Is climate-smart farming a way out of food insecurity in east Africa?
This article by The East African provides a civil-society perspective on climate smart agriculture (CSA) and questions its current practices in East Africa. The article argues that widespread use of fertilisers and other chemicals does not necessarily guarantee increased productivity neither does it ensure that smallholder farmers benefit. Preference for traditional soil fertility restoration practices and the use of organic fertilisers is expressed. A research of ACB on the collapse of the “green revolution” in Malawi is shown as an example to underpin this perspective. The findings of the ACB research highlight multinational agricultural input companies as the biggest beneficiaries of the CSA production system, with farmers trapped in a cycle of debt and dependency and that the natural resource base being degraded and eroded.