This Technology Transfer Advances Zimbabwe's
Context
The country faces a challenge in adapting its agriculture education and farmer training component to climate-smart technologies, that is, Climate-Smart Agriculture. The current curriculum is not including issues of climate change and the adaptation and mitigation component, and therefore puts at risk agriculture education, farmer training and agriculture productivity since most of the student who graduate from agricultural colleges end up working as agriculture extension workers to, largely, the newly resettled farmers who constitute the bulk of farmers in Zimbabwe.
Cognizant of the negative impacts of climate change on agriculture, on 25th and 26th July 2015, Ministry of Agriculture, Mechanization and Irrigation Development organized a National curriculum Workshop on agricultural education, to review the courses offered in all government-run agricultural colleges. The workshop agreed that there is an urgent need to mainstream climate change education climate-smart agriculture, and other issues, into the National Diplomas available in all agricultural colleges.
Assistance Requested
1. Developing a Climate-Smart Agriculture Manual for Agriculture Education in Zimbabwe:
The manual will be integrated into all national agriculture learning curricula and shall form a standard approach or intervention against climate change and promoting sustainable development. The main themes including in the manual which are important for Zimbabwe’s agriculture include but not limited to:
- Definition of Climate Change
- Principles of Climate-Smart Agriculture
- Agro-forestry
- Soil and Water management
- Irrigation systems
- Crop and Livestock production
- Post-harvest Management and Value addition
- Renewable energy and Energy management
- Gender, HIV and AIDS
2. Training workshop on Climate-Smart Agriculture:
Facilitating (some logistics and most funding) the capacity building process and training events in Climate-Smart Agriculture. By conducting capacity building workshops to students, lecturers, and relevant stakeholders in agriculture education, CTCN’s technical assistance will also help further integrate agriculture education and the agriculture industry. This helps to integrate the manual into agriculture education with the buy-in of local stakeholders. Green Impact student teams and team patrons will also benefit from such a platform which provides a launch pad for students to take advantage of opportunities in agriculture whilst also contributing to socio-economic development of Zimbabwe.
Relevant Technologies and Approaches
Expected Benefits
Medium-term impacts:
- Increase in quality delivery of Training.
- With capacity to deal with climate change through climate-smart agriculture, future extension workers, agriculture entrepreneurs and smallholder farmers will be better equipped to increase productivity and incomes, build resilience to climate change and reduce or remove greenhouse gases where possible.
- Setting up of agriculture demonstration centers in all government-run agriculture colleges across the country.
- Set up outreach programmes where students engage with surrounding communities to offer extension services under the Green Impact Student Footprints for Climate-Smart Agriculture (SFCSA) programme.
- Increase in quality delivery of monitoring and evaluation tools.
- With each year, as students continue to receive the theory and practice of climate-smart agriculture, there will be more positive results of the work done in capacity building and its transfer to agriculture production and across the value chain.
- Increase in on-farm productivity and incomes, and resilience as a result of Green Impact student teams’ quality delivery of climate-smart agriculture to smallholder farmers across the country.
- A notable reduction in on-farm greenhouse gas emissions as a result of Green Impact student teams’ quality delivery of climate-smart agriculture principles to smallholder farmers across the country.
Long-term impacts:
- A sustainable programme that enhances student active participation in promoting climate-smart agriculture and transfer of climate-smart technologies to smallholder farmers across the country.
- Increased agricultural productivity and incomes, increased resilience to climate change and reduction or removal of greenhouse gas emission. This translates to sustainable development and sustainable environmental management practices.
- Increased knowledge and awareness of climate-smart agriculture approaches benefit smallholder farmers to increasing agriculture productivity and incomes, resilience to climate change and significantly reducing or removing greenhouse gas emissions where possible.
- CTCN’s technical assistance will help to lower or remove greenhouse gas emissions in on-farm agriculture activities by smallholder farmers. By capacitating agriculture college student teams on climate-smart technologies which promote climate-smart agriculture, the students are able to transfer the knowledge to the smallholder farmers who are struggling to increase agriculture productivity and build resilience, but also, who are mainly responsible for land degradation and increase crop and livestock’s vulnerability to climate change.
- Climate-Smart Agriculture practices such as intercropping with legumes, mulching, crop rotation, greater crop diversity and improving storage and processing, and improved feeding strategies, rotational grazing, grassland restoration, integrated crop and livestock, and manure management have significant benefits to sustainable agriculture and help reduce heat and water stress on crops and livestock.
