Conservation agriculture and climate change, why the buzz?

There are sustained efforts by various public and non-governmental agencies to promote conservation agriculture (CA) as an effective strategy for environmental conservation generally and climate change adaptation specifically.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) regards conservation agriculture as a crop production method that strives to achieve profits, sustained production levels while concurrently conserving the environment.

The technique involves minimal disturbance of the soil while planting and weeding farms. There are three rules that need to be followed for a practice to be regarded as CA. These are: do not turn the soil, keep the soil covered, and rotate crops. It combines several basic principles namely: reduction in tillage; retention of adequate levels of crop residues and soil surface cover; and use of crop rotation.

Immediate climate change related benefits from the practice include reduced emission of carbon dioxide stored beneath the soil surface, hence contribution to climate change mitigation.

The other is enhanced adaptive capacity of small-scale farmers because conservation agriculture involves crop rotation. In case one crop fails due to climate change impacts, alternatives crops that may be more tolerant of such stress provide farmers with a choice for their food needs hence enhancing their adaptation.

Conservation agriculture makes it possible to increase production of existing cropland and the production of different food crops hence enhancing food security and dietary diversity.

The move towards promotion of CA relates directly to the enhancement of benefits of sustainably exploiting available land. Because it demands minimal inputs, poor rural based farmers are also able to maximise production and therefore produce a surplus that they can sell to enhance household incomes.

More savings

Unlike conventional agriculture, CA demands less labour input because weeding is done less frequently. The need to keep the soil covered suppresses the growth of weeds and reduces erosion. In addition, it improves soil structure, increasing soil water retention and organic matter content and therefore soil fertility.

The above benefits are the key reason why CA is regarded as being climate smart. Climate-smart agriculture is the type that leads to three benefits. These are increasing farmers’ capacity to adapt to the effects of climate change and therefore enhance their resilience; reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing farmers’ incomes in a sustainable way.

Resilience to climate change is the ability of a farming system to recover from shocks induced by the phenomenon such as droughts or floods.

Research done in Southern Africa on the potential of CA to deliver benefits on adaptation, mitigation and productivity of smallholders farmers showed that even if CA confers adaptation and mitigation gains, those on adaptation are realised sooner. Generally, however, the practice has shown a direct positive impact in enabling smallholder farmers to deal with the negative impacts of climate change.

On July 5, 2018, the Kenya National Climate Change Action Plan (2018 – 2022) was officially presented to the Cabinet. The NCCAP recognises conservation agriculture, which is referred to in the Plan as “Conservation tillage,” as one way that through which the country will achieve its mitigation targets. According to the NCCAP, conservation agriculture has the potential to make Kenya reduce its carbon dioxide emission by 1.09 metric tons by 2030.

Although most of the carbon dioxide emitted by crop and livestock production systems comes from livestock in the form of methane produced by the digestive systems of ruminants (mostly cattle), any significant reduction is critical.

There is, therefore, every reason for small-scale farmers whose activities support the livelihoods of an estimated 75 per cent of Kenyans, both directly and indirectly, to be encouraged to adopt CA. It means more food from the same amount of land, access to more food types, sustained soil fertility and improved food security.