AgriSmart Group members have a wide range of expertise and have been actively involved in the following sectors:

AgriSmart Group has a strong agricultural and food security expertise. It remains one of the core areas of our expertise. Our aim is to contribute to achieving food security, improving nutrition in a gender responsive manner and promoting income security of smallholder male and female farmers through market led sustainable agriculture development.

Our Group members advise on all aspects of agricultural development and food security, ranging from agricultural strategic planning to building the productivity, self-reliance of smallholders, including climate resilient agriculture development and adaptation to climate change.

Specific expertise includes:

  • Feasibility study and strategic planning for small and medium scale farms, based on agroecological and value chain analysis to identify best crop production practices that meets the family nutrition and market demands;
  • Irrigated and rainfed crop production and processing including bio-fuel analysis;
  • Agricultural extension and technology transfer for irrigated and rainfed crop production to smallholder farmers;
  • On-farm adaptive research planning, design and implementation;
  • Post-harvest handling, processing, storage and marketing;
  • Community pasture management including co-management systems;
  • Environmental and social impact assessment, monitoring and management;
  • Agricultural policy and economics;
  • Farm level and regional agricultural market development, storage, grading systems and commodity markets;
  • Business planning and small and medium enterprise start-up;
  • Agricultural research stations planning, design and construction.
  • Socioeconomic resilience support and disaster risk reduction;
  • Livelihoods development;
  • Climate-smart agriculture technologies; and
  • Capacity development and training.

Intensive agricultural development and inefficient use of water is putting pressure on water and land resources. The current emphasis on scheme-based irrigation and water resource development has caused failure or inefficient development of water resource development projects in many parts of the globe. ACG strongly believes in changing the current approach to watershed-based water resource development, using climate and water smart water resource development principles. Group members have been involved in development of innovative and easy to implement water smart technologies to ensure socially and environmentally sustainable and economic water resource development projects. Some of the specific expertise include:

  • Feasibility study, planning design and implementation;
  • Hydrology/water balance studies at the watershed and sub-watershed levels;
  • Multi-sectoral water allocation studies;
  • Participatory Irrigation and drainage development and management planning, design, construction and contract management;
  • Irrigation water management at the scheme and farm and scheme level;
  • Environment and social impact assessment;
  • Water user association policy, regulation, planning, design and capacity development;
  • Surface and groundwater harvesting – planning, design, and construction; capacity development and training, and
  • Modelling (SWIM, WEAP, etc.) to analyze alternate scenarios and determine the best possible options.

AgriSmart group strive to develop innovative solutions and best practices to sustain and enhance the value of natural resources in more efficient and sustainable ways. This starts from an in-depth review of country standards and regulations, an analysis and feasibility study of the social and environmental assessment of the project interventions is undertaken. By helping to implement policy and regulatory frameworks, AgriSmart works with public institutions and facilitates public-private partnerships and non-governmental organization and communities to manage and sustain their natural resources. Some of the specific expertise include:

  • Feasibility studies and strategic planning;
  • Environmental impact assessment and management;
  • Agricultural land use planning;
  • Integrated landscape management and community forest management;
  • Agroforestry
  • Community based natural resource management;
  • Soils and hydrology; and
  • Empowerment and rights of affected communities.

ACG strongly believes that male and female members of the society equally contribute to the agricultural and natural resources development. ACG’s approach to all development projects is gender-based from planning to implementation and follows the UN SDG 5 goal of Gender Equality and Women Economic Empowerment. ACG members have applied and used a “gender model family-based” approach that empowers male and female in access to resources, economic empowerment, leadership roles and participation in the decision-making process and governance of project initiatives to assume ownership.

All project planning, design and implementation is based on the development and implementation of gender action plans and gender-based workplan activities. This ensures that each member of the project team is responsible for ensuring gender mainstreaming in all of the project.

Specific Expertise includes:

  • Gender analysis;
  • Gender-sensitive project design and implementation;
  • Design and delivery of training programs in gender equality in agriculture and natural resource development; and
  • Gender-based approaches to monitoring and evaluation.

Anthropogenic factors are significantly affecting the climate, causing increase in CO2 levels. Some of the major factors causing climate change beside increase in the use of fossil fuels and aerosols are the land use, deforestation, ozone depletion and animal husbandry, causing change in microclimate. AgriSmart Group members have extensive experience in dealing with these external forcing mechanisms and to mitigate their impact on global climate change. The team members have been involved in projects dealing with reducing the effects of external factors on climate change including:

  • Use of aerobic and anaerobic fermentation of farmyard and household refuse and conversion of CO2 to methane that can reduce carbon footprints of animal husbandry by four folds;
  • Use of climate and water smart irrigation and water resources development by maximizing crop yield per hectare per unit of water that minimizes natural resources use and deforestation;
  • Use of crop varieties that are drought and salinity resistant;
  • Use of efficient and water smart water harvesting methods, both at watershed and farm level to reduce potential impact of climate change on farming communities;
  • Use and promotion of more efficient agricultural development practices such as tree intercropping, afforestation, conservation agriculture, regenerative agriculture, managed grazing and promotion of tropical staple tree crop planting.

AgriSmart Group members have been practicing climate smart agricultural development, ensuring climate resilience in their project activities that span some 30 years. The team identifies suitable and location-specific strategies that can be easily adapted by local communities to mitigate/minimize climate change impact and assist the communities to implement the recommended climate-smart technologies.

AgriSmart group members also have extensive expertise on promoting environmentally sustainable development. Some of the specific expertise include:

  • Regional Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (irrigation and agricultural projects, hydro-electric development projects, mining projects, rural development projects, watershed/catchment development projects)
  • Linear EIA (roads, transmission lines, gas and oil pipelines);
  • Environmental and Social Management Plan development, implementation and monitoring;
  • Wetland delineation and creation;
  • Soil and land reclamation (saline and sodic soils, acid soils, disturbed soils);
  • Soils, agriculture, irrigation and environmental training;
  • Biodiversity conservation and improvement;
  • Land Management;
  • Integrated Natural Resource Management;
  • Community-Based Natural Resource Management;
  • Climate smart agriculture development; and
  • Soil and water management/land husbandry.

Agriculture and livelihood support are considered as critical part of humanitarian response. ACG follows international humanitarian principles, encompassing intervention focused preparedness for response. ACG believes such interventions not only save farm families from severe food insecurity and hunger due to conflicts or natural disasters, but they also support resilient development through promotion of adaptive social protection approach. ACG uses different approaches, including disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation to increase livelihoods resilience of the most vulnerable farming communities.

Our group members have hands-on experience with humanitarian assistance and are able to help affected communities in meeting their food needs through assisting them to increase crop production that ultimately contributes to improving their livelihoods resilience to future crises. Some of the expertise includes:

  • Baseline vulnerability assessment and strategic planning;
  • Linking early warning to early action;
  • Emergency needs and impact assessment;
  • Disaster risk reduction (DRR);
  • General food distribution and food for work M&E work;
  • Vouchers & microfinance;
  • Distribution of seeds and tools;
  • Destocking/restocking of livestock;
  • Animal health care and nutrition;
  • Rapid response in conflict hotspots;
  • Supporting people in contexts of forced displacement;
  • Increasing the resilience of pastoralists;
  • Contributing to sustaining peace;
  • Facilitating access to rural energy;
  • Strengthening resilience through integrated support;
  • Providing expertise and equipment to combat pest and diseases; and
  • Capacity development and training.