Climate-smart smallholder agriculture__ publication

A new paper by International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) attempts to explain what a changing climate means for how we support smallholder agriculture practices.

//  Climate-smart smallholder agriculture: What’s different?

The publication, titled Climate-smart smallholder agriculture: What's different?, points at the growing consensus that climate change is transforming the context for rural development, changing physical and socio-economic landscapes and making smallholder development more expensive. However, there is less consensus on how smallholder agriculture practices should change as a result. The article suggests three major changes:

• Project and policy preparation need to reflect higher risks, where vulnerability assessments and greater use of climate scenario modelling are combined with a better understanding of interconnections between smallholder farming and wider landscapes.
• Deper appreciation of interconnected risks should drive a major scaling up of successful 'multiple-benefit' approaches to sustainable agricultural intensification by smallholder farmers.
• Climate change and fiscal austerity are reshaping the architecture of public (and potentially private) international development finance. This calls for new efforts to enable smallholder farmers to become significant beneficiaries of climate finance and better ways to achieve and then measure a wider range of multiple benefits beyond traditional poverty and yield impacts.

//  Examples of multiple-benefit responses to adaptation challenges

 The paper gives examples of some of the interventions being implemented or likely to be implemented in IFAD-supported programmes:

• Reduction of yield losses associated with climate impacts through improved land management and climate-resilient agricultural practices
• Increase in availability and efficiency of water use for smallholder agriculture production and processing
• Increase in institutional capacity for adaptation at local and national levels
• Strengthening disaster risk reduction at the community level
• Promotion of technologies reducing vulnerability of rural livelihoods and increasing efficiency along agricultural value chains
• Ensuring that rural infrastructure is climate-resilient

//  Watch presentation online

The occasional paper was presented on 8 June by Elwyn Grainger-Jones, director of IFAD's Environment and Climate Division. Watch the presentation here.

//  Download

Climate-smart smallholder agriculture: What's different?

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