A decline in pollinator dependent vegetable crop productivity in India indicates pollination limitation and consequent agro-economic crises.

Approximately 70% of the tropical crop species depend on pollinators for optimum yields (Roubik, 1995, Klein 2007). The economic value of such pollinated crops to India is $726 million and India is the world's second largest vegetable producer (Sidhu, 2005). This status has been underpinned by large-scale changes in land-use and pesticide dependency (Fazal, 2000; Shaw & Satish, 2007). A method (c.f. Aizen et al. 2008) that partitions crops into categories depending on their relative pollinator dependence (Index of pollinator dependence, DI) was applied to analysis of vegetable yields for India over 45 years (1963-2008) using FAO data. This has revealed that since 1993, relative yields of crop production has either flattened or declined, while pollinator non dependent crops show no similar decline. This pattern of yield limitation may be due to several factors, among which pollinator limitation would be a major factor (Kearns et al. 1998) and this risk is discussed. Pollinator decline will have serious socio-economic consequences for countries like India, which host a large population of small and marginal farms for whom falling yield level would be critical for subsistence (Kearns et al. 1998; Kremen et al., 2002; Klein et al., 2007; Potts et al., 2010). We show here for the first time any indication of pollination limitation in India, an emerging economy that is still predominantly agrarian. Detailed land use and ecological surveys are urgently required to assess the ecology of pollinating insects within and around agricultural systems in India

Summary of Baseline Household Survey Results: Makueni, Kenya

This report presents a summary of the main results of a baseline household survey carried out between April 2012 and June 2012 in seven (7) villages with 140 households (HHs) in Wote, a benchmark site of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS). Wote is located in Makueni County in South Eastern Kenya. The survey was carried out using the standardised CCAFS household baseline tool

Genesis reversed: climate change impacts on agriculture and livelihoods in mixed crop-livestock systems of East Africa

Climate-induced livelihood transitons in the agricultural systems of Africa are increasingly likely. There has been only limited study on what such transitons might look like, but it is clear that the implicatons could be profound in relaton to social, environmental, economic and politcal efects at local and natonal levels. The work here was set up to test the hypothesis that sedentary farmers who currently keep livestock in transiton zones that may become warmer and possibly drier in the future may ultmately be forced to increase their reliance on livestock vis-a?-vis cropping in the future. We carried out feldwork in 12 sites in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to understand how farming systems have been changing in the recent past. We then evaluated what the impacts of these changes, and further changes in the same directon, may be on household incomes and food security in the coming decades, using crop and household modelling. We found no direct evidence for the hypothesised extensifcaton of agricultural producton in the study sites. Indeed, the processes of farming systems evoluton in East Africa are substantally conditoned by powerful socio-cultural processes, it appears