Estimating Targets for GLDC

Ram Dhulipala, Kristofer Dodge, David Bergvinson. (31/8/2019). Estimating Targets for GLDC. Hyderabad, India: International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).

Abstract

The SRF was designed to illustrate the impact of agricultural research for development by 2030; it evaluates systemwide anticipated achievements towards the Sustainable Development Goals measured by the three SLOs of reducing poverty, improving nutrition, and improved natural resources/ecosystem services. GLDC leverages enabling environments to take advantage of policy, technology and partnerships converge to accelerate the adoption of profitable technologies by farmers while recognizing advantages (and disadvantages) in regional and national enabling environments, production challenges and market opportunities. CGIAR has received considerable return on investment (ROI) while converging policy, technology, and partnerships. The Tropical Legumes II (TL II) is a good example of this investment; GLDC will use the same strategy to scale technologies and livelihood strategies in the drylands. GLDC has set targets contributing to the SLOs (and thereby the SDGs) in the areas of poverty reduction, improved nutrition, and sustainable production. Due to the nature of the target crops, the CRP is getting value for money in the case of improving nutrition for health. In addition, many cropping systems for the drylands are grown in marginal lands, adding carbon to the soil profile that would otherwise be disproportionately impacted by climate change. A proven technology that has reached over 400,000 farmers in the Sahel of Africa is microdosing in dryland cereal cropping systems. The legumes, grown as companion crops to cereals, will further increase soil health through nitrogen fixation – a distinguishing feature of GLDC within the agri-food system portfolio. Our efforts will contribute to CGIAR efforts of keeping global temperature rise under 2 degrees by reducing agriculturally-related greenhouse gas emissions by 0.8 Gt CO2-e yr–1 (15%) . Conservative estimates over current annual levels of nitrogen fixation in residues that remain in the system for GLDC target countries is 27,500 tons of N by 2022 (assuming 25 kg N/ton of legume residue + 30% for roots) . Fixing nitrogen and carbon in the drylands directly contributes to SLO3, which aims to sustain production for future generations by restoring 190 million ha of degraded land, conserving 7.5 million ha of forest, reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.