This project provides support to farmers at the household level to optimize climate-smart rainfed agriculture practices, particularly relating to crops. Investments could include water and soil conservation, optimizing farm management (improved crop varieties, Integrated Pest Management; soil and water testing technologies), controlling invasive species, and supporting value chains. Climate change risks include rainfall variability, droughts, floods and increase of average temperature, making rainfed agriculture more vulnerable.

There is significant opportunity to unlock the potential of enhanced rainfed agriculture, thus building climate resilience and moving farmers beyond subsistence farming towards sustainable community level investments specific climate smart rainfed agriculture for farmer/producer groups. Crops cover much of the landscape in the project area (57%) and provide the main source of food and livelihoods.

 Yet, crop productivity has been declining due to a series of factors, including underinvestment, overexploitation, a changing climate, and security threats. Agricultural area expansion and imports are the primary means to meeting increasing food demand; yet agricultural expansion is a driver of desertification, which in turn reduces agricultural productivity, generating a vicious circle of overexploitation. 

To break this cycle, the project will invest in water and soil conservation, optimizing farm management (improved crop varieties, Integrated Pest Management; soil and water testing technologies), value chain development, and small equipment to increase labor efficiency.