Informations et ressources scientifiques
sur le développement des zones arides et semi-arides

Long-term Europe-Africa Research and Innovation Partnership for Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture

Titre : Developing resilient and profitable rural livelihood systems in semi-arid Mozambique : a conceptual approach

Pays/Région : Mozambique

Date : Start date 2012-08-31 // End date 2015-12-31

Identifiant : 337-NO-ACRONYM
Type de projet : Applied research project

Objectif
This project will develop a new conceptual approach guided by principles of modern resilience thinking and rural livelihood systems analysis to develop and evaluate pathways for increased food security and reduced rural poverty in semi-arid Mozambique. By identifying constraints and defining thresholds that keep farming systems in low input/low output configurations, the project will identify trajectories towards desirable states of higher productivity and profitability that are economically and ecologically sustainable and socially acceptable.

The project will address four specific objectives :

1. Describe typologies of existing livelihood systems and associated value chains defined in relation to agro-ecological conditions, population pressure and market access for two districts in semi-arid Mozambique. Rural livelihood systems typologies will be developed as a basis for generating widely applicable lessons from the project that can be targeted to specific contexts. Recommendation domains will be developed to stratify the semi-arid areas in Mozambique using available secondary information and through GIS. They will be used to verify the research sites and identify areas with a high potential for extrapolating the research results.

2. Validate, adapt and use bio-economic models (eg, Efficiency Analysis and Trade-off Analysis) to define profitable, economically and ecologically sustainable livelihood systems options for specific contexts and farmer profiles. Using the data collected during surveys, parametric estimations will be developed on production and economic efficiency, production growth for crop and livestock activities, and trade-offs of alternative systems configurations. The model analysis will help define potential improved stages of production and marketing and major thresholds that need to be crossed, targeting the farm typologies that will have been defined.

3. Define more innovative livelihood systems and associated value chains for greater resilience against environmental and economic constraints listed. Innovation Platforms (IPs) will be used as a forum in which to design inclusive research and development interventions to make livelihood systems and value chains work, taking into consideration the needs of the poor, especially women. At the IP workshops, the research team will bring in the results from economic and bio-physical modeling and discuss them with local stakeholders as a basis for defining improved livelihood systems and to identify a range of technical, institutional and policy options that would realistically lead to higher levels of resilience and profitability for the specific farm typologies.

4. Identify strategies for promoting innovative livelihood systems that build resilience in semi-arid areas and enable the poor, particularly women, to benefit from inclusive market-oriented agriculture. The project will use the IP as a forum to initiate and promote improved production-to-market systems for different farm typologies. The research team in close cooperation with support services will formulate clear research and extension strategies supporting the identified best-bet technologies likely to be adopted by farmers and the most promising trajectories to be pursued by relevant stakeholders actively involved in the IPs. The research team will then identify appropriate communication channels and strategies through which the project outputs can be disseminated at district and community levels.

Coordinateur : International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISA
Partenaires : Agricultural Research Institute of Mozambique (IIAM) University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU)

Financement principal : Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC)
Budget : 418 917 EUR

FNSSA project database