Every morning Kenyan groundskeepers in standardised green overcoats sweep away leaves from the perfectly paved driveway, wash the terracotta-tiled walkways, and attempt to scare encroaching vervet monkeys away from the grounds. Their task is to maintain the manicured idyll of the World Agroforestry Centre, a picture of modernity that sits within Nairobi's Karura Forest. The leaves on the road and the monkeys on the roof are constant reminders of the natural and political ecology within which this wealthy Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) institution is located. As a site of local resistance to powerful change, Karura has been both a place of occupation for rebel militias during the Mau-Mau uprising against the British colonial army, and, more recently, was the location for one of the country's most famous anti-capitalist conservation protests, led by the environmental campaigner and champion of community-led conservation, Wangari Maathai.
The World Agroforestry Centre (known by the acronym ICRAF) is one of two CGIAR campuses in Nairobi and it hosts a range of CGIAR organisations, shown in the overwhelming display of acronyms and logos on the impressive billboard at the campus entrance: CIMMYT (The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre); ASB (Alternatives to Slash and Burn); ICRISAT (International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics); IITA (International Institute for Tropical Agriculture); CABI (Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International), and more. There are more still across town at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the CGIAR's other Nairobi campus, which hosts the AATF (African Agricultural Technology Foundation); BeCA (Biosciences Eastern and Central Africa); and ISAAA (International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications), amongst others. The endless acronyms of projects and partners represent the common language of the CGIAR; a linguistic uniform that represents modern agricultural development campaigns informed by state-of-the-art climate models, crop breeding technologies, and land management innovations; and one that is intimidating to decipher for those outside of the group. These international, and in some respects autonomous, institutions are key agents in the shaping of a green revolution agenda for Africa's agricultural future.
Under the shade of a large fig tree outside of the local village primary school, four days after one of the worst storm events that Joyce could remember had stripped the leaves off her maize stalks and felled small areas of her two-acre plot, she explained to the assembled farmer group âwe have not received those kinds of hails for more than thirty years in this placeâ. The storm, which, in spite of the clear skies and intense drying heat of midday sun from which we were taking cover, was still evident in surrounding fields of shredded maize plants, came just weeks before many in the Nyenyilel farmer's group were intending to harvest. The repeated inclement weather that followed had left them concerned about water damage and rotting of the crops in the field, and facing potential difficulties in drying the maize kernels for storage. Despite different theories about how the weather was changing and what to expect over the coming weeks and years, most agreed that bringing in a harvest would depend this year, as it long has done in that part of Western Kenya, on working together and working quickly.
It can be difficult to reconcile the challenges evident in the long-term and seasonal climate impact forecasts of global circulation models and the âclimate smartâ solutions being developed in the breeding stations and trial sites of agricultural research institutions, with the everyday adaptations of the Nyenyilel farmer's group. The weekly uncertainties and extremes, the local indicators of change, and the communal race-against-the-clock strategies of collective harvesting and drying seem somewhat incommensurate with these international state-of-the-art climate impact and adaptation projects. Not incompatible â in fact, combining climate model forecasts with farmersâ knowledge of local climates and integrating improved agronomic techniques with on-farm coping strategies would likely be wholly valuable â but somehow separate; different problem framings, priorities, time horizons and knowledge systems that are disconnected, not just by poor communication, but in some cases by deep-rooted barriers of experience, culture, social norms and even distrust.
Not unlike Karura forest, Africa's future agriculture represents a complex and contested political arena of competing modernisation agendas, knowledge systems, local agency and experiences, and environmental change.
Across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), particularly in response to the threat of climatic change, âpro-poorâ and âclimate smartâ technologies are increasingly seen as the means to a green revolution and a resilient future agriculture, however, for many small-scale African farmers in particular, they are not risk-free themselves. At the same time, the constrained coping mechanisms or habitual practices of resource-poor farmers may be exacerbating, rather than alleviating, vulnerability to future changes, not just in the climate, but in linked social, economic and political systems.
Contrary to often convincingly simple problemâsolution narratives that regularly justify development initiatives, the complex, context-dependent and multifaceted challenges of agricultural adaptation are subject to multiple and contested assumptions, values and constructions of risk. How this contestation, which is inevitably shaped by power and politics, plays out has ramifications for research and humanitarian investments, the design of national and international agricultural policies, and ultimately the livelihoods of African farmers. Where policies or interventions are built around a process that privileges certain knowledge and narratives and excludes others, the danger is that adaptation becomes narrowed down to pathways that bring benefits for some, but marginalise others.
The central thesis of this book is that effective adaptation to an uncertain future depends on the inclusive negotiation of alternative narratives within the diverse settings in which agricultural change is governed; not only in national policy-making arenas and the boardrooms of international development initiatives, but also in the fields and communities of smallholder farmers, the offices of national research centres, and the operations of civil society organisations. Throughout the book, insights into the knowledge and narratives that emerge from these multiple settings of agricultural governance are presented.
The settings and scope of the book
Growing global interest in climate change and food security; new commitments to investment in the agricultural sector; and the emergence of new actors and new technologies within this expanding policy and research arena, mean that it is a particularly timely moment to look critically at which, and whose, narratives are being advanced . . . and why. Tracing this knowledge politics has involved engaging with a broad array of actors and sites (see Figure 1.1) within and beyond the African continent; only just beginning to reflect the extent of interest and activity towards adaptation in Africa, and by no means representing the scale or diversity of this endeavour in its entirety. The case studies of the book touch on framings of agricultural change within global climate change and agricultural research programmes; cross-continent crop-breeding initiatives; trans-Atlantic transfers of technology; publicâprivate partnerships; national agricultural policies and extension programmes; non-governmental organisations; community farm groups; and individual households.
The focus is predominantly on developments within, or that target, small-scale rain-fed agricultural systems, which have a particular vulnerability to climatic uncertainty and change and support a significant proportion of the region's rural population. Small-scale agriculture represents a priority sector across the National Adaptation Programmes of Action and Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions identified by many African nations in response to their commitments under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the strategies of countries such as Kenya and Malawi, that have advanced policy frameworks oriented around addressing climate change, and document a commitment towards investment in âclimate smartâ agricultural development. Beyond climate change, productivity-driven, âgreen revolutionâ-type transitions towards commercialisation in the smallholder sector, feature prominently in national economic development plans, such as the national Vision 2030 documents developed by Zambia and Kenya, and in sector-specific strategies, such as the Malawian government's Agricultural Sector Wide Approach, which are often developed with the support of international donors.
Discourses of âclimate smart agricultureâ and a âgreen revolution for Africaâ, around which powerful coalitions of donors, research institutions and policy advocates are increasingly orienting their activities, are picked up as key themes throughout the book. Collectively these discourses reflect a particular interest in technologies of impact-at-scale agricultural modernisation, which have been a priority of the CGIAR system since its origins in the Asian green revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. This priority is mirrored in the contemporary objectives of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); and of philanthropic donors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), who increasingly favour a publicâprivate partnership (PPP) model for the development and delivery of âgreen revolutionâ technologies. However, these agendas are broad in scope, issues of social empowerment and equality, a concern for broadly defined food security, and recognition of the importance of mitigating as well as adapting to climate change, at least at a rhetorical level, distinguish these emergent discourses from the narrow concern for increasing productivity evident in earlier agricultural modernisation agendas. They also cover a broad suite of technologies and techniques of farming inclusive of land and water management strategies, agroforestry, alternative cropping systems, and improved crop varieties. Sumberg et al. (2012) explain that a growing critique of the inequities of the green revolution in the 1980s had significant influence in promoting issues of social priorities and justice within the agronomic research and a participatory agenda and new interest in participatory and âfarmer firstâ (Chambers et al. 1990) agricultural research emerged in response. However, the extent to which this has endured in the transition towards private sector-led agricultural revolution is questionable, and indeed questioned in some of the chapters of this book.
In the context of emerging actors, discourses and priorities in African agriculture, these chapters aim to represent a diversity of âgreen revolutionâ and âclimate smartâ endeavours from multiple, and predominantly critical, perspectives. Specifically, they consider the cases of crop breeding for drought tolerance in maize, including through the use of transgenic techniques in the case of the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) Initiative (Chapter 4); and endeavours towards âscaling upâ conservation agriculture in Zambia and Malawi (Chapter 5); and contextualises these arguments within a broader review of âclimate smartâ agricultural interventions (Chapter 6), with a particular focus on addressing the following questions:
- Through what social interactions and within what social, cultural, economic, historical, institutional and political contexts do different actors construct narratives about the future of African agriculture?
- How is uncertainty interpreted within these and what assumptions,...
