Empowering farmers with climate information for agricultural decision making
Nowadays, the major challenge faced by smallholder farmers in Mali is the lack of accurate climate information to make better planning and decision to either improve or stabilize productivity.
To improve farmer’s climate risks resilience in West Africa, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) has been implementing the Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach through the CASCAID project, led by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).
Due to its objectives in mainstreaming climate change and variability issues in its activities, the Africa RISINGprogram, led by ICRISAT, started a joint venture with CCAFS under their activity “Scaling out climate information services (CIS) use through the Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach to developing Climate-Smart Villages (CSV) in the Africa rising site of Bougouni in Mali” to scale up the PICSA approach in order to help bridge the climate information gap of smallholder farmers.
Rod Waddington