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The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact health and livelihoods in West Africa. Exposure of food system fragilities by the pandemic presents the opportunity for regional-specific reforms to deliver healthy diets for all and promote resilience to future shocks.

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Agricultural productivity in many rural areas in Sub Saharan Africa is low. This affects food security and rural livelihoods. Understanding farm diversity is essential to delineate recommendation domains for new technologies. Farm typologies are a useful tool to assist in unpacking and understanding the wide diversity among smallholder farms to improve targeting of agricultural intensification strategies. We studied a community of smallholder farmers in Ha Lambani, a village, Limpopo South Africa. In this study, agricultural experts identified farmer groupings through based on the crops grown, farm size and major the source in which gross maximum income was earned. A survey was then carried out to identify farming patterns, constraints and we linked these constraints and solutions to specific ecosystem services that appear to be currently important to the farming systems. This enabled us to explore the potential to enhance productivity through ecological intensification, and provides important information about which specific ecological intensification measures are likely to gain traction or appeal to a particular group of farmers in this community. We conclude that although expert based typologies enhance local relevance and reality, they need to be combined with statistical approaches for effective selection of farms, innovation targeting and out-scaling of technologies.

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