How can we support the extreme poor to facilitate their food security with CA?

Session: How can we support the extreme poor to be better enabled (with regards to having sufficient food security) to commit to learning and executing CA? It’s “addressing poverty before production” in parallel with CA training, as the extremely poor (yet capable) can choose not to work on piecework for starvation wages, but better adopt CA practices in the short and long term. This includes a “farming as a business” model, once basic necessities (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) are addressed. Business skills (saving, budgeting, and planning), and saving money, impact success from CA. CA may be used by some farmers who are enabled to engage in off-farm livelihoods as a means of savings (e.g., I’ll grow enough to buy food, and CA ensures that food will be produced).

Biographical data: Carl Wahl is the Global Agriculture Advisor for Concern Worldwide, the Republic of Ireland’s largest international NGO. He has lived and worked in Africa (mainly Liberia, Malawi and Zambia) since 2004, when he first started as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Northwestern Province, Zambia. Mr. Wahl is a holder of an M.S. in Agroecology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has authored papers on small-scale agroforestry and Conservation Agriculture.