Augmenting Farmer Income with on-farm Water and Carbon Trade-offs

Agroecological practices such as crop diversification (intercropping, crop rotation, agroforestry, etc.) and livestock integration offer ecological benefits such as carbon and water sequestration. In the long term, such practices often improve on-farm soil health and water use efficiency on-farm. However, civil society organisations (CSOs) that promote these practices encounter many social, economic, and institutional challenges in persuading farmers, including unclear short-term trade-offs associated with agroecological transitions. Evidence-based economic forecasting is crucial to ensuring that farmers’ incomes are supported during transitions for improved agroecological outcomes. In this policy brief, we pilot a farm-scale tool to estimate the trade-offs between farmer income, carbon storage, and water requirement across different types of farms in a semi-arid region, and suggest the following measures to better plan farm interventions: 1. Provide farmers with information on farm design options 2. Tailor agroecological interventions to local land use, needs, and priorities 3. Develop and implement joint landscape management for ecosystem services