Abstract
Climate change threatens food production systems and smallholder farmers’ livelihoods, particularly in developing countries. Farmers’ exposure to weather changes cause income loss and threaten households’ food security. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has been heralded as a sustainable approach to increasing agricultural productivity while adapting to and mitigating climate change. There is a need to understand the full range of benefits derived from the CSA practices promoted to farmers in areas already exposed to several agricultural intervention projects. This requires an evaluation of farmers’ responses and their farm management practices. Our study closes this gap by employing cross-sectional studies to identify the knowledge sources of farmers’ adopted CSA practices, drivers of those practices and their impact on the households’ food production. We collected primary data between January and April 2023 in the Kozah prefecture of Togo from over 500 farm households and 10 experts. Preliminary results show that farmers first knew of climate-smart agriculture practices from traditional knowledge and they mainly adopt soil management climate-smart practices. Over 85 percent of farmers do not use improved seeds, mainly due to the costs associated with their adoption. Results also show that farmers combine climate-smart practices on the same plot and find the impact of this combination on their food production to be increased yet risky. We anticipate that findings from this study to provide information to guide policymakers in designing agricultural programs and policies that can better address the constraints of low food productivity and high food insecurity plaguing the country.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Technical, Political, and Social Responses
KEYWORDS
AGRICULTURAL INTERVENTION PROJECTS, CLIMATE-SMART AGRICULTURE, FOOD SECURITY, SMALLHOLDER FARMERS
