Resilient agriculture is a label that identifies agricultural approaches with the potential to reduce the negative impact farmers experience in response to challenges such as drought, conflict, and climate change. The Food Security and Nutrition Network is a global community of practitioners that shares opportunities and cross-disciplinary information with members. FSN is/was funded by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.
Some interesting resources in this resilient agriculture course include:
Permagardens
Permagardens incorporate aspects of permaculture and bio-intensive agriculture to maximize outputs for growers with limited growing areas. The approach has application for farmers with limited space for growing, longer-term refugee or internally displaced person camps, and homesteads seeking self-sufficiency. The updated permagarden technical manual also includes techniques for water harvesting over entire home landscapes (described in the manual as a compound-level approach). Resources for this technique include a manual, monitoring and evaluation tools, training materials, videos, and tips/checklists.
Resilience Design
Resilience design, as used in FSNs resources, refers to the agroecological view of smallholder farming systems as a whole. These resources identify eight standard attributes to strive towards including community-led, resources, design, water, soil health, biodiversity, protection, and adaptation. One interesting case study which you can view reports and a webinar on, looked at using resilience design on 18 hills in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. To address soil erosion issues, farmers adopted agroforestry practices on the contour with the inclusion of percolation pits on all 18 hillsides. Percolation pits are holes for groundwater recharge and protection against erosion. For more details, see the following video: http://edn.link/jgrqk3. The program established farmer field schools to educate about compost making and use, new crops and varieties, mulching and residue use, and processing and marketing to support the economic and environmental concerns of the community. Leadership and advocacy groups created a social movement for land tenure security efforts. In this way, none of the challenges farmers faced were addressed in isolation from other factors. Resources on resilience design include a facilitator’s guide, case studies, checklists, and more!
African Women Rising is one organization that uses these resources in a Resilience Design Training-of-Trainers Certification Course in Regenerative Agriculture in Uganda. [http://edn.link/ezkyqy]
8 Issues in this Publication (Showing 1 - 8)
Resilience Design Mentorship Pilot: Approach, Findings, and Lessons Learned: September 2020
From May 2019-March 2020, USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA)-funded Strengthening Capacity in Agriculture, Livelihoods and Environment (SCALE) Award piloted an agriculture mentorship project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with a small group of agriculture technical staff from Food Security Program (FSP)-Enyanya, a USAID/BHA-funded Development Food Security Activity (DFSA). This report summarizes the pilot methodology, findings from baseline and endline surveys, and lessons learned from the process.
FSP-Enyanya is implementing the Resilience Design in Smallholder Farming Systems (RD) approach on 18 hillsides in South Kivu (referred to by FSP-Enyana as “L’approche Colline” or the “Hill Approach”). By May 2019, the FSP-Enyanya team had completed two in-person RD trainings, one in July 2017 and one in November 2018. Given the technical complexity of the RD approach and its associated techniques, the trainings were an important foundation in transferring the technical knowledge and application to staff. However, the team acknowledged that further ongoing technical support was necessary for those staff who were responsible for training farmers on the approach. SCALE used this as an opportunity to pilot its remote mentorship/coaching approach in order to learn and adapt for future support to other BHA-funded activities
Resilience Design in Smallholder Farming Systems: Measurement Toolkit
To achieve the overall goal of designing a site that improves soil health and water management to develop a smallholder farm agro-ecosystem that is more resilient to environmental, social and economic shocks and stresses, the indicators are developed from the overall goal and the five main aims of Resilience Design and their associated objectives:
- Ecolgical
- Energy-Related
- Economic
- Nutritional
- Social
Resilience Design in Smallholder Farming Systems: A Practical Approach to Strengthening Farmer Resilience to Shocks and Stresses
The Resilience Design (RD) in Smallholder Farming Systems approach evolved from initial discussions at a TOPS Symposium on Agroecological Principles, Design and Practice in Washington, DC in January 2015, designed to improve agricultural programming in USAID/FFP programs. The two-day event brought together experts and practitioners to share knowledge on building resilience in smallholder farming systems. The RD approach builds from those initial discussions, combining elements from agroecology, permaculture, climate-smart agriculture, conservation agriculture, and bio-intensive methods, into a practical process that can be layered into existing activities within the development context.
The RD approach asks farmers to seek a deeper understanding of their farming systems within their agroecosystems to create a better farm design that optimizes the use of and enhances available resources over the long term and in response to external changes. It seeks to strengthen the resilience of smallholder farmers and their farming systems to environmental and economic shocks and stresses through: enhancing natural resources and ecosystem services; increasing energy efficiency; increasing income; contributing to increased nutritional status; and strengthening the skill set, adaptability and confidence of smallholder famers.
Resilience Design Training Facilitator’s Guide
This Resilience Design (RD) Facilitator’sGuide is a training tool that can be used to cascade the Resilience Design in Smallholder Farming Systems approach (RD approach). Facilitators should ideally have received prior training in the RD approach, agroecology, or agriculture before conducting an RD training session. It is also helpful for facilitators to have experience conducting large-scale field trainings and understand best practices for organizing such events. Prior to conducting an RD training, facilitators should review the RD approach document, and thisGuide, in their entirety.
Resilience Design for Agroecological Production
As Resilience Design is increasingly implemented across multiple organizations, programs and contexts, these minimum standards serve as a guide for ensuring consistency and quality. They apply to all humanitarian and development programs implementing Resilience Design approaches, whether at a garden scale or across a larger landscape. Any site applying RD should, at a minimum, have these components in place.
This document provides an overview of eight minimum standards that apply to all RD site interventions. For specific implementation of these standards at the garden or farm level, see the Permagarden Checklist and the Resilience Design Checklist.
Permagarden Technical Manual
The Permagarden Technical Manual Third Edition explains the key concepts and techniques necessary to create permagarden growing systems. It then explains how these techniques can be incorporated into emergency and nonemergency programs that support home gardens, using a farmer-led process of observation and design. The manual includes an explanation of the purpose and theory behind the Permagarden Approach, which recognizes the important role of soil health, water management, and biodiversity in improving crop production. It outlines the most commonly used practices for developing a permagarden, such as double digging, biointensive planting, intercropping, tree planting, and water harvesting, and provides detailed instructions on how to implement the different practices throughout the home compound. It also discusses how program staff can engage farmers in learning about permagardens and their benefits, and how these same concepts and practices can also be applied to increase the production and resilience of their field crops.
Permagarden Monitoring Sheet
Permagarden Monitoring Sheet on the areas including:
- DESIGN: Site has a contextspecific design that optimizes resources and external influences.
- WATER: Site has water harvesting strategies to slow, spread, sink and manage water.
- SOIL HEALTH: Site creates a healthy soil food web that supports sustained production and growth.
- BIODIVERSITY: Site has a diversity of plant, tree and animal species that work together to support overall health and production.
- PROTECTION: Site’s soil and plants are protected from any negative effects of people, animals, insects, disease and other external influences.
Resilience Design for Water and Landscapes
This primer is designed to support those working in humanitarian and development contexts by highlighting a design process for increasing community resilience to shocks and stresses ranging from social and economic upheaval to natural disasters such as floods, drought, increased heat and aridity, loss of living soils and biodiversity, and compromised ecosystem services due to degenerative land practices. The design process described in the following pages is based on low-cost, low-tech, processbased solutions that mimic natural processes and ecological cycles.
The application of this approach can open up opportunities for new livelihoods based upon organic food systems, while buffering communities from the impacts of weather and climate-related shocks and stresses.
