Farmers’ organizations (FOs), such as associations, cooperatives, self-help and women’s groups, are common in developing countries and provide services that are widely viewed as contributing to income and productivity for small-scale producers. Here, we conducted a scoping review of the literature on FO services and their impacts on small-scale producers in sub-Saharan Africa and India. Most reviewed studies (57%) reported positive FO impacts on farmer income, but much fewer reported positive impacts on crop yield (19%) and production quality (20%). Environmental benefits, such as resilience-building and improved water quality and quantity were documented in 24% of the studies. Our analysis indicates that having access to markets through information, infrastructure, and logistical support at the centre of FO design could help integrate FOs into policy. Natural resource management should also be more widely incorporated in the services provided by FOs to mitigate risks associated with environmental degradation and climate change. Finally, farmers who are already marginalized because of poor education, land access, social status and market accessibility may require additional support systems to improve their capacities, skills and resources before they are able to benefit from FO membership.

Semi-arid areas are found in a large number of countries and regions of Africa and South and Central Asia. They display high vulnerability to climate change with considerable adaptation needs. In this paper, we review country-level and multi-country projects supported by international agencies. We examine the priorities and goals presented in national adaptation planning documents and in sectorial planning documents. Through this analysis, we seek to compare adaptation needs with current trends in national, regional and global projects and collaborations. Our results suggest that initiatives supported by international agencies play a considerable role in achieving national adaptation priorities, especially in areas such as agriculture and water management. However, compared with specific adaptation options such as drought-resistant species and irrigation (which tend to be the scope of the projects), the analyzed documents tend to see challenges in agriculture more in the contexts of food security, livestock and rural development. They emphasize the strong connection between rural livelihoods and sustainable land and ecosystem management. Priorities listed in the national documents but not captured in current initiatives include human health, pastoralism, security and migration. Our results also show high levels of mainstreaming adaptation into sectorial planning documents, especially those on poverty reduction; however, compared with the focus on the project level, they here emphasize adaptations focused on institutional development and governance. Finally, the outcomes indicate that global, regional and national initiatives are distributed unequally and that countries in Central and West Africa and Central Asia currently exhibit low participation, especially in national projects.

This article introduces and tests a framework that applies a systems perspective to food security with an assessment of the food system's resilience in the context of climate change. The framework was applied in 20 communities in Honduras and Nicaragua. Our results indicate that contributions from supporting systems, institutions and processes are crucial to ensure overall food system resilience and critical food utilization and access dimensions. These systems include natural resources and their management and critical infrastructure (transport, power, communications, storage, etc.) along with key institutional policies and processes for participation in decision-making. To improve resilience in food systems, it is important to increase household and community subsistence, local markets and food storage in accessing key staple items for good nutrition. At the same time, institutions must be strengthened to build capacities and monitor trends in food security, health and disease, and emergency preparedness. The framework helped to reveal the dependence of community food security, and especially food utilization and access, on decisions at the regional and national levels, beyond the direct control of the communities. Finally, users stressed the usefulness of the framework in structuring complex interactions of resilience features across different dimensions of the food system, which later could be used to inform local and regional decision- and policy-makers.