Exploring the Climate Change Impacts on Food Availability in Agroforestry Livelihoods: A Rural Moshi Study
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Southampton
Department Name: School of Geography
Abstract
Agricultures addition into forests (agroforestry) has widespread praise for improving farmer's climate change (CC) resiliency. However, in some Tanzanian agroforests CC implications are visually evident, meaning potential repercussions for food security and ecosystem services, mainly soil conservation. Accurate data of forest cover and soil components under CC are missing, therefore, impacts on food security and dependant livelihoods are unclear. This, coupled with little known barriers to adaptation, restricts capabilities to develop necessary responses. Thus, understanding CC impacts on agroforestry livelihoods and food security is vital to ensure adaptive measures are devisable, and achieve adaptive capacity, food security and livelihood sustainability.
This interdisciplinary project investigates whether Tanzanian agroforests appropriately support farming livelihoods, food security and adaptive capacities under CC, using Rural Moshi as a case study. This involves: 1) exploring CC impacts on agroforestry livelihoods, 2) CC effects on soil fertility and crop productivity and 3) examining how farmers adapt. Hypothetically, CC will worsen food insecurities due to diminishing agroforests, which reduce soil fertility. Using the sustainable livelihoods and food security four pillars theoretical frameworks, the fieldwork will include interdisciplinary research. 90 farmers will be interviewed using selective and chain sampling, allowing for agroforesters vs non-agroforesters cross-comparisons. Qualitative and quantitative methods are necessary, using collection instruments involving: interviews, crop yield assessments, soil sampling and secondary data analysis. Where required, interview coding, statistical analysis and mapping analytical tools will be applied. Project outcomes could impact Tanzanian, agricultural and food-secure organisation's CC policy, and advance forestry CC adaptation knowledge, allowing for future research.
This interdisciplinary project investigates whether Tanzanian agroforests appropriately support farming livelihoods, food security and adaptive capacities under CC, using Rural Moshi as a case study. This involves: 1) exploring CC impacts on agroforestry livelihoods, 2) CC effects on soil fertility and crop productivity and 3) examining how farmers adapt. Hypothetically, CC will worsen food insecurities due to diminishing agroforests, which reduce soil fertility. Using the sustainable livelihoods and food security four pillars theoretical frameworks, the fieldwork will include interdisciplinary research. 90 farmers will be interviewed using selective and chain sampling, allowing for agroforesters vs non-agroforesters cross-comparisons. Qualitative and quantitative methods are necessary, using collection instruments involving: interviews, crop yield assessments, soil sampling and secondary data analysis. Where required, interview coding, statistical analysis and mapping analytical tools will be applied. Project outcomes could impact Tanzanian, agricultural and food-secure organisation's CC policy, and advance forestry CC adaptation knowledge, allowing for future research.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Marije Schaafsma (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Martin Watts (Student) |
Publications
Watts. M
(2021)
The social impacts of coffee trade
in TRADE, Development and Environment Hub
Studentship Projects
| Project Reference | Relationship | Related To | Start | End | Student Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ES/P000673/1 | 01/10/2017 | 30/09/2027 | |||
| 1952772 | Studentship | ES/P000673/1 | 01/10/2017 | 31/01/2024 | Martin Watts |
| Description | As a result from this award, and based on the emerging findings, we now know based on empirical evidence that homegarden agroforestry systems and farmers are likely to be less productive under future climate change that encompasses increasingly warmer and dryer conditions. Although some crops yields, such as maize and beans, may be positively impacted by climate change, more important food and cash crops, such as banana, are expected to be negatively affected by the increasingly warmer and dryer condition despite an expected drop in outbreaks of banana disease. However, the impact on income from banana under future climate change is less clear because due to the localised market a reduction in banana yield increased the selling price and thus income from banana. Based on the insight gained into current livelihoods strategies in the warmer and dryer midlands homegarden, households located in the highlands may require access to additional farmland to cultivate crops to help compensate for the expected overall lower crop production as climates continue to worsen. This livelihood strategy, however, is expected to become increasingly difficult as populations grow and land scarcity increases. Practicing this livelihood strategy also mandates greater access to physical and natural capital assets, which could become increasingly difficult to access as climate change exacerbates. The impact of a lesser productive homegarden on household well-being and ability to access livelihood assets for crop production is still yet to be analysed. Based on the qualitative evidence and conceptual framework, it is possible that household well-being and access to livelihood may decline, suggesting that under future climates livelihoods in the homegarden system could worsen unless effective adaptive methods are implemented. These emerging key findings importantly show with empirical evidence that tropical agroforestry systems can also be negatively impacted by climate change despite the common advocation in agroforestry literature and policy discourse that agroforestry can provide an effective long-term adaptation solution for subsistence farmers. |
| Exploitation Route | It is hoped that the key findings generated from the funding will be used to plan for the future impacts of climate change in homegarden agroforests, for example, by local NGOs or governments which could encourage and increase awareness of accessing additional farmland. Tanzania's green climate fund, which focuses on domains of food security, livelihoods and forestry, could be used to assist agroforestry farmers in adapting to climate change. Furthermore, as much of the agroforestry and climate literature tends to focus on the increased resilience and adaptation benefits from agroforestry without considering how climate change impacts agroforestry systems itself, these findings highlight that climate change can negatively affect agroforestry systems could encourage further study into how different trajectories of climate change e.g., increased rainfall, may impact on various others types of agroforestry systems. |
| Sectors | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Environment |
| Description | The Tropical Agricultural Association Award Fund |
| Amount | £2,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | The Tropical Agriculture Association |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Start | 09/2019 |
| Title | Conceptual Framework |
| Description | Through the research conducted so far, an interdisciplinary conceptual framework for understanding how climate change impacts tropical agroforestry systems, including agroforestry farmers households, has been generated. The framework is novel and uniquely combines different aspects and ideas of other relevant interdisciplinary frameworks and concepts in order to produce a framework capable of capturing how climate change, and other interacting pressures, effect the close mutual relationships and feedbacks between agroforestry's biophysical and social systems. The framework can be used to guide the collection and analysis of empirical data and is a key methodological contribution to the agroforestry literature as there is a scarcity of agroforestry specific conceptual frameworks, especially for analysing the impacts on farmer's livelihoods. The framework is currently presented in the methodology chapter of the thesis, which is not yet available. |
| Type Of Material | Data analysis technique |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | As of yet the framework is not available so there are no notable impacts to report. |
| Title | Dataset of empirically recorded impacts of climate change on homegarden agroforestry |
| Description | The dataset encompasses a household survey conducted in the midland and highland agro-ecological zones - zones which support the homegardens - of the Moshi Rural District in Tanzania. The sample size was 261 and data was gathered across 6 villages spatially distributed across these agro-ecological zones. Data was collected on the perceived impacts of climate change and drought on farmers' crop yields and income, livelihood assets, such as livestock, the natural capital used to co-produce crops, such as soil moisture and quality, and household well-being. Any adaptive or coping responses employed by households, and the perceived impact on their crop yields, was also noted. The dataset also includes changes overtime in crop yields, income, access to assets and household well-being based on farmer recall and focusing on periods of before drought (2013), during drought (2017) and after drought (2020). Currently, due to the lack of empirical study on the impacts of climate change on tropical agroforestry systems, and the livelihoods of farmers using agroforestry, this dataset includes responses not commonly documented in empirical literature. As such, this data is a key empirical contribution of this research project. The responses in this dataset can also be used to predict how the homegarden agroforestry system will response under future climate change by comparing the responses gathered from households in the warmer and dryer midland zone to the cooler and wetter highland zone, which is a novel and useful aspect of this research. The data gathered in this household survey was guided by the conceptual framework and preliminary qualitative research. Due to research ethics, before sharing this dataset more widely the identities and exact locations of households in the sample will be removed to protect participants anonymity. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | This dataset forms the majority of the empirical results in the thesis. Therefore, the impact of the dataset will align with any impact generated from the key findings of this research. Once the data is analysed and the findings are published the data will be shared publicly for use. |
| Title | Dataset of the impacts of coffee production and policy interventions on producer's well-being |
| Description | The dataset comprises the recorded impacts, as empirically documented in 104 studies, of coffee production and trade on the different dimensions of producer's well-being, as well as the effect of policy interventions, such as certification, on modifying the direction of these impacts. The dataset was generated via a systematic review approach focusing on academic and grey literature which studied the impacts of coffee production and trade on people. This work was conducted for the TRADE-Hub project, which is a UKRI project, by me whilst I worked there as a research assistant part-time during the part-time candidature of my PhD. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | The dataset is with the project, and I have not been made aware of any impacts from the dataset created. |
| Description | Remote Data Collection |
| Organisation | Sokoine University of Agriculture |
| Country | Tanzania, United Republic of |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The research team supplied the questionnaire, supervision and sampling design to the hired MSc student from SUA. The research team also supplied training to the hired student on the key principles of household survey data collection. By providing this opportunity, the collaboration improved the student's research skills and experience and thus increased the students employability in Tanzania. The student was also put in charge of the other two research assists who were less experienced in data collection and therefore provided the opportunity for the SUA student to improve their leadership skills. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Due to the inability to travel overseas during covid to complete the fieldwork, this collaboration contributed significantly to this research by provide the majority of empirical data used in all three results chapters. Therefore, this collaboration has made a key contribution to the key findings of this research. |
| Impact | The outcomes which were derived from the household survey empirical dataset are linked to this collaboration. This includes the presentations conducted which include current findings from the household survey (the TAA presentation) as well as the empirical dataset itself. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Presentation at School of Geography conference (University of Southampton) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The intention of the presentation was to provide researchers in the school of geography an overview of the research topic, progress made and the key findings so far. Around 40 academics were on the teams call (as this was presented remotely due to covid restrictions). Therefore, the dissemination of my research reached a high number of researchers in the school including geographers with significantly different research backgrounds who may have likely not come across or have knowledge of this research before. A number of questions and discussions followed the presentation. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Presentation at the Tropical Agricultural Association annual general meeting |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
| Results and Impact | As part of receiving the Tropical Agricultural Association (TAA) funding award, I was asked to present my findings from my research so far and make evidence based suggestions to increase subsistence farmers resilience to climate change. I did this online to an audience of Tropical Agricultural Association members, which included some members outside the UK based in tropical countries, as well as to members involved in industry. Following the presentation, i received numerous follow-up emails from members interested in my research who asked further questions. These attendees also put me in contact with other contacts in their industry networks overseas who would also be interested in my research and findings which helped widened dissemination. The feedback i received from my TAA mentors was that my presentation sparked alot of interest amongst TAA members. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | South Coast Doctoral Training Programme Final Year Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | The purpose of this presentation was to communicate the research that I have conducted so far to other social science researchers outside the realm of geography and the university of Southampton. Around 50 academics from different social science subjects, including attendees from the universities of portsmouth and brighton attended. Following the presentation, there was about 10 minutes of questions and discussions about my research. This included different ways of making impact with my research through my project collaborators. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |