Thematic Area 3- Technology, Climate-Resilient Agriculture and Food Systems

Agriculture’s capacity to feed the growing Zimbabwean population is being threatened by climate change, compounded by widespread unsustainable farming practices and natural resources use. The growth in the country’s population is raising the demands for food, energy, water, and land. A combination of factors including natural resource degradation and overexploitation imply that the resource base required for sustainable food production and natural resource management is becoming increasingly scarce. Climate change makes the choices more complicated and its interaction with poverty is intricate. Smallholder farmers who largely depend on rain-fed agricultural production and yet produce most of the staple crops are more vulnerable to climate variability.

The uptake of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices such as conservation agriculture, agroforestry, irrigation, climate-resilient crop varieties, and animal breeds remains slow. Therefore, building climate resilience and prudent natural resource management are key going forward. There is an urgent need to find ways of making crops and livestock more resilient to extreme weather, pests, and diseases; and how to prevent the degradation of natural resources and biodiversity loss. In addition, the capacity of private sector, policy makers and smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe needs strengthening in order to effectively and sustainably manage the dwindling natural resources and plan and manage climate-smart farming systems for enhanced and sustained agricultural productivity and climate resilience. There is need to find innovative ways of financing the agricultural sector in Zimbabwe.

Research priorities: Research under this thematic area is sub divided into three sub themes-

1. Climate change and resilience; and
2. Food systems, digital agriculture and technology
3. Green agriculture

CAFP will focus on answering the following policy objectives/issues:

• Building resilience in Zimbabwe’s food systems in the face of climate change.

Indicative research areas are as follows:

• • Make an inventory of coping strategies that are increasing household resilience to shocks and how these strategies can be supported and up-scaled;
  • Make an inventory of available agro-ecology practices that are being practiced in the country and identify which of these practices are working well and how they can supported;
  • Identify strategies on how to increase farmer confidence with available alternative farming practices and how to sustainably incentivize the adoption of these practices; and
  • Identify innovative strategies to strengthen farmer institutions at local, regional and national level in terms of knowledge sharing, marketing and collective action in order to enhance farmer productivity, profits and household resilience
  • Green agriculture to mitigate the impacts of climate change
• Enhancing Zimbabwe’s food systems through increased use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the agricultural sector.

Indicative research areas are as follows:

• • Take an inventory of available technologies that are being used or have a potential for being used in the agricultural sector and assess how ICT can be harnessed to fast-tract agricultural sector digitalization in Zimbabwe;
  • Identify the policy options for creating an enabling environment for increasing the use of ICT technology for resilience; and
  • Create an online/digital GIS based platform with agricultural, socioeconomic, biophysical indicators data disaggregated at province and district level to guide agricultural policy and investment decisions.