INTERNATIONAL Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) Principal Scientist, Christian Thierfelder, has urged farmers to adopt Climate Smart Agricultural practices in order to develop resilience towards climate shocks.

Professor Christian Thierfelder, said climate-smart agriculture systems are cropping systems that are better adapted to climate shocks like drought or heat stress. They reduce greenhouse gas emissions, sequester carbon and are also profitable for farmers, while being beneficial for them and their household.

“Conservation agriculture is for example one that has been promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture for many years, it’s a system based on minimum soil disturbance, crop residue retention and crop diversification. But also, traditional intercropping systems that help capture more moisture during dry spells or water harvesting technologies like potholes or waterways where you can save water are considered climate smart,” Professor Thierfelder explained.

Professor Thierfelder explained when farmers experience short in-season dry spells, our cropping systems actually can support that because there is enough residual soil moisture that the plants can grow from.

“Our aim is for farmers to produce under every condition. If it’s drier or wetter, we want them to have a stable yield. And conservation agriculture systems or these sustainable intensification practices that we have here add to that; they builds resilience. Resilience means you can have something even if the situation is terrible,” he said.

Professor Thierfelder said farmers are traditionally used to ploughing the land, turning it all upside down, planting maize and that does not create resilience, that just leads to degradation.

“What we do here is to provide information and train farmers to practise farming differently, leaving the soil intact, putting crop residues like the forest puts the leaves, and also plant different types of crops. More different types of crops build a more robust and less risky farming system,” he said.

And CIMMYT Development Economist, Hambulo Ngoma, said the SIFAZ project introduces different technologies to farmers, but the real question is, to what extent do farmers actually benefit from these technologies.

“We have been running annual surveys to try and estimate adoption, diffusion, drivers and enablers,” he said.

Mr Ngoma explained various other economic analysis have been done to try to understand the economic benefits of these practices that are being promoted under the SIFAZ project.

“We conduct our surveys by taking a sample of farmers that host these trials, both mother and baby trial farmers and other farmers. Then, we track the extent to which they are adopting and using the technologies on the trials in their own fields because that’s when real diffusion happens. And from what we have seen, there is quite a notable increase in the proportion of farmers that are actually adopting some of these technologies from the trials to their farms,” he said.

He explained beyond the adoption, what are the economic benefits of this sustainable intensification practice? We’ve done quite a lot of analysis in that respect, and we find very encouraging and positive results, both at the household level in terms of yields, productivity, but also in terms of income,” he said.

The SIFAZ Project is a 7.5-year project funded by the EU and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT). -NAIS