Scaling strategy workshop: Assessing challenges and opportunities for scaling socio-technical innovations in Mixed Farming Systems of Nepal's Mid-Hills

Mixed farming system (MFS) is predominant in the global south. Mixed crop-livestock systems are estimated to cover about 2.5 billion ha of land globally and, in the developing world, they supply around 75% of milk, 60% of meat, and 41–86% of cereals consumed (Herrero et al., 2010). In MFS, farmers integrate crops, trees, and livestock systems to diversify risk from single-crop production, use labor efficiently, access cash, and add value to products. MFS has the potential to maintain ecosystem function and health, and to help prevent agricultural systems from becoming fragile (Holling, 1995). However, key drivers of change- population pressure, urbanization, migration, climate change, water scarcity, changing eating habits, and unstable food prices are deepening inequalities in resource access. All these drivers are obstructing progress towards achieving sustainable development goals (Herrero et al., 2010). To improve the overall performance and sustainability of MFS, their sustainable intensification requires integrated systems research to identify context-specific pathways toward efficient, resilient, and scalable MFS that preserve natural capital and offer equitable benefits for all (Hoeschle-Zeledon et al., 2021). The Sustainable Intensification (i.e., production of more food on the same piece of land while reducing the negative environmental impacts) of Mixed Farming Systems can deliver critical outcomes that result in multiple impacts at scale, minimize sectoral trade-offs and leverage/maximize synergies in MFS (Hoeschle-Zeledon et al., 2021). The CGIAR’s Initiative on Mixed Farming System (SI-MFS) aims to address these challenges through sustainable intensification of mixed crop-tree-livestock systems to deliver more productive and equitable livelihoods, along with reduced environmental footprint. SI-MFS intends to provide gender-transformative pathways to achieve this goal by deploying locally viable socio-technical innovations that will maximize synergies and minimize trade-offs between the systems’ biophysical and social components (Hoeschle-Zeledon et al., 2021).