Agroecological Food System to Strengthen Community Climate Resilience

This project supported by the Bread for the World aims to reduce poverty, increase community climate resilience and maintain agrobiodiversity in the project target areas of Chikankata, Chirundu, Shibuyunji. This will be achieved through implementation of project interventions aimed at diversifying and enhancing agricultural production systems thereby assuring food and nutrition security which will contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 2, which targets to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030.

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The project aims to increase the production of agroecologically grown food and agrobiodiversity; the quantity of agro-ecologically grown crops and number the of crops and varieties being grown in the community increases by 30%. It aims to increase the diversity of foods consumed by farmers by 30% by end of project.The project also aims to establish market linkages in the target areas; the number of women marketing their products has increased by 20% by project end. The project is mainly targeting women because they tend to grow a higher diversity of crops and varieties than men mostly because they are responsible for food preparation for the family.

 

The project will take the approach of utilizing agrobiodiversity for achieving food and nutrition to fight poverty as well as adaptation to climate change. The project will also use agroecology to address productivity challenges and to mitigate against climate change.  The project addresses gender inequalities in support of food and nutrition production interventions and will institute women empowerment and knowledge participation to increase the participation of women in all decision-making processes including taking up leadership in project implementation at all levels. It also improves communication with and among the target communities by adopting and integrating digital communication facilities. The project will utilize digital platforms to improve access to information related to markets, weather and production.

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Some key activities include;

• Training of farmers in seed production and marketing and conducting community seed multiplication programmes.

• Developing digital tools for access to markets and weather-related information and capacity building for farmers in digital applications.

• Strengthening and maintaining of community seed banks including developing digital tools to support the documentation of these seed banks and compiling community biodiversity registers.

• Training of trainers for community facilitators in agroecology and agrobiodiversity, training of farmers in AE farming practices, establishment of demonstration plots on AE, field days on AE farming practices, farmer exchange visits on AE and facilitate the development of local AE markets.