Why Climate-Smart Agriculture matters

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), agriculture sector accounts for more than half of total employment in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and over 70 per cent in East African Community (EAC). But there is an issue threatening agricultural crops and practices more than any other these years: climate change, and the category most affected by this are smallholders farmers.

Smallholders, who have learnt to plant and cultivate their crops according to ancestral knowledge, are now confronted with an issue which is much bigger than them and which they cannot control. In ordre to understand it and consequantly to adapt their practices, they need external knowledge but alsohelp from existing technologies.

According to FAO, Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach that helps to guide actions needed to transform and reorient agricultural systems to effectively support development and ensure food security in a changing climate. CSA aims to tackle three main objectives: sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; adapting and building resilience to climate change; and reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions, where possible.

Having in mind that the youth is the population most touched by unemployment in Africa but also the most prone to technology usage, getting this category to work in agriculture using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is essential both to tackle unemployment and to aim to farmer's resilience and more sustainable agricultural practices.

However we have to keep in mind that that agriculture, including forestry, fisheries and livestock production, generate around a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, so that agriculture must both contribute more to combating climate change while bracing to overcome its impacts, according to The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) 2016 report titled “Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security”.

Source: The New Times