New policy support gap for ‘climate-smart’ form of agriculture
JOHANNESBURG: Conditioned that ploughing is the sure way to produce crops, Zimbabwean farmer Handrixious Zvomarima surprised himself by trying a different method. He planted cowpea seeds directly without tilling the land. It worked.
The new method tripled Zvomarima’s cowpea yield when many farmers did not harvest a crop following the El Ninoinduced drought which affected more than 40 million people in Southern Africa.
Some of the technologies that more farmers need include access to resilient seeds and livestock breeds, timely weather information and weather index insurance.
Zvomarima from Shamva District, 120 km north-west of Harare, adopted the watersaving method known as ‘no till farming’. This is part of the Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices and approaches developed and promoted by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). This model of climate- smart agriculture seeks to sustainably increase productivity and incomes while helping farmers adapt to and become more resilient to the effects of climate change. CSA practices also aim to reduce and remove agriculture’s greenhouse gases emissions, where possible.
“Policy makers have a role to play in climate- smart agrotechnological innovation; the researchers suggest traditional supply- side measures and equivalent demand- side measures (such as tax breaks) could reduce cost and increase return on investment for users,” said Dr Federica Matteoli, project Manager at FAO Climate Change and Environment Division in Rome.
She shared a case study of Italy’s embrace of CSA at the 4th Global Science Conference on Climate Smart Agriculture in Johannesburg, South Africa in November 2017. Matteoli said policies need to be compatible with CSA objectives and their ability to boost the development and adoption of CSA technological innovation.
Italy was currently at the forefront of promoting research and developing scientifically supported policies related to climate change adaptation and mitigation measures, Matteoli said.
At the same time the country was promoting the application of the principles of CSA to locally building resilience throughout the food system.
Matteoli said cooperation and knowledge sharing can promote an enabling policy environment at national and local level in promoting CSA. Italy has promoted conservation agriculture, no tillage practices, climate- smart production systems and knowledge transfer which have collectively been called the Italian Blue Agriculture.
For an enabling environment to promote CSA, potential users must be engaged with earlier in the innovation process, ensuring sharing of information and linkage with universities, technical bodies and national institutions.
In addition, there is need for appropriate education programmes and awareness campaigns and the identification of knowledge needs for CSA and priority areas for intervention using consultative and participatory approaches, Matteoli said.
Researchers say CSA techniques are effective but there is urgency to quickly spread out the practices, innovations and technologies as climate change threaten agriculture productivity.
Some of the technologies that more farmers need include access to resilient seeds and livestock breeds, timely weather information and weather index insurance.
Scaling up CSA needs bold and inclusive policies which are still lacking several decades after CSA approaches were introduced. Researchers and development actors argue that alternative farming methods have been proven to help farmers cope with weather variability and still harvest crops even in poor rainfall.
Another Zimbabwean farmer, Fungisai Masanga (44) saved US$ 150 ( RM600) in labour in the last season after adopting conservation agriculture, another approach of climate smart agriculture. She intercropped maize with nitrogen fixing cowpeas, pigeon pea and lablab.
“This system has allowed us to have more crops in the same field,” says Masanga, a mother of five children.
“We have harvested some of the cowpeas which my family has enjoyed and we are soon to harvest maize too, all from the small field where we did not have to plough.”