Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PrAEctiCe (Potentials of Agroecological practices in east Africa with a focus on Circular water-energy-nutrient systems)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2024-05-01 al 2025-04-30
East Africa, like many other regions in Africa, is experiencing food insecurity due to prolonged droughts, soil erosion, and changes in rainfall seasons caused by climate change and extreme weather conditions. The Covid-19 pandemic and ongoing global disputes further exacerbate the food security problem, adding to the fragility of the food system in the region. A transition towards a more climate-resilient, transparent, and sustainable food system is highly needed.
Agroecology is seen as a strategy to address the current situation, although little is known about its impacts on labor, incomes, and food security. To address this gap and assist smallholder farmers with their agroecological transition in East Africa, the PrAEctiCe project will focus on quantifying the impacts of current agroecological practices to determine their socio-economic viability.
The project has reached significant milestones with the design and construction of living labs completed in three East African countries. This crucial development provides a dynamic environment for hands-on experimentation and real-world validation of the Decision Support Tool.
The Decision Support Tool, aimed at agroecological advisors, will assess socio-economic and environmental indicators to aid farm-level decision-making. It will support the selection of optimal agroecological practices, helping farmers mitigate and adapt to their specific conditions.
The project brings together 16 consortium members from Europe and Africa, adopting a multi-stakeholder approach to develop a novel agroecology indicator set. It focuses on the circular water-energy-nutrient systems of integrated aqua-agriculture while keeping the smallholder farmer’s needs at the center.
Agroecology is seen as a strategy to address the current situation, although little is known about its impacts on labor, incomes, and food security. To address this gap and assist smallholder farmers with their agroecological transition in East Africa, the PrAEctiCe project will focus on quantifying the impacts of current agroecological practices to determine their socio-economic viability.
The project has reached significant milestones with the design and construction of living labs completed in three East African countries. This crucial development provides a dynamic environment for hands-on experimentation and real-world validation of the Decision Support Tool.
The Decision Support Tool, aimed at agroecological advisors, will assess socio-economic and environmental indicators to aid farm-level decision-making. It will support the selection of optimal agroecological practices, helping farmers mitigate and adapt to their specific conditions.
The project brings together 16 consortium members from Europe and Africa, adopting a multi-stakeholder approach to develop a novel agroecology indicator set. It focuses on the circular water-energy-nutrient systems of integrated aqua-agriculture while keeping the smallholder farmer’s needs at the center.
The main achievements so far are the construction of the living labs which is almost finish in the first 18 months of the project. These pilots will help to demostrate the efficiency of the water-energy-nutrient circular system. Parallel to this, the app that will help the smalholder farmers' transition into agroecology is being developed by specialist. This work is feeded by several partners that have their input on the indicators framework and mapping stakeholders, agroecology farms and integrated aqua-agriculture.
The work done so far in collaboration within the consortium, has produced 16 deliverables, from which 13 are public, and will be soon be available in our Zenodo account.
The work done so far in collaboration within the consortium, has produced 16 deliverables, from which 13 are public, and will be soon be available in our Zenodo account.
The projects has aimed to map different actors involved in agroecology in East Africa through specific activities, such as, the Stakeholder map for Agroecology in East Africa, the Precision mapping of Agroecology practices in East Africa and the Mapping of integrated aqua-agriculture in East Africa (https://praectice.eu/integrated-agriculture-aquaculture-map/(si apre in una nuova finestra)). With these, the consortium has now a clearer perspective on the target audience for the impacts of the project. A part of these stakeholders have already participated in co-creation workshops organized by the project, in order to identify needs that where not taken in consideration, and now are part of the future developments of the project's main exploitable results, the Decision Support Tool. Moreover, these results are not standing alone, since together with the Report on existing indicator frameworks, further Selection of successful case studies of combinations of agroecological practices were able to be achieved.