Climate-Smart Agriculture: Goals and Benefits

Through the course of the month, our discussions have been centered around CSA, and today, we'll be rounding off on the subject matter. There is always a ray of hope anywhere the word SOLUTION is mentioned, and that is exactly what Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) has brought to the Agricultural world and to mother Earth in extension. Amidst the dangers involved in Agriculture caused by the changes in climate today, Climate-Smart Agriculture has come up as a better and integrated approach to managing landscapes-cropland, livestock, forests and even fisheries.

Fish-rice integration is exciting. You harvest both fishes and rice on the same land. Do you like it? pic.twitter.com/1ecnPl1KkS

— Modern Agriculture Updates (@ModernAgUpdates) August 8, 2022

Ocean health declines and natural resources including soils, water and biodiversity are stretched dangerously thin in the struggle to keep up production. Unfortunately, these challenges are intensified by agriculture's extreme vulnerability to climate change. Asides from the negative impact of climate change in the form of increasing temperatures, weather variability, shifting agro-eco system boundaries, invasive crops and pests, and frequent extreme weather conditions, going further into the farming sector, climate change is reducing crop yields, the nutritional quality of major cereals and lowering livestock productivity.

Fortunately, CSA has come up with an integrated approach to managing landscapes. With this approach, CSA is undoubtedly profitable to the environment, humans and livestock. Here are the Goals Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) seeks to achieve:

Goals of CSA

• Increased Production

CSA aims at producing more and better food to improve food security in the world, taking more consideration of the 75 percentage of the world's poor who live in rural areas. 

• Enhanced Resilience

More interestingly, CSA also aims to reduce crops' vulnerability to drought, pests, diseases and other climate-related risks and shocks, thereby improving the capacity to adopt and grow in the face of longer-term stresses like shortened season and weather patterns.

• Reduced Emissions

Another lofty aim of CSA is to pursue lower emissions for each calories or kilo of food produced, and to also avoid deforestation from agriculture and identify ways to absorb carbon out of the atmosphere.

Benefits of Climate Smart Agriculture

Climate Smart Agriculture helps address a lot of challenges and also makes mother Earth a safer place, here are some priceless benefits of CSA:

- Climate Smart Agriculture helps to address the issue of food security, misdistribution and malnutrition, thereby reducing food waste globally.

- CSA addresses the relationship between Agriculture and poverty. 

Having estimated that about 75 percentage of the world's poor live in the rural areas, with agriculture being their most important source of income. CSA is uniquely placed to propel people out of poverty. It is an effective and equitable strategy to reduce poverty and increase food security.

- CSA addresses the relationship between climate change and agriculture.

With the current increase in average temperatures, temperatures are projected to be not only hotter but more volatile too. This will thereby increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and perturbations across the entire ecosystem, all of which will have profound impacts on agriculture, forestry and fishes.

- Climate-Smart Agriculture helps to increase agricultural productivity to support equitable increase in farm income, and it does it in a SUSTAINABLE and far more efficient way compared to the normal agriculture, thereby improving food security and development. 

The practice of Climate-Smart Agriculture is the new farming method every farmer and individual should cultivate and propagate. CSA is beneficial on all fronts. By adopting it and promoting its global inculcation, we create a better world for ourselves and for posterity. 

— Funbi Ransome-Ige