Curated Content

Conservation agriculture is an approach to agricultural management based on three principles:

1. Minimum soil disturbance
Zero tillage is ideal, but the system may involve controlled tillage in

which no more than 20 to 25% of the soil surface is disturbed.

2. Retention of crop residues or other soil surface cover
Many de nitions of CA use 30% permanent organic soil cover as the

minimum, but the ideal level of soil cover is site-speci c.

3. Use of crop rotations

Crop rotation helps reduce build-up of weeds, pests and diseases. Where farmers do not have enough land to rotate crops, intercropping can be used. Legumes are recommended as rotational crops for theirnitrogen- xing functions.

Coffee-Banana Itercropping is a climate-smart agricultural practice based on indigenous knowledge. It increases farmer incomes, improves resilience to climatic impacts, and sequesters higher amounts of carbon as opposed to monocropping systems. The practice also has positive effects for rural women and household nutrition.

Site-Specific Nutrient Management (SSNM) provides guidance relevantto the context of farmers’ fields.SSNM maintains or enhances crop yields, while providing savings for farmers through more efficient fertilizer use. By minimizing fertilizer overuse, greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced, in some cases up to 50%.

Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM) is a set of practices related to cropping, fertilizers, organic resources and other amendments on smallholder farms to increase production and input use efficiency. ISFM delivers productivity gains, increased resilience, and mitigation benefits. ISFM benefits food security and incomes enhances yield stability in rainfed systems, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions from soils and fertilizers making it of value to climate-smart agriculture.

Taking a gender-responsive approach to Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) means that the particular needs, priorities, and realities of men and women are recognized and adequately addressed in the design and application of CSA so that both men and women can equally benefit.

The Climate-Smart Agriculture Rapid Appraisal (CSA- RA) provides an assessment of key barriers to and opportunities for CSA adoption across landscapes by collecting gender-disaggregated data, perceptions of climate variability, and resource and labor allocation,
as well as economic assessments at the household level. This approach combines participatory workshops, expert interviews, household/farmer interviews, and farm transect walks to gather and capture the realities and challenges facing diverse farming communities.

 ‘Climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA)—agriculture and food systems that sustainably increase food production, improve resilience (or adaptive capacity) of farming systems, and mitigate climate change when possible—has quickly been integrated into the global development agenda. However, the empirical evidence base for CSA has not been assembled, complicating the transition from CSA concept to concrete actions, and contributing to ideological disagreement among development practitioners. Thus, there is an urgent need to evaluate current knowledge on the effectiveness of CSA to achieve its intended benefits and inform discourse on food, agriculture, and climate change. This systematic review intends to establish the scientific evidence base of CSA practices to inform the next steps in development of agricultural programming and policy.

This information note discusses the findings from CCAFS submisssion to the UNFCCC SBSTA on Impact of climate change on African agriculture: focus on pests and diseases.

To ensure a food-secure future, farming must become climate resilient. Around the world, governments and communities are adopting innovations that are improving the lives of millions while reducing agriculture’s climate footprint. These successful examples show the many ways climate-smart agriculture can take shape, and should serve as inspiration for future policies and investments.

This booklet provides examples of climate-smart systems by showcasing some FAO success stories in various countries. The cases have been selected from the FAO Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) Sourcebooklaunched in 2013 to show the diversity of poten al op ons across different regions and agricultural systemsalso covering subjects such as biodiversity and gender.