INCREASE

Do you know what happens when integrated soil fertility management is combined with agro-forestry, bio-slurry, renewable energy and irrigation? You have more climate-friendly, stable and higher yields. This is what Sida’s Increasing Climate Resilience in Energy & Agriculture Systems and Entrepreneurship (INCREASE) project is all about.

The INCREASE project evolved from lessons learned and achievements in two earlier Sida-funded climate-smart agriculture and renewable energy projects SILMS (Sustainable Integrated Land Management Solutions) and E4A (Energy for Agriculture).

The objective was to increase social, economic, and environmental resilience and equity in agriculture and energy systems by strengthening their adaptive capacity. The project was implemented over three years from January 2020 to 31 December 2022. It covered Eastern, Central, Copper Belt, Lusaka, and Southern provinces, initially targeting 11,300 smallholder farmers.

SILMS was tasked to promote climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices in two districts in the Eastern Province, targeting over 20,000 smallholder farmers. E4A focused on securing household energy for cooking and fertilizer needs and aimed to install 4,575 biodigesters. These two projects under SNV individually offered convincing evidence of the various aspects that contributed to resilience. Bringing the projects' achievements together expedited the foundations for sustainable farming and value chains.

Biogas and bio-slurry were more relevant than ever for diversifying sustainable energy options and conservation-type farming. They had enormous growth potential in Zambia as hydrocarbons were phased out, alternatives to wood fuel became more pressing, and the agricultural sector moved away from chemicals and more towards organic farming. The project working hypothesis was that:

SNV's main partners in the project were the Zambia Agriculture Research Institute (ZARI), and three agribusinesses, each with a large smallholder farmer base: Alliance Gineries Limited (cotton), Parmalat (dairy) and Freshmark (horticulture).

The results

The INCREASE project showed that smallholders and other value chain actors are taking responsibility for improving their resilience to climate change by re-adopting traditional practices and making more structural shifts.

In doing so, INCREASE responded to the needs of smallholders and value chains to be more innovative and more resilient in the face of climate change while also increasing food security and income levels in select agriculture and energy value chains. By 2024, INCREASE’s market-led strategy, highlighted in the mid-term evaluation report, proved instrumental in fostering sustainable livelihoods and enhancing climate resilience.

In summary, the INCREASE project

• Trained 12,380 smallholder farmers on Climate-smart practices. 41% being female and 58.3% being male.

• Realised 60% adoption of two climate-smart practices and 90% of at least one practice.

• 94% of youth/women SME's were trained in business services and access to finance.

• Increase in income for 65% of smallholder farmers.