Adaptation to climate change through climate-smart agriculture

Climate change adaptation, which involves taking measures to cope with impacts of climate change, requires that new ways of producing food be devised in order to enable communities to sustain their livelihoods and achieve food security. Climate change, which is the observed change in the climate of a place over a period of at least 30 years and whose evidence can be determined from records such as average temperature or rainfall of a place, results in either new challenges for producing food or in some cases opportunities.

In many countries which include Kenya, scientists predict that rainfall patterns will change and seasons will become less predictable because of climate change. This then means farmers will need to get accurate information about the amount, distribution and the duration of rains that are expected to be available during every growing season. In other words, farmers will need to practice what is now referred to as climate-smart agriculture.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), climate-smart agriculture is an approach that helps to guide actions needed to transform and re-orient agricultural systems to effectively support development and ensure food security in a changing climate. It has three aims: to increase agricultural production and income; to adapt and build resilience to climate change and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions where possible. CSA provides an excellent opportunity to link the three dimensions of sustainable development namely: economic, social and environmental.

Resilience to climate change is the ability of people, particularly their sources of livelihoods, to withstand the negative impacts of cimate change. For example, the family of a farmer who has enough grain properly stored in order to last him for one year may be able to survive if the crop for the next season is destroyed by floods. This may not be possible for a farmer who did not store sufficient harvest to prepare for such a catastrophe. The first farmer’s family can be described as being more resilient.

The second farmer on the other hand can be described as being more vulnerable to climate shocks. Vulnerability is that state that finds people, as households, communities or even countries, having very limited ability to withstand extreme events resulting from climate change. For examople, farmers and countries which rely on rain-fed agriculture are more vulnerable than those that use irrigation to produce food, because they have no food when rains fail.

There are several national strategies that are relevant to climate change and its impact on agriculture. These include the National Climate Change Action Plan (2013-2017) and the Agricultural Sector Development Strategy (2010 – 2020). Both of these strategies have however not specifically mainstreamed CSA. In response, a Kenya Climate-Smart Agriculture Strategy (KCSAS 2017 – 2026) has been developed to address this gap.

The objectives of the KCSAS are to: enhance adaptive capacity and resilience of farmers, pastoralists and fisher-folk to the adverse impacts of climate change; develop mechanisms that minimize greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production systems; create an enabling regulatory and institutional framework; and address cross-cutting issues that adversely impact climate smart agriculture.

Four broad strategic areas have been identified for KCSAS namely: adaptation and building resilience by addressing vulnerability due to changes in rainfall and temperature, extreme weather events and unsustainable land/water management and utilization; mitigation of GHG’s emissions from key and minor sources in the agriculture sector; establishment of an enabling policy, legal and institutional frameworks for effective implementation of CSA; and minimising effects of underlying cross-cutting issues such as human resource capacity and finance, which would potentially constrain realisation of CSA’s objectives.

Crop rotation as a climate smart agriculture strategy

One of the practices that has been found to be effective in ensuring agriculture is climate smart is conservation agriculture. Conservation agriculture involves three main elements. The first is ensuring that there is minimum physical disturbance of the soil or what is referred to as minimum tillage. It calls for minimal ploughing or digging up of the soil.

The second is ensuring that there is permanent organic cover of the soil surface such as through mulching or allowing biomass such as maize or other types of straw to remain and decompose on the farm. The third element is diversification of crop species grown in sequence, also known as crop rotation. One highly recommended form of crop rotation is to grow leguminous crops such as beans during the season that follows growing of cereal crops such as maize. Legumes are known for their ability to enrich the soil by naturally capturing nitrogen from the atmosphere and turning it into a nutrient that other plants can use, a process known as nitrogen fixation.

Conservation agriculture increases the soil's ability to regenerate and recycle nutrients, gradually reducing the need for expensive chemical fertilisers, some of which contribute to the emission of nitrous oxide, one of the known greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.