Training on Food Security and Agriculture

The Global Food Security Strategy calls for expanding work in improving nutrition and resilience. This course underscores Perk Group’s focus on food security development and incorporates the participant’s vision for food security and agriculture development.  Through this training, participants will be able to address challenges through building a common understanding of their priorities, challenges and key issues in agriculture and food security.  Participants will explore current thinking that can be applied to new and existing strategies which will assist them in designing interventions that achieve greater and more targeted results.

The covers the nature of agriculture across regions in Africa and the current situation of food security. Poverty eradication through creating food security is a key sustainable development goal. The course tries to analyse food security in terms of availability, access and utilisation and also slightly look at how each of these aspects can be affected by climate change. The course covers aspects of adaptive strategies. Relevant case studies offer a rich variety of contextual examples from smart agriculture to changes being made by livestock farmers across Africa.

The course will examine adaptation in theory and in practice, through a focus on four sectors that are critically important for climate resilient development in Africa: Water Security, Agriculture and Food Security, Ecosystems and Ecosystem Services.

Perk Group Africa

Perk Group Africa is a fast-rising training and capacity development centre founded in Nairobi, Kenya. We have quickly grown into one of the leading destinations for organisations, groups and individuals seeking to advance their skills in the many subjects that we cover.  We offer courses in many aspects of our day-to-day activities including spatial technologies, climate change, IT, Data collection, management and statistics and broad project management areas. Since our founding, we pride ourselves on our diverse clientele, which reflects the many areas that we cover in our trainings. PGA has a tradition of work excellence that is respected across our clients and we are privileged to have a pool of highly experienced instructors on our staff, all of whom are recognised as industry leaders in their field. Our aim is to ensure that our trainings contribute to the public good through sharing knowledge for the benefit of society.

Course Requirements

Basic understanding of basic agricultural principles and climate change would be a bonus but not necessary. Delegates need access to a PC or portable device with internet access to participate in the training and have access the training materials. Delegates must be able to communicate in English.

Who this course is for

The course is suitable for individuals and business professionals who want to be more knowledgeable about the field of agriculture and climate change.

By the end of this training, participants will have acquired skills and practices:

• • Understand the Value Chain concept and the other concepts related to it
  • Identify the Value Chain actors and their role in the chain
  • Characterise production systems and post-harvest quality control systems
  • Understand the marketing steps in the Value chain approach
  • Understand the importance of Information agricultural and agri-food value chains approaches

Course Outline

The Course will cover three broad spectrums

1. Agriculture and Food Security

We’ll start off looking at the nature of agriculture across regions in Africa and the current situation of food security. Eradicating poverty through creating food security is a key sustainable development goal. We will analyse food security in terms of availability, access and utilisation – and how each of these aspects can be affected by climate change. I’ll be providing some information about the projected impacts of climate change on agriculture before moving onto look at adaptive strategies. The cases this week offer a rich variety of contextual examples from smart agriculture in Mauritius to changes being made by Namibian livestock farmers.

2. Climate, Vulnerability and Development

This section will introduce the key concepts around climate adaptation and agriculture that this course in based on exploring the relationship between social and economic development in parts of Africa. We will look at the anticipated changes in the future climate of the region and how this could impact on Agriculture.

3. Specific topics covered in the training

• • • Food security in agriculture
    • Baseline Food Security Assessments
    • Impact of climate in agricultural production
    • Adaptation to climate change and farm extension services
    • Increasing Food Production
    • Availability Assessment and Analysis
    • Food Security Concepts and Frameworks
    • Livelihoods Assessment and Analysis
    • Markets Assessment and Analysis
    • Nutritional Status Assessment and Analysis
    • Agriculture and food security risks
    • Agriculture and Food Security Adaptations
    • Sector and chain based approach of agricultural and agri-food values