FARMERS who built the rice terraces in Banaue and those who created similar paddies in the uplands of South Cotabato centuries ago were resource-smart, and they would certainly qualify to be considered practitioners of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) today.
Hundreds of small water-impounding projects in Talugtog, Nueva Ecija, and in tobacco-growing areas of the Ilocos region were built decades ago to harvest water during the rainy season and use the same during the summer months.
These, too, are CSA achievements, based on the 2010 concept developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
The FAO, like the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat), now admits that CSA is actually location-specific since farmers adapt to climatic conditions and harness soil and water resources efficiently.
Icrisat has had some success in developing efficient irrigation systems in Africa and India in collaboration with farmers themselves.
Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala has been talking about CSA and he has credited the Bureau of Soils and Water Management, under Director Silvino Tejada, for establishing 99 agro-meteorological stations to help farmers nationwide.
However, farmers themselves have become smarter, with rice growers in Antique surprising Alcala and other officials when they said they have been harvesting rice thrice a year, with or without CSA.
This CSA may as well lead to a rescheduling of rice planting seasons in different regions, as suggested by Herculano Co, longtime president of the Philippine Confederation of Grains Associations (Philcongrains), who wondered if it is was possible for various areas to harvest rice year-round.
CSA is now the byword of all policy-makers as the world population zooms to 9 billion people and aberrant weather has led to prolonged dry seasons and disastrous typhoons.
Writing in the online environmental journal Grist, Liz Core said, “CSA is the idea that farmers—along with their friends with money and agriculture/climate science knowledge—should develop and use technologies that work with the ever-changing climate, not against it. Why? Well, to put it simply, so that climate change doesn’t completely disrupt our food system, forcing us all to go hungry.”
An article in Modern Farmer stressed that it is only now, four years after it was broached, that it has been transformed from a philosophy to a “solid plan.”
Under CSA, all forms of agriculture must adjust to the changing weather patterns, hopefully to overcome its adverse impacts.
“CSA is going to be difficult to implement. It requires academic research, technology development and the money to make it happen. But when it all comes together, CSA could help farmers deal with climate change affecting crop health and yields, move away from environmentally harmful farming practices and learn to use less carbon-reliant technology,” Core said.
CSA secured a boost recently when the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research, a group of 15 scientific research centers, issued a statement that it would commit 60 percent of its operating budget, which is more than $55 million to develop climate-smart tools for 500 million farmers worldwide.
Both US Secretary of State John Kerry and US Department of Agriculture Tom Vilsack also launched the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, a group that promotes agriculture that reduces the impact of climate change.
The FAO has already issued a booklet detailing some CSA success stories in various countries. The cases have been selected from the FAO Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) Sourcebook launched in 2013, to show the diversity of potential options across different regions and agricultural systems.
“There has been a rapid uptake of the term CSA by the international community, national entities and local institutions, in the past years. However, implementing this approach is challenging, partly due to a lack of tools and experience. Climate-smart interventions are highly location-specific and knowledge-intensive. Considerable efforts are required to develop the knowledge and capacities to make CSA a reality,” the FAO admitted.
The purpose of the sourcebook is to further elaborate the concept of CSA and demonstrate its potential, as well as its limitations.
It is a reference tool for planners, practitioners and policy-makers working in agriculture, forestry and fisheries at national and subnational levels, dealing with the effects of climate change.
The FAO said Section A, “The Case for Climate-Smart Agriculture,” consists of two modules establishing a conceptual framework and is targeted to a broad audience. Module 1 explains the rationale for CSA and module 2 focuses on the adoption of a landscape approach.
Section B covers “Improved Technologies and Approaches for Sustainable Farm Management” and is divided in nine modules. It is targeted primarily to the needs of planners and practitioners, and analyzes what issues need to be addressed in the different sectors, in terms of water (Module 3), soils (Module 4), energy (Module 5) and genetic resources (Module 6) for up-scaling of practices of crop production (Module 7), livestock (Module 8), forestry (Module 9) and fisheries and aquaculture (Module 10) along sustainable and inclusive food value chains (Module 11).
Section C is about enabling frameworks and encompasses seven modules, targeted to policy-makers, providing guidance on what institutional (Module 12), policy (Module 13) and finance (Module 14) options are available. It further provides information on links with disaster-risk reduction (Module 15) and utilization of safety nets (Module 16), and also illustrates the key role of capacity development (Module 17) and assessments and monitoring (Module 18).