By myAgro
Aida, a farmer with myAgro in Senegal, picking up her farming inputs in Keur Samba.
For smallholder farmers in West Africa, the global climate crisis is having an outsized impact. Rains that they rely on have become more unpredictable and temperatures are rising 1.5 times faster than anywhere else in the world. As the region’s population continues to rise, it is imperative that smallholder farmers, who produce an estimated 30% of the world’s food, are supported to respond to rapidly changing climate conditions.
myAgro is an award-winning organization equipping smallholder farmers in West Africa to move out of poverty. Through its mobile layaway model, myAgro offers integrated packages of improved seeds and fertilisers, seedlings, poultry, and training to smallholder farmers in Mali, Senegal, and Cote d’Ivoire – enabling them to increase their incomes using inputs and practices that support climate resilience, adaptation, and mitigation.
There are multiple terms for agricultural practices that support farmers in our rapidly changing environment – terms like climate-smart agriculture, regenerative agriculture, and agroecology. While all three prioritize sustainability and care for the earth, they each have unique definitions and practices. myAgro’s approach can be described as leveraging climate-smart agriculture.
Defining “Climate Smart”
According to The World Bank, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) addresses the interlinked challenges of food security and accelerating climate change. CSA aims to:
- Increase productivity: Produce more and better food to improve nutrition security and incomes, especially for poor and rural farmers through climate adaptation.
- Enhance resilience: Reduce vulnerability to climate risks like drought, pests, and disease, and build farmer capacity to adapt in the face of longer-term stressors like shortened rainy seasons and erratic weather patterns.
- Reduce emissions: Pursue lower emissions for each calorie or kilo of food produced, avoid deforestation from agriculture, and identify ways to absorb carbon out of the atmosphere.
Climate Smart Agriculture in Action at myAgro
myAgro integrates and innovates climate smart solutions to ensure that farmers and their families can benefit from immediate yield increases in the short term, while cultivating healthier land for future generations. While myAgro integrates climate-smart approaches across many aspects of our programming, here are two highlights that we are most excited about from the past year with our farmers:
- Scaling Agroforestry in Mali
One of the biggest challenges we are tackling at myAgro is that farmers in Mali and Senegal are dependent on one rainy season per year to do their farming and often have no other source of income, leaving them even more vulnerable to the worst impacts of climate change. One bad season can have long-term, detrimental consequences for the food security and well-being of farmers and their families.
myAgro’s agroforestry program is the first and only community-based agroforestry program in West Africa – helping farmers diversify their food sources and income by providing them with seedlings and training to plant trees amongst their food crops. We’ve established a network of 550 village-based mother units (MUs): nurseries that grow trees from seed and then deliver healthy seedlings to farmers in surrounding villages. As opposed to sourcing seedlings from big-box nurseries, the MU production network improves tree survival rates, lowers package delivery costs, and provides our locally recruited MU managers (most of whom are women) with additional income via sales commissions.
In 2024, we scaled our program to serve 189,000 farmers with packages of baobab and moringa trees, planting a total of nearly 1 million trees – a major investment in the climate resilience of the region. These trees mature to provide farmers and their families with nutrient-dense leaves, seeds, and fruit that can be harvested and sold multiple times per year, helping to improve and stabilize their food security and income. The trees also strengthen farmer climate resilience by improving soil health, reducing erosion, shielding crops from extreme weather, improving biodiversity, and offsetting carbon emissions.
- Improving Productivity at Lower Costs
A second challenge faced by smallholders in West Africa is the high cost of inputs like seeds and fertilizer. Over the past five years, market volatility of fertilizer prices has been a major challenge for farmers, who rely on this input to boost their yields in a region impacted by soil erosion and degradation. Overuse and over-reliance on chemical fertilizer can also reduce soil biodiversity and ultimately reduce natural soil fertility.
Currently, myAgro provides farmers with microdosed quantities of fertilizer, along with training on how to apply a microdose. As opposed to liberally applying large amounts of fertilizer, microdosing involves applying small amounts in targeted locations close to the plant for improved uptake. The practice allows farmers to achieve yields similar to traditional application methods at a lower cost. myAgro has been testing strategies that help farmers reduce their reliance on chemical fertilizer even further, while still achieving high yields. Our goal is to help farmers lower their input costs and rebuild natural soil biodiversity and fertility.
In 2022 and 2023, myAgro began trials for an innovative “half-dose” peanut package, in which only half of the microdose quantity of chemical fertilizer is applied to fields in a targeted manner. Through a series of controlled trials, we concluded that a half-dose package could produce peanut yields comparable to myAgro’s standard microdose – and at a fraction of the cost.
In 2024, myAgro launched a pilot with 27,000 farmers in Mali so that they could try this new practice for themselves. Farmers who purchased a typical myAgro peanut package had the option of adding on a half-dose pilot package, so that they could see the results side-by-side. We recognize that adopting a new practice can feel risky, and requires farmers to trust our recommendation, learn a new method, and apply the method properly to see its full benefit. To support farmers in trying out this new method, we provided:
- Pilot packages that were subsidized (lowering financial risk)
- In-person demos and training on how to apply the half-dose successfully
- Personalized field visits to support farmers during planting and application
- Ongoing mobile support via our Call Center to answer questions
At harvest time, we found that the half-dose continued to perform well in the “real world” when looking at yields in metric tons per hectare: trial participants achieved an impressive 155% increase in yield relative to control farmers, which was comparable to the standard microdose package (see Figure 1). This means that for just half the fertilizer cost, farmers can still achieve the same output – ultimately increasing their net profit per hectare.
This trial has helped to establish a network of farmers that are excited to champion the practice to others, sharing their success stories with other farmers – and helping to increase the adoption of new sustainable farming methods more broadly. Looking ahead, myAgro aims to continue testing and expanding farmer access to this solution in order to hone a product, training, and delivery model that generates maximum impact at scale while maintaining cost efficiency.
Balakissa Kieta, a peanut and okra farmer in Bancoumana, Mali, participated in myAgro’s half-dose trial this year. She shares, “I have my two plots here, one cultivated with half the dose of fertilizer and the other with the regular dose. I am very satisfied with the project because this year I observed a clear improvement in my field. We applied the fertilizer rigorously and followed the training agent’s recommendations by carrying out weeding twice. This special attention has contributed to the health of my plants. On my 1/8 hectare plot on which half dose is applied, I think I can harvest two bags of peanuts, which represents a much higher yield than normal. The half-dose method seems to be paying off, as the peanuts are sturdier and healthier. This experience gives me confidence in the techniques we have learned and shows how good monitoring and management can make a real difference. I can’t wait to see the end result. Improving the health of our soil using lesser fertilizer will benefit my family.”
Continuing Improvements in the Face of Global Warming
As global temperatures continue to rise, the adoption and scaling of climate-smart approaches like agroforestry and reduced fertilizer use is vital to ensuring that farmers and their families can improve their food security in the short term, while fortifying the health of their land for generations to come. myAgro is energized to continue this work in partnership with farmers in Mali, Senegal, and Cote d’Ivoire and to continue learning and improving its practices and offering in the years to come.