Best Practice

Why do we need climate-smart agriculture? This brief overview answers key questions about Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA): what it is, what makes it different, what are the main elements, and what actions are needed to implement CSA.

Countries vary in their institutional technical and financial abilities to prepare for climate change in agriculture and to balance food security, adaptation, and mitigation goals.Indicators for climate readiness provide guidance to countries and enable monitoring progress. Readiness assessments can enable donors, investors and national decision-makers to identify where investments are needed or likely to be successful. Examples of climate readiness indicators are provided for five work areas: 1. governance and stakeholder engagement, 2. knowledge and information services, 3. climate-smart agricultural strategy and implementation frameworks, 4. national and subnational capabilities and 5. national information and accounting systems.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is being widely promoted as a solution for food insecurity and climate change adaptation in food systems of sub-Saharan Africa, while simultaneously reducing the rate of greenhouse gas emissions. Governments throughout Africa are writing policies and programs to promote CSA practices despite uncertainty about the ability for practices to meet the triple CSA objectives of CSA. We conducted a systematic review of 175 peer-reviewed and grey literature studies, to gauge the impact of over seventy potential CSA practices on CSA outcomes in Tanzania and Uganda. Using a total of 6,342 observations, we found that practice impacts were highly context (i.e. farming system and location) specific. Nevertheless, practice effect across CSA outcomes generally agreed in direction. While our results suggest that CSA is indeed possible, lack of mitigation data precludes a more conclusive statement. Furthermore, the inclusion of potential adoption rates changes the potential of CSA practices to achieve benefits at scale. Given the uncertainty and variable impacts of practices across regions and outcomes, it is critical for decision makers to prioritize practices based on their desired outcomes and local context.

This report talks about the global challenge in terms of climate change and agriculture in the World. It particularly focuses on the climate projections and the related challenges interms of agriculture in Africa. Feeding people in decades to come will require ingenuity and innovation to produce more food on less land in more sustainable ways. Climate change will exacerbate already tight resourceconstraints by making weather more extreme and variable and by decreasing average yields worldwide. In countries where the economy is heavily based on agriculture, development of the agricultural sector is the most efficient poverty reduction measure. Yet agricultural expansion for food production and economic development which comes at the expense of soil, water, biodiversity or forests, conflicts with other global and national goals. This report highlights few country examples as follows : (i) improving hillside productivity in Rwanda; (ii) natural regeneration of agroforestry systems in Niger; (iii) greening Ethiopia; (iv) linking weather risk management with social protection in Ethiopia; (v) conservation farming in Zambia; (vi) restoring Vietnam’s mangrove buffer; (vii) community managed sustainable agriculture in India; (viii) using weather index insurance to improve relief efforts in the event of drought in Mexico; (viii) erosion control in China (ix) the three rivers in China, sustainable grazing and carbon credits; (x) cooking with biogas in China; and (xi) silvopastoral approaches in costa rica and Nicaragua. The report concludes with the following findings : (i) early action is needed to identify and scale up best practice, to build capacity and experience and to help clarify future choices; (ii) considerable finance will be needed to rapidly implement proven programs and support poverty alleviation and food security goals in a changing climate; and (iii) Durban offers a unique opportunity for Africa to shape the global climate agenda and establish an agriculture work program that is informed by science and covers adaptation and mitigation.

DFID has recognised a need to provide guidance to country offices (CO) on what actions are needed to address the predicted impacts (both negative and positive) of climate change on agriculture and the potential adaptation measures. There is a need to establish what expert, evidence-based programme and policy guidance already exists, its applicability to DFID and its overall quality. This will establish whether there is a need to produce a separate and tailored Topic Guide to assist CO’s in designing and managing programmes, and inform the development of specific Future Fit guidance on food and agriculture.

This report is the results of a desk based study that reviewed 14 examples of guidance on agriculture and climate adaptation and was commissioned to help inform whether a new Topic Guide would be relevant and useful for DFID.

This report has been produced by the Global Climate Adaptation Partnership with the assistance of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) contracted through the Climate, Environment, Infrastructure and Livelihoods Professional Evidence and Applied Knowledge Services (CEIL PEAKS) programme, jointly managed by HTSPE Limited and IMC Worldwide Limited. Some of the material draws upon earlier work by the Global Climate Adaptation Partnership (citations are provided in the text).

Alternate wetting and drying (AWD) is a rice management practice that reduces water use by up to 30% and can save farmers money on irrigation and pumping costs. AWD reduces methane emissions by 48% without reducing yield. Efficient nitrogen use and application of organic inputs to dry soil can further reduce emissions. Incentives for adoption of AWD are higher when farmers pay for pump irrigation.

Conservation agriculture is an approach to agricultural management based on three principles:

1. Minimum soil disturbance
Zero tillage is ideal, but the system may involve controlled tillage in

which no more than 20 to 25% of the soil surface is disturbed.

2. Retention of crop residues or other soil surface cover
Many de nitions of CA use 30% permanent organic soil cover as the

minimum, but the ideal level of soil cover is site-speci c.

3. Use of crop rotations

Crop rotation helps reduce build-up of weeds, pests and diseases. Where farmers do not have enough land to rotate crops, intercropping can be used. Legumes are recommended as rotational crops for theirnitrogen- xing functions.

Coffee-Banana Itercropping is a climate-smart agricultural practice based on indigenous knowledge. It increases farmer incomes, improves resilience to climatic impacts, and sequesters higher amounts of carbon as opposed to monocropping systems. The practice also has positive effects for rural women and household nutrition.

This literature review summarises theory and evidence of the contribution of conservation agriculture (CA) to resilence in the event of drought. A resilient agricultural system is able to continue to function and provide essential ecosystem services, such as food provisioning, following an external shock. If drought occurs, a more resilient system should o er higher productivity and food security. The review asks whether CA improves productivity and food security when rainfall is poor, and what aspects of CA contribute most to these benefits. The review will guide the design of a eld study on the impacts of CA after the 2015/16 El Nino drought in southern Africa.

Effective scaling up is a key measure of success for an innovation or intervention. A new approach is typically tested in a pilot project that has limited reach. With monitoring and evaluation (M&E), the lessons learned from the pilot can be used to scale up the model to create larger socioeconomic and developmental impacts. The decision to scale up, however, is often made with incomplete information. Given the high cost of scaling up, it is important for governments and development partners to carefully decide which innovations are ready for further investment. A good understanding of the scaling-up process and a framework for analysing scalability is critical for informed decision-making.