The climate-smart agriculture papers: Investigating the business of a productive, resilient and low emission future
This book (PDF) by Springer shares new data relating to Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), with emphasis on experiences in Eastern and Southern Africa. The material is assembled to answer key questions on the following five topic areas: (1) Climate impacts: What are the most significant current and near future climate risks undermining smallholder livelihoods? (2) Varieties: How can climate-smart varieties be delivered quickly and cost-effectively to smallholders? (3) Farm management: What are key lessons on the contributions from soil and water management to climate risk reduction and how should interventions be prioritized? (4) Value chains: How can climate risks to supply and value chains be reduced? and (5) Scaling up: How can most promising climate risks reduction strategies be quickly scaled up and what are critical success factors? The papers illustrate, among other things, how practitioners can access free online tools to make use of climate data; how new varieties of crops or better soil management can help farmers adapt; how information networks or entrepreneurial training can help the spread of promising technologies; how private-sector firms can promote CSA among their growers; and how farmer-to-farmer training can help bring CSA to scale. CSA uptake and scaling in Africa has been limited by a combination of physical barriers (such as access to adequate farm equipment, tools and materials) and non-physical ones (such as the cultural, institutional and policy environments). One of the goals of the book was to highlight such problems, so that the barriers can be overcome and further progress achieved. The book does not offer definitive solutions for creating a climate-smart future. Instead, it presents a cross-section of efforts to help us move in that direction.
More information about the creation and goal of the book can be found here.