The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) has co-developed, tested, and scaled climate services approaches that have been used for agricultural decision-making by more than 420 institutions in 11 countries in Latin America, reaching 501,000 farmers.

Local stakeholders and farmers in Latin America generally have limited access to agroclimatic information or mechanisms to relate this information to local climate impacts. This lack of access prevents stakeholders from translating information into actionable knowledge.

To enable better agricultural decision-making through climate information, CCAFS scientists helped to develop and implement the Local Technical Agroclimatic Committees (LTACs) approach. CCAFS worked with more than 420 institutions in 11 countries in Latin America to codevelop, test, and scale the approach.

Through the LTACs, users access information about climate variations at multiple timescales, understand how these variations can affect crops, and design measures to reduce crop loss. Currently, the LTACs reach more than half a million farmers through a comprehensive Climate Risk Management strategy spanning local to national and regional levels.

Climate services approaches codesigned by CCAFS and used by more than 420 institutions in 11 countries in Latin America have reached more than 500,000 farmers.

In Colombia, 15 LTACs deliver tailored agroclimatic information to 224,000 farmers in a climate service network of more than 140 institutions. In Guatemala, 19 LTACs cover the entire country, and more than 90 institutions deliver advisory services to 37,000 farmers. In Honduras, 12 LTACs reach 77,000 farmers with involvement from more than 90 institutions. In Mexico, El Salvador, Panama, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru, 163,000 farmers receive information from more than 190 organizations.

At the territorial level, LTACs are participatory and diverse in nature, involving the public sector, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), private sector, farmers, and civil society, among other institutions. This diverse composition helps generate a powerful governance structure for rural development and community-level resilience.

CCAFS research and partnerships help generate a powerful governance structure for rural development and community-level resilience.

In Guatemala, next users apply gender- and youth-sensitive communication of climate services within their organizations and with farmers’ groups. In a country with poor levels of gender equality, climate services are helping to facilitate access to information by vulnerable groups, including women (30% of farmers) and indigenous populations (30%).

Confidence in climatic information has grown over time — about 88% of users think that rainfall forecast is accurate in previous seasons, showing the usefulness of this information for decision-making. The NextGen forecast system developed by CCAFS scientists is key to building trust and confidence.

The development of LTACs in Latin America countries has also led to political influence. In Honduras and Guatemala, LTACs have been institutionalized, and, in Colombia, they were included in the National Determined Contributions.