Background
At the end of 2015, the official deadline for the United Nations’ Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reported that the undernourished
proportion1
of the developing world population had fallen from 23.3 percent in 1990, to 12.9
percent, fundamentally improving the welfare of 216 million people worldwide (FAO, IFAD, &
WFP, 2015). Despite these positive outcomes, improvement is advancing at an increasingly slower
pace and is potentially in danger of trend reversal as the effects of climate change become more
serious. Today, about one in nine people (approximately 795 million2
), largely concentrated in
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and Southeast Asia, are still undernourished; a vulnerable population
that is likely to grow unless efficient adaptation and mitigation strategies are adopted.
In its most recent report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
representing 195 member countries and thousands of scientists, explicitly warns of decreases in
crop production and water availability following extreme weather events such as heat waves and
heavy precipitation (IPCC Core Writing Team, Pachauri, & Meyer, 2014). Additional global risk
projections include declining work productivity and increased morbidity and mortality as a result
of dehydration and heat exhaustion; a particular risk to agricultural workers who labor outside and
rural households that walk long hours to collect water and wood or access local markets. There is
further high consensus among the authors of the report that within communities dependent on
agriculture and pastoralism, that there will be an uptick in violent conflict as communities vie for diminishing access to resources (FAO et al., 2015). This is an outcome that persistently
characterizes many of the countries where food insecurity continues to persist.
The most recent manifestation of El Niño, the warm phase of the cyclical El Niño–Southern
Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon, offers insight into how devastating extreme shocks in weather
patterns can be, with shifts in wind and temperature patterns resulting in extreme rain and flooding
in some parts of the world, drought in others (NOAA, 2016). According to the Famine Early
Warning Systems Network, short-term shifts in climatic conditions as a result of El Niño have
already resulted in delayed rains, thus distorting the agricultural planting season, and caused severe
droughts.
With 2016 likely to be one of the driest growing seasons on record, it is expected that
farmers will experience several consecutive years of poor crop production. Within the past six
months, diminished crop yields have inflated food prices, including staples, and substantial food
aid is anticipated to be required in the coming year. Several countries have declared drought
emergencies and 2.5 million people are classified as being in crisis just within the South Eastern
region of Africa (FEWS, 2016).
Though some countries have initiated development of collaborative forecasting systems
that would allow scientists and farmers to communicate regarding adjustments to timing of
planting and crop choice, this level of sophistication can safely be assumed to be beyond the
abilities of many developing countries (Hansen, Mason, Sun, & Tall, 2011). Indeed, efforts
towards promoting modern farming methods (e.g. the Green Revolution) have largely failed in
countries that are both most susceptible to climate change and are already food insecure. One
option offered by agricultural scientists is to promote adoption of locally popular and economically
viable crop varieties, with selected characteristics such as drought-tolerance and pest resistance in
3
order to enhance production and yields. These seeds, known as improved varieties (IV) are not
reliant on expensive agrochemicals and are suited to local agro-ecological zones. IVs are typically
bred by taking into account that much of agriculture in SSA is rain-fed and relies largely on simple
tools such as hoes and family labor.
Over the last decade, the international community has committed upwards of a billion
dollars globally to the development and distribution of climate smart agriculture (CSA) that has
successfully demonstrated strong yield returns on field stations overseen by government research
centers and organizations such as the CGIAR members. What is highly uneven however, is the
understanding of how smallholder farmers (as the intended primary consumers of IVs), are
responding to this technology, both through rates of adoption and their ability to obtain similar
production gains compared to agricultural scientists. In short, production of potential technologies
has been substantial but there is still a lack of insight into which of these technologies are best
suited to alleviate future and current pressures on food security.
As general practice, when smallholder farmers seek to increase production, they frequently
do so by expanding the land that they cultivate (i.e. at the extensive margin) as opposed to using
improved technologies while keeping the land constant (i.e. at the intensive margin). In an effort
to slow down the expansion of cultivated land, which results in the clearing of forests and
perpetuates climate change, it will be necessary for scientists to breed IVs that will allow for
productivity gains on the intensive margin without requiring the acquisition of additional
expensive technologies or agronomic practices that have been rejected in the past.
Agricultural technologies must be contextually appropriate in order for them to have any
impact. Regardless of what is technically possible in drought-prone environments, without the
4
buy-in of farmers who are willing to adopt IVs, policymakers should understand that such
strategies are not suitable.
With this two-fold interest in crops that are already suited to arid regions (thus likely to be
more resilient to climate change) and are locally popular (meaning that societies have a vested
interest in their cultivation) the interest of donor organizations such as USAID has naturally turned
to legumes and pulses including groundnuts, beans, lentils and peas. Indeed, 2016 has been
declared the International Year of the Pulse by the United Nations (FAO, 2015), in recognition of
their global popularity, nutritional benefits, and economic potential. Furthermore, legumes, even
traditional varieties (i.e. locally found and widely used plant breeds), frequently have the
advantage of doing well in drought-prone environments compared not only to fruits and vegetables
but also to ‘thirsty’ staples such as maize.
Guided by the motivation to assess the potential of promoting crop varieties suited for the
changing climate by societies likely to be most affected, this study considers the potential for
adoption of improved groundnut varieties in Uganda.