Conservation Agriculture and Climate Resilience in sub-Saharan Africa

"International donor, and national government investment, is being targeted at ‘climate-smart agriculture’ initiatives aimed improving the effectiveness of land management measures designed to adapt to hotter, drier conditions affecting sub-Saharan Africa. The differential impacts of extreme climate events on farmers who have adapted their land management practices to become more ‘climate-smart’ remain poorly understood and quantified. This project will extend findings from a NERC/DFID El Niňo 2016 Programme project (ACRES) by studying the impacts of the uptake of Conservation Agriculture (CA) land management practices in three Districts in southern Malawi.
CA involves shifts in farming practices to reduced soil tillage, permanent organic soil coverage and intercropping or crop rotation. It is widely seen as a form of climate-smart agriculture capable of enabling development, enhanced climate change adaptive capacity and soil carbon storage. However, evidence of the benefits of CA on agricultural yields and livelihoods is fragmented and contested, complicated by the heterogeneity and temporal variability of sub-Saharan African farming systems. The established network of CA studies across Malawi (see - http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/research/sri/consagric/) offers an opportunity to evaluate direct and indirect impacts of CA interventions on soils, crop yields and livelihood resilience.
In this project, you will work with agricultural systems experts at Leeds and with Malawian partner institutions (Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the Chitedze Agricultural Research Station) to investigate the effects of CA on crop yield, crop pest and soil parameters and their impacts on farming system resilience.
In particular, according to your particular research interests, the studentship could involve:
1. Assessing whether farmers practicing CA can better maintain crop yields under climate variability and examining reasons for changes in land management practices following drought events (as affecting Malawi in 2015/16 ACRES project study).
2. Analysis of the impact of land management practices on the incidence of crop pest damage and changes in the nature of post-harvest crop losses under different rainfall conditions.
3. Evaluation of the changes in farmer decision-making with regard to land management, cropping and post-harvest handling as a result of enhanced climate variability experienced over recent years in southern Malawi."

http://www.nercdtp.leeds.ac.uk/projects/index.php?id=519