding local decision-making?
8. How do farm tenure and size impact adoption? How does small size impact adoption? How
does secure tenure impact adoption?
9. How do procedural rights impact adoption? Access to non-local decision-making?
(government, policy, farmer groups, prices) Access to information (market, technical, etc.)?
Access to recourse?
75
ANNEX 5: FARMER SURVEY
METHODOLOGY
Purpose and Objectives
The case studies under this activity were aimed at being an effective and efficient way of getting
additional field level information and knowledge that can be triangulated with the other sources
of knowledge (literature review and interviews with resource people) to help establish a robust
footing for the study’s recommendations.
The main objectives of the on-the-ground fieldwork include:
1. Analyze CSA practices that we have studied through the literature and interview process
in action in the field: The case study will allow us to get a sense of the reasons for their
adoption from the farmers’ perspective and their importance to production/productivity;
resilience and risk management and mitigation as appropriate.
2. Further validate the emerging findings of the literature review and interview phases
especially with farmers and rural producers: The reading and listening phases have
allowed for the refinement of hypotheses around constraints and opportunities for the
adoption of CSA. The case studies provide a further opportunity to drill down and
understand these issues – especially from the farmers’ perspective. Thus the case
studies will include farmer interviews.
3. Explore the synergies between practices on the ground: Case study locations and been
selected partly because there are several ongoing CSA practices in use. The cases will
thus help to concretely look at the possible synergies between practices. This will
require interviews not only with rural producers but the promoters of practices being
utilized.
4. Explore directly with farmers their decision-making processes under changing climate
(including the potential synergies/trade-offs between production and resilience): We are
developing a better understanding on how rural producers make decisions. The case
studies will enable to further query producers about their decision-making processes.
5. Get some first-hand (qualitative) observations of the extent of adoption and the
constraints/opportunities for selected practices at the local level.
6. Explore the differences between policy and practice (national to local).
Site selection
Site selection was guided by:
• Selection of geographical areas where several practices are present. This gives us the
opportunity to explore the interaction between practices (instead of picking practices and
identifying cases that illustrate those practices).
• The sites represent a diversity of practices.
• The sites allow comparison with USAID field experience and takes into consideration
76
USAID programming.
• Areas where there is already some documentation/information. This allows for us to
quickly zero in on cases that are liable to be revelatory. It also allows us to take a critical
look at what is often fairly “promotional” material, to go past the first couple of layers of
the onion.
• These areas are ones where the African members of the team have significant
experience.
Thus, in collaboration with USAID, 2 sites in Kenya and 2 sites in Burkina Faso were selected.
Methodology and Field Work
The technical export questionnaire was modified for use with farmers, providing consistency
across all interview groups. Interviews were complemented by field observations including visits
to farmers’ fields that have implemented improved techniques. The following visits were
conducted necessary:
Visit Purpose
Local government office (elected and Courtesy call and to ascertain familiarity with CSA both from a
administrative and technical) policy and practice perspective
Promoters’ facilities (NGO, donor, research Obtain information on types of practices and success
org, etc.)
Promoters “demonstration plots” (photo of each Visual observation of “ideal” state of practice
plot)
Villages at least 5 per site Interview farmers and farmers’ groups
Farms at least 10 per site (photo of each Visual observation of fields to compare with “control”,
practice with comparator as possible) demonstration plot and with interview
Local private sector agricultural operators Interviews on approaches to CSA at local level
(input suppliers, marketers, etc.)
Fieldwork was carried out by well-trained and experienced teams of local specialists guided by
experts mentioned in Integra’s proposal. Each team was comprised of 3 members – the Kenya
team was entirely female and the Burkina team included one female. This component was
carried out in April and May of 2016. A summary of the fieldwork is included below.
77
Site location Climate Average Main crops grown Dates of Total Number of
rainfall study Number of women
interviews interviewed
Kenya
Wote Wet 600mm Maize (82.7 percent) April, 2016 81 48
Beans (79 percent)
Kibwezi Dry <600mm Sorghum (23.5 percent)
Fruit (23.5 percent)
Burkina Faso
Dano Wet 900 – Millet (79.6 percent) May, 2016 147 30
1200 mm Maize (61.2 percent)
Ouahigouya Dry 600 – Sorghum (57.1 percent)
Groundnuts (47.6 percent)
900 mm
Beans (47.6 percent)
Rice (34 percent)
Links to Data
The raw data collected from the case studies can be found by following the links provided
below. Please note that you will need a Google Account to access the data.
Kenya Farmer Survey Data
https://drive.google.com/a/integrallc.com/file/d/0B8n4fRJYNjFkNmJiM2gyZGhIM2s/view?usp=s
haring
Burkina Faso Farmer Survey Data
https://drive.google.com/a/integrallc.com/file/d/0B8n4fRJYNjFkR21WS2JMcFFsVEk/view?usp=
sharing
78
Contact Information
For more information about the Adoption of Climate-Smart Agriculture in Africa study, please
contact Mr. David Quinn, Director, Economic Growth and Innovation at Integra.
David Quinn
Director, Economic Growth and Innovation
Integra Government Services International LLC
www.integrallc.com
[email protected]
79

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ADOPTION OF CLIMATE-SMART

(STYLE: SUBTITLE) MONTH DAY, YEAR – MONTH DAY, YEAR

CSA technologies and strategies assessed as part of this study

Field-level 1. Farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR)

Developing a ‘Factors of Adoption’ framework

Components of the study

Ardcles idendﬁed through orthogonal keywork search process

Abstracts / execudve summary reviewed

Keywords tagged on Zotero

Documents reviewed for quality and relevance

476 documents passed 'cridcal appraisal' test

Selected documents analyzed for factors to CSA adopdon

49 potendal factors emerged

Literature re-analyzed according to 49 potendal factors

CSA should be viewed as an approach and not a set of practices.

Smallholder farmers share a number of common characteristics that

The extent of adoption of CSA in Africa

Part 1. Literature Review

Payment for Ecosystem

Agriculture and Climate

Climate Smart Villages

Safety Net Programs

Social and Farmer

Category 1: Economic and Production Characteristics

Category 2: The Agro-Ecological System

Why did gender not emerge as a high factor influencing adoption?

Long term cost 14% 0% 67% 50% 50% 26%

Initial cost 29% 8% 56% 0% 0% 24%

Size of farm 36% 31% 11% 50% 50% 31%

Access to external inputs 14% 8% 33% 25% 100% 21%

Access to markets 7% 15% 11% 0% 0% 10%

Enabling Institutional relations 0% 62% 22% 75% 0% 31%

Land rights/tenure 7% 15% 0% 25% 0% 10%

Private Sector (n=2)

Civil Society (n=9)

Size of farm (Large) 0% 0% 0% 25% 0% 2%

Access to credit 21% 8% 22% 0% 100% 19%

Percentage of Farmers Noting Weighted Impact of Incentives to

Table 10: Farmers barriers to CSA adoption

Categories Factors Male Female Male Female

Initial cost 64% 83% 82% 77%

Table 11: Farmers incentives to CSA adoption

Social and Cultural Context

Table 17: Assessing the market and institutional feasibility

Layer a systems approach onto CSA programming

Support economy-wide good agricultural practices

Phase 4: Implement, Monitor and Evaluate

World Vision International. 2012. Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration: An Effective

2. Screening 3. Cridcal 5. Report

Searching and Initial Screening:

Villages at least 5 per site Interview farmers and farmers’ groups

Kenya Farmer Survey Data

Burkina Faso Farmer Survey Data

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