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Farmers globally are facing challenges associated with climate variability and change. In Haiti, where agriculture is predominantly non-mechanized and rainfed, smallholder farmers are severely affected by reduced yields and increases in operating costs. We evaluate the Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach with farmers who live in mountainous areas outside of Port-au-Prince ahead of the 2019 spring growing season. We use quantitative surveys and qualitative case studies to measure farmers' understanding and use of PICSA information and tools, and perceived effects on their farming and households. Seventy percent of survey respondents (63% women) reported that training in PICSA led them to make positive changes in their farming and livelihood enterprises. While most of the changes pertained to the management of existing farming enterprises, farmers also made changes in scale and started new enterprises. The analysis of qualitative case studies provides an in-depth understanding of perceived benefits on farmers' income, food security, confidence and their attitudes towards farming and climate risk. PICSA builds farmers’ self-efficacy by enabling them to focus and reflect on their individual context while collectively analyzing and interpreting relevant information on climate and livelihood options. This study has important implications for future adaptation interventions where extension services and climate information are limited.

We investigate the influence of an agricultural TV edutainment programme on farmers’ decisions to implement changes of agricultural practices. We use data obtained from a survey conducted to 1,572 households in Kenya across the target areas of a TV edutainment programme, Shamba-Shape-Up (SSU). A conceptual framework is developed to account for the interaction between farmers watching SSU internal factors including farmer’s and household’s characteristics, farmer’s views on farming and farmer’s trust on sources of influence and farmer’s decision to change their agricultural practices. Structural equations and probit models are used to understand how watching edutainment TV programme Shamba Shape-Up (SSU) along with farmers and household’s characteristics, famer’s views on farming and farmer’s trust on sources of information affect maize and dairy farmer’s probability to make changes to agricultural practices shown in SSU. We find that SSU has an influence on maize and dairy farmers’ decisions to implement changes of agricultural practices. Farmers who watch SSU have a higher probability to implement a greater number of agricultural practices. However, SSU influence varies depending on the agricultural practice recommended as well as on the reasons that farmers have for watching the programme. The probability of implementing agricultural practices shown on SSU was dependent the associated difficulty of making such changes. Edutainment TV can be a viable channel to nudge farmers to implement practices that contribute to face local and global challenges such as adapting and mitigating climate change, poverty reduction, increasing productivity and income of smallholders in developing countries.

To realize its full potential in supporting small-scale farmers to address challenges of climate variability and change, climate services must empower individual farmers to make decisions that suit their diverse lived realities and utilize their existing capacities. This requires tools and principles that support the farmer as the decision-maker.

Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) is an approach that has been used to date in 20 countries and benefited tens of thousands of households including over 5000 in Northern Ghana and 75,000 in Rwanda. PICSA involves trained field staff or community volunteers working with groups of farmers and includes farmers: using both historical climate information and forecasts; exploring practical options to address challenges and; using participatory decision making tools to evaluate and plan options for individual farm contexts. A survey of randomly selected farmers and detailed case studies was used in Northern Ghana to investigate the influence of PICSA on farmer’s decision-making, livelihoods, and innovation behaviours. Ninety seven percent of farmers had made changes to their practices (mean of three per farmer), including starting new enterprises and a wide range of management practices. Farmers described positive effects including on income and food security and importantly on wellbeing, and confidence in their abilities to address climate change and variability. In case study interviews farmers clearly explained the rationale for their changes as well as reporting how they actively sought and obtained further technical information and resources. Innovation processes observed are in stark contrast to those associated with linear dissemination of technology models. Keywords: Climate variability, Climate change, Participatory approaches, Options by context, Smallholder farmers

Recently, a new approach to extension and climate information services, namely Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) has been developed. PICSA makes use of historical climate records, participatory decision-making tools and forecasts to help farmers identify and better plan livelihood options that are suited to local climate features and farmers’ own circumstances. This approach was implemented in 2016 in two sites in Senegal and Mali, with 57 and 47 farmers, respectively. At the end of the growing season, these farmers were surveyed to explore their perceptions on the use of the approach. In Senegal and Mali, respectively 97% and 76% of the respondents found the approach ‘very useful’. The approach enabled farmers to make strategic plans long before the season, based on their improved knowledge of local climate features. Moreover, evidence demonstrates that PICSA stimulated farmers to consider and then implement a range of innovations which included: (i) changes in timing of activities such as sowing dates, (ii) implementing soil and water management practices, (iii) selection of crop varieties, (iv) fertiliser management and (v) adaptation of plans for the season (farm size, etc.) to the actual resources available to them. The study also demonstrated the potential of farmer-to-farmer extension in scaling up the approach, which is of great interest especially in the current context of limited extension services in the West African region. Keywords: Climate change, Climate information services, Climate variability, Food security, Livelihood options, West Africa

Edutainment, the combination of education with entertainment through various media such as television, radio, mobile phone applications and games, is increasingly being used as an approach to stimulate innovation and increase agricultural productivity amongst smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Shamba Shape Up, a widely publicised makeover reality TV programme, is an example of edutainment that has received considerable attention, and airs in three countries in East Africa where it is estimated to be watched by millions of viewers.\ud There is no published academic research on the influence of makeover television formats on innovation systems and processes in smallholder agriculture. Using an Agricultural Innovation Systems approach, this paper explores how makeover edutainment is influencing smallholder farmer innovation systems together with the effect this is having on smallholder farms. In the absence of previous research, it articulates a Theory of Change which draws on research traditions from mass communication, agricultural extension and innovation systems. \ud Data came from two large scale quantitative (n=9,885 and n=1,572) surveys and in-depth participatory qualitative research comprising focus group discussions, participatory budgets, agricultural timelines, case studies and key information interviews in Kenya. An estimated 430,000 farmers in the study area were benefiting from their interaction with the programme through increased income and / or a range of related social benefits including food security, improving household health, diversification of livelihood choices, paying school fees for children and increasing their community standing / social capital. \ud Participatory research showed SSU enhanced an already rich communication environment and strengthened existing processes of innovation. It helped set the agenda for discussions within farming communities about opportunities for improving smallholder farms, while also giving specific ideas, information and knowledge, all in the context of featured farm families carefully selected so that a wide range of viewers would identify with them and their challenges.\ud Broadcasts motivated and inspired farmers to improve their own farms through a range of influences including entertainment, strong empathy with the featured host farm families, the way ideas emerged through interaction with credible experts, and importantly through stimulating widespread discussion and interaction amongst and between farmers and communities of experts on agricultural problems, solutions and opportunities. The fact that local extension workers also watched the programmes further enhanced the influence on local innovation systems. \ud The findings indicate that well designed makeover edutainment can strongly influence agricultural innovation processes and systems resulting in impact on the agricultural production and behaviours of large numbers of smallholder farmers.

Approaches to natural resource management emphasise the importance of involving local people and institutions in order to build capacity, limit costs, and achieve environmental sustainability. Governments worldwide, often encouraged by international donors, have formulated devolution policies and legal instruments that provide an enabling environment for devolved natural resource management. However, implementation of these policies reveals serious challenges. This article explores the effects of limited involvement of local people and institutions in policy development and implementation. An in-depth study of the Forest Policy of Malawi and Village Forest Areas in the Lilongwe district provides an example of externally driven policy development which seeks to promote local management of natural resources. The article argues that policy which has weak ownership by national government and does not adequately consider the complexity of local institutions, together with the effects of previous initiatives on them, can create a cumulative legacy through which destructive resource use practices and social conflict may be reinforced. In short, poorly developed and implemented community based natural resource management policies can do considerably more harm than good. Approaches are needed that enable the policy development process to embed an in-depth understanding of local institutions whilst incorporating flexibility to account for their location-specific nature. This demands further research on policy design to enable rigorous identification of positive and negative institutions and ex-ante exploration of the likely effects of different policy interventions.