Resilient, inclusive agriculture and sustainable business - ARISE

Issues

Extreme weather events such as droughts and flooding, as well as erratic rainfall patterns, result in lower crop yields and higher and more volatile food prices, exacerbating poverty and malnutrition. All along the supply chain, from smallholder farmers to retailers and global food manufacturers, everyone is affected by disruptions to production and to the availability and price of food, but smallholders are the most at risk. Climate change and extreme weather events put additional pressure on the capacity to produce enough to feed a growing population.

In some African countries, rainfed crop yields could decline by 50%, and the major food crop prices could increase by 50 to 120% in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030. The number of people at risk of hunger would then increase by 10 to 20% by 2040, with 65% of them in sub-Saharan Africa, and the number of malnourished children could increase by 20%, again with the majority in Africa.

Undercapitalised family farms need support to build their resilience to climate change, especially through better integration into supply chains and better agricultural risk management strategies. One way to build the resilience of these farms is to optimise the adoption of different risk management methods, both through technology uptake and by sharing the risks with other actors in the supply chain.

Description

The ARISE project is a series of work programmes focusing on five key areas:

• predicting the likelihood of extreme weather events;
• assessing weather and agricultural risks to farmers;
• managing supply chain risks for farmers, value chains and countries;
• demonstrating livelihood impacts for smallholder farmers;
• implementing optimal decision parameters for all stakeholders.

The project is based on five Work Packages (WP) :

• WP 1: identifying, designing and assessing solutions;
• WP 2: developing technologies;
• WP 3: linking sustainable practices to premiums and mechanisms for risk protection;
• WP 4: using business modelling and financial incentives;
• WP 5: designing and structuring services and monitoring-evaluation systems.

The project partners include all of the key actors in agricultural value chains, from producer organisations to retailers, input suppliers, banks, and insurance and reinsurance companies. They are present in Europe (for example, Munich Re), Africa (for example, Agricultural Market Development Trust and Private Agricultural Sector Support in Tanzania) and the United Kingdom (for example, Sainsbury's).

The universities involved in the project will provide their expertise in the following fields: climate science, meteorology, remote sensing, image recognition, crop modelling, financial engineering, risk economics, development economics, deep learning and supercomputing, and hydrology. The network of stakeholders established by a previous project on the same topic (WINnERS) will conduct experiments at selected sites in order to implement sustainable agricultural practices and new business and financial models and services, in both Europe and Africa. The first test sites are situated in Tanzania and the United Kingdom.

Studies on the comparative effectiveness of drought risk insurance and hydraulic systems for supplemental irrigation will be conducted by simulation for cases in Senegal and Zimbabwe. Model calibration data will be compiled based on previous experiments conducted in these countries, as well as in Mozambique.

Expected impacts

The findings of the project will provide decision-making parameters that will facilitate the creation and distribution of added value by:

• introducing systemic change in the relationships between farmers and their trading partners, by establishing new contractual relationships in agricultural supply chains;
• giving farmers and public and private decision-makers access to simple, transparent measures;
• enabling ex-ante creation of added value through appropriate risk management;
• creating added value for farmers and value chains, by supporting traceability and generating trust along the supply chain.

In Africa, the project will foster the ecological intensification of production systems based on annual crops by protecting farmers against risks and increasing and stabilising the ratio of farm gate prices between agricultural products and the inputs needed for eco-intensive techniques.