This document summarizes climate-smart agriculture (CSA) options for mixed crop-livestock systems in sub-Saharan Africa. It discusses the importance of these systems for food security now and in the future given population growth. Several CSA practices are presented and evaluated based on their potential impacts on production, resilience, mitigation, feasibility, and adoption constraints. The analysis finds that CSA options often involve trade-offs. Additionally, broad-brush targeting of interventions is not appropriate given context-specific impacts. Improving the evidence base and addressing adoption constraints will help scale up promising CSA practices.

1. CSA options in mixed crop-livestock
systems in sub-Saharan Africa
Philip Thornton, Todd Rosenstock, Christine
Lamanna, Pat Bell, Wiebke Förch, Ben
Henderson, Mario Herrero
CCAFS-ILRI, ICRAF, Ohio State University, GIZ SADC, OECD,
CSIRO

2. Outline
• Importance of the mixed systems in SSA
• CSA interventions in the mixed systems
• Adoption constraints and potential uptake
• Towards prioritising investments in CSA
• Conclusion

3. Mixed crop-livestock
systems
The backbone of
African agriculture,
providing the great
majority of staples
for the resource-
poor
• 41-86 % of the
maize, rice,
sorghum, millet
• 90 % of the milk
• 80 % of the meat

4. Mixed crop-livestock systems: Potential
Two types of mixed
systems:
“extensive,” with
lower agroecological
potential (LGP fewer
than 180 days per
year)
“intensifying,” with
higher agroecological
potential (having an
LGP of 180 or more
days per year, less
than 8 hours’ travel
from markets)

5. 0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050
Population(index1991=100)
Year
WORLD
Northern Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
Latin America and the
Caribbean
Eastern Asia
Southern Asia
South-Eastern Asia
Western Asia
UN Population Division. 2006 Revision. World Population Prospects.
Sub Saharan
Africa
Africa’s mixed crop-livestock systems
Critical for food security now, even more so in the future
UNPD (2017)

6. Agricultural interventions that address
• Adaptation, mitigation and food security (and nutrition?)
• Intended to guide changes in agricultural systems to achieve
the “triple win” where this is feasible
What are CSA practices?
• Potentially many, but evidence limited
• “Operationalization” of CSA key
A framework for addressing the food security
challenge: Climate Smart Agriculture

7. Domain Size
Adoption
Potential
Production
Impact
Mitigation
Potential
Feasibility
Domain Size
Adoption
Potential
Production
Impact
Mitigation
Potential
Feasibility
1 Diet intensification: stover
digestibility improvement
2 Diet intensification: grain
supplementation
0
1
2
3
Thornton & Herrero (2014)
CSA interventions will often involve trade-offs
Two ways of intensifying ruminant diets in the mixed
systems of SSA

8. A qualitative analysis of different options
• We used data from the soon-to-published Compendium
of CSA, a global survey of CSA practices and best
estimates of their effects on productivity, resilience and
mitigation (Rosenstock et al., ICRAF)
• Where data were missing, a survey of topic experts to
estimate impacts and evaluate the adoption constraints
associated with each option
• A continental-scale semi-quantitative estimation of the
suitability of each option geographically (the domain)
and the rural population in each domain

9. List of climate-smart options considered
Asterisks show the strength of evidence relating to potential impacts on productivity, resilience,
mitigation (weak *, moderate **, strong ***)

10. Thornton et al. 2017
Some of the climate-smart options available to
smallholders in mixed crop-livestock systems in SSA
Potential impacts: + positive, -negative, +/- = uncertain
Strength of evidence: *** confident, ** likely, * poor

11. Constraints to the widespread adoption of some climate-
smart options
Importance of constraint: ** major, * moderate
Thornton et al. 2017

12. Agricultural system domains for some climate-
smart options in SSA
Thornton et al. 2017
Relative suitability: 0, not suitable; 1 (low), 5% potential adoption; 2 (medium), 15%
potential adoption; 3 (high), 30% potential adoption
EM, extensive mixed systems; IM, intensifying mixed systems

13. Main conclusions of the analysis
• There are no silver bullets: climate smartness in the
mixed systems depends on local context
• One key message from this analysis is that broad-
brush targeting of CSA interventions is not
appropriate, from a technical standpoint, given that
the impacts are often not clear or are highly context
specific.
• Triple wins may exist in some situations, but there
may often be trade-offs
• E.g. temporal trade-offs between meeting shorter-
term food production / income objectives and
longer-term resilience objectives

14. Main conclusions of the analysis
• Constraints to adoption of interventions in SSA
still need to be addressed
• Some promising options are heavily under-
researched: food storage, food processing
• Evidence base needs to be improved for
several other options, including climate
services and insurance

15. Thank you
For more information:
p.thornton@cgiar.org