GFAR, with international expert partners including the CGIAR, the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development, FAO, IFAD, international farmers organizations, Regional Fora and the Earth System Science Partnership), has been at the forefront of actions to raise awareness of the potential of agricultural systems in mitigating and adapting to climate change.

 

A new project is bringing farmers from Pacific island countries together to share their ideas on food security and climate change.

 

Three years ago, after cultivating a few seeds from a single yam, Graham Daniels embarked on a new farming endeavour in the Tanolui community of Vanuatu's Shefa province.

 

It proved so successful he is now harvesting three times a year, selling out of stock at the local market and sharing his expertise with others.

 

Pauliane Bafil, a project coordinator with the UN Development Program (UNDP), is working with Mr Daniels and other farmers on a new knowledge-exchange scheme being rolled out in Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Fiji.

 

Ms Bafil said the creation of knowledge hubs allowed individual farmers who had advanced knowledge, farming methods and resilient plant varieties that others might not have access to, to collaborate with each other.

 

The networks brought these farmers together to share their successes and failures, encouraging them to share information, planting materials and to work together to trial sustainable or climate-resilient farming systems.

 

Moortaza Jiwanji, the Pacific risk resilience program manager with the UNDP's Pacific Centre, said sharing knowledge strengthened the resilience of farming communities because they were experimenting with more techniques like mixing crops.

 

"If they're only growing one crop variety, they're very vulnerable. Whereas if you have a variety of crops, you enhance resilience for those communities," he said.

 

"Another area is where people are actually sharing the [seedlings], so it's not just an exchange of information and techniques."

 

Mr Jiwanji said farmers saw the knowledge hubs as an opportunity and source of confidence.

 

"Beforehand I think they were really struggling, but this is now an opportunity, a sign of hope for communities to actually come out of that by pooling together."

 

 

Mr Jiwanji said the challenges of climate change meant this sort of regional cooperation was more important than ever before.

 

"We've all seen the headlines after Tropical Cyclone Pam that hit Vanuatu in March ... The stories about how communities, particularly remote communities, really didn't have anything to eat in the aftermath of the disaster — particularly green leaf produce," he said.

 

"That's a pattern we're seeing with extreme weather events. Now with climate change and more slow-onset events, like extended periods of drought and dry periods, it's reducing farming communities' ability to grow crops."

 

With growing support from local government and national agriculture ministries, there is speculation the hubs will develop new commercial and export ventures for the region.

 

"Right now a lot of the focus on subsistence farming and this is still very early days," Mr Jiwanji said.

"Certainly, these are much more organised approaches and I think there's huge prospects for farming communities to connect better with government [and] also the private sector.

 

"They could become a source for feeding the supply chain."

 

There are already four knowledge hubs in Vanuatu and eight in Solomon Islands. Seventeen are planned for Tonga and another seven in Fiji.