Synthesis Report: Three Horizon Farmer Session at UFCCC Africa Climate Week

The Farmer session co-organised by took place as a side-event to the UNFCCC Africa Climate Week, 18-22 March 2019, Accra, Ghana. The session aimed to bring forward the role of farmer-driven (small-scale) initiatives in building positive, food secure and climate resilient futures in Africa.

Pathways towards food secure, sustainable and climate resilient futures are often designed on global or national levels. This session aimed to focus on local-scale, practitioners’ perspectives to enrich the large-scale narratives. In order to facilitate the discussion, the 3 Horizon approach was applied. The workshop included three roundtable discussions focusing on visions of the future, existing promising initiatives and how to overcome the challenges. The results showed that the priority areas requiring support are building societal ability to self-organise and act together, increase the ability of different societal groups (e.g. women, young people) to act independently, to increase the position of farmers both in terms of direct investments in infrastructure and in terms of their societal status, and support their considerations of resilient landscapes.

The workshop yielded two very different approaches to common challenges, and very different perspectives on these challenges. While one group focused on maintaining or increasing productivity, to meet the double challenges of increased population sizes and climate variability, the other group addressed these challenges by aiming to inform and influence consumer markets and adopt proactive approaches to understanding and managing uncertain weather patterns.