Climate-smart agriculture and its relevance to Kenya are discussed in an article in The East African.

Dr Luca Alinovi, agricultural economist and country representative of FAO in Kenya, explains how climate-smart agriculture is “a means of identifying which activities within production systems are best suited to respond to the challenges of climate change for specific locations, with the aim of maintaining and enhancing the capacity of agriculture to support food security in a sustainable way”.

“CSA is neither a single practice nor a single set of practices. It is a broad approach for addressing climate change and achieving development goals,” says Alinovi. It has 3 main objectives: improving agricultural productivity and food security, increasing resilience and adaptive capacities in farming communities and enhancing climate change mitigation.

In countries like Kenya, rising temperatures and frequent weather events negatively affect crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture productivity.

Alinovi writes that the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations is working with partners such as the World Agroforestry Centre and the CGIAR Research Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) to promote of climate-smart agriculture.

In Kenya, support is being given to initiatives which encourage smallholders to maintain integrated production systems that incorporate crops, livestock, fish and trees. Such systems – including agroforestry – deliver multiple benefits for food production and climate adaptation and mitigation.

Successes include projects in the counties of Nakuru, Bungoma, Laikipia, Machakos, Embu and Siaya where FAO has been working with over 3,000 households to come up with a set of adaptation options. Farmers have been able to more than double their crop, livestock and fish productivity while incorporating more than 300,000 leguminous fodder trees.

In the highlands of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, FAO has partnered with farmers to reboot an 800-year-old agroforestry system known as Kihamba, which provides livelihoods for around 1 million people.

Read the full story: Climate-smart agriculture: Why it is the remedy for Kenya’s food needs