From forecasts to action – What is needed to make seasonal forecasts useful for South African smallholder farmers?

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Abstract

This paper explores the barriers that limit the use of SFs by smallholder farmers and policy-makers and practical, political and personal changes in the Limpopo Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (LDARD) that could enhance greater usage of SFs in risk management. Interviews and workshops were performed with LDARD staff at province, district municipality and service center level within the Extension and Advisory Services and Disaster Management Services divisions. Many extension officers repeatedly pointed out the need to move from reactive to proactive policies. This could entail creating effective channels for bottom-up communication of emerging ground conditions coupled with relief and support efforts distributed even during hazardous events, not only after greater losses have been felt. Different perceptions and understandings of if and how SFs inform national subsidies and site-specific recommendations distributed in the province to extension staff that departmental communication could be improved to increase trust and reliability of the forecasts and accompanying recommendations for farmers.

Introduction

Although the long-term effects of climate change will interact with non-climate drivers and stressors to heighten the vulnerability of agricultural systems in many parts of Africa [1], climate variability on the shorter term often has devastating consequences for the food security of agricultural households [2]. In 2016 one of the strongest El Niño events on record drastically affected global weather patterns causing drought conditions that seriously afflicted more than 36 million people from Ethiopia to Zimbabwe. Smallholder farmers, including women who make up around 50 per cent of the agricultural labour force in sub-Saharan Africa, are especially at risk [3]. Women and youth tend to be more vulnerable to climate-related impacts because they to a higher degree rely on natural resources for livelihoods, are responsible for procuring food, water and fuel, have fewer assets, and meet numerous social, cultural and political barriers [4].

Transformative change is increasingly being recognised as vital to address the overwhelming challenges facing smallholder farmers, including the impact on food and water security from increased drought risks [5]. A key distinction is made between incremental adaptation and deliberate transformation [6]; the former denoting actions to maintain the current system and the latter implying changes in the fundamental attributes of the system so that resilience is enhanced to handle future and even greater challenges [7]. While deliberate transformation has emerged as the new “solution” embraced by scientists and activists, it calls for a serious questioning of current assumptions, values, interests and loyalties, and identifying and addressing individual and collective blind spots. Transformational adaptations, proactive or reactive, are expected to be increasingly necessary especially for marginalised or vulnerable groups [8]. In agriculture these could include large-scale shifts from cropped areas to pastoralism [9], organic farming [10] or farm forestry [11]. A transformational approach could also focus on reducing risk and vulnerability [7] that instead of directly responding to climate impacts, involves altering the basic conditions that underlie vulnerability [8].

Seasonal climatological forecasts (SF) have in recent years become an essential part of disaster and risk planning. Early warning systems (EWS), based on forecast information could reduce smallholder farmers' drought risks and inform decisions and recommendations during the hazardous period. However, without coordinated national drought policies that focus on risk management, EWS, along with impact assessments and disaster relief will continue to be part of a reactive, crisis management approach towards drought management [12], [13] and not enable more transformative processes that reduce the vulnerability of smallholder farmers and increase food security.

Recent drought and flood management strategies and systems, such as the United Nations Strategy on Disaster Risk Reduction [13] and the Drought Management Systems under development in the European Union [14], reflect a transformational change from disaster management towards a people-centred risk management approach. Historically this transition has been hampered by limited efforts to recognise and address drought risks including the contextual factors that underlie the vulnerability of people and agricultural systems [15]. The latest UN framework on disaster reduction [13] supports deliberate transformation by highlighting the importance of reducing vulnerability by tackling underlying disaster risk drivers e.g. poverty and inequality, climate change and variability, poor land management and non-risk-informed policies, through dedicated action.

In South Africa, the Agricultural Disaster Risk Management Plan (ADRMP) and the Agricultural Drought Management Plan (ADMP) were passed in 2008 based on the framework of the Disaster Management Act (DMA) no. 57 of 2002. These plans marked a shift towards more proactive risk management from previous drought management strategies, which mainly relied on reactive short-term responses such as post-drought relief and restrictions on water supply during low-flow periods. Consequently, more recent efforts have recognised a more proactive approach to managing drought in agricultural production planning and management [16]. While the South African government has provided disaster relief for many years, the assistance has been found to focus on meeting farmers’ immediate needs without contributing to their increased resilience to future hazards [17]. It also suffers from poor timeliness, ineffectiveness and poor coordination [18]. Studies of farmers’ perceptions have pointed out poor logistical solutions around transportation and feed storage [17] and a poor collaboration and coordination of government departments at national and provincial level [19]. Other studies have suggested that relief agencies could speed up subsidies and crisis responses by identifying which tasks could be done in advance [20] for example using SFs to improve the timing of seed delivery [21]. The use of SFs to guide disaster management decisions and actions has been suggested as a way to link the crisis calendar to the decision calendar [22].

If smallholder farmers are to make timely decisions, increase yields and avert disastrous situations, they must be able to make use of forecast information to prepare for and mitigate negative outcomes. Including information on hydrological impacts, recommendations and guidance on possible actions can increase forecast usefulness [23]. Vermeulen et al. [24] point out a common mismatch between smallholder farmers’ needs and the accuracy, format, scale and content of early warnings. In Zimbabwe farmers who made changes to their farming practices based on SFs (50% altered the time of planting and 40% planted different crop varieties) reported 10% increased harvests (averaged for the two year study) as compared to farmers that did not act on the information [25]. Yet to effectively use SFs and early warnings, farmers must also have the capacity, resources and sufficient lead-time to respond [26], [27]. Previous studies in Africa have provided little evidence that forecasts alone, without other interventions such as seed distribution or increased access to credit or lower prices for fertilisers, will lead to improved harvests [25], [28].

In this paper we explore barriers that hinder the use of SFs in risk management, as well as ways that would allow SF information to become more useful to smallholder farmers. The study took place in the Limpopo Province, South Africa and is based on dialogues with representatives of Extension and Advisory Services and Disaster Management Services of the Limpopo Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (LDARD). Assessments were made at the national, regional, provincial, district municipality, service centre1 and community levels.

We organise and discuss our material according to three interacting”spheres” of transformation – the practical, political and personal – that illustrate distinct yet related arenas or entry points where transformational adaptation processes may be realised to support climate-resilient pathways for sustainable development [8]. The personal sphere includes beliefs, values, worldviews and paradigms; the political, systems, institutions and structures and the practical, behaviour and technical responses. The recognition that technical and behavioural changes essential to transformational adaptation are embedded in larger systems and structures, shifts the narrow view of addressing adaptation through technical systems to a more comprehensive one that also recognises the importance of social and political dimensions.

We aim to specifically answer:

  • What are the barriers that limit the use of SFs by smallholder farmers and policy-makers?

  • Which potential changes in the practical, political and personal spheres could enhance the usage of SFs in risk management?

Section snippets

Methods and study area

The empirical material in this study was collected during interviews and participatory workshops undertaken in a larger project “Local early warning systems for drought: Can they increase community resilience?” undertaken between June 2013 and October 2015. The project encompassed two rainy seasons, 2013–2014 (forecasted as wetter than normal) and 2014–2015 (forecasted as drier than normal).

Limitations related to seasonal forecasts

This section describes the SFs received from national level, the main limitations in the forecast information and how it is perceived by LDARD staff. In Fig. 1 this information is arranged according to the three interacting transformation spheres– practical, political and personal at different administrative levels: national, provincial, district municipality, service centre and community.

Limitations related to the dissemination and understanding of seasonal forecasts

Limitations related to the dissemination of SFs are discussed below and arranged according to the practical, political and personal spheres at the LDARD administrative levels where they occur (Fig. 3).

Limitations related to actions based on seasonal forecasts

In this section, existing barriers that limit actions among smallholder farmers are described. They are arranged according to the practical, political and personal spheres at the LDARD administrative levels where they occur (Fig. 4).

Opportunities for transformation

In this section, we explore potential opportunities to make changes in the content, dissemination and use of SFs at different administrative levels, as well as among smallholder farmers across the practical, political and personal spheres.

Conclusions

For SF information to more significantly play a role in the transition from disaster to risk management among government authorities and smallholder farmers in Limpopo, a number of measures could be addressed in the practical, political and personal areas to enable the increased usage of SF information by farmers and extension officers. Practical changes can be more easily rectified such as improvements in SF format and content and to the top-down dissemination channel at LDARD. These however

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the participation and help from community members of Lambani and Mokwakwaila, LDARD staff from provincial to service centre level and all workshop participants from other organizations. We also thank the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) for funding project SWE-2011-164.

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