With climate changes causing increasing concern across the globe, it has become more crucial for countries to engage in more climate friendly and climate safe processes in agricultural production as well. The 2020 Wet Season Agricultural Performance Survey Report came up with certain recommendations for the future of agriculture and agribusiness in Nigeria and one of such recommendations is an active investment in climate-smart agriculture (CSA).
At the just concluded Feed Nigeria Summit 2020 hosted by AgroNigeria, Plant Virologist in the Department of Biological Sciences, Covenant University, Dr Angela Eni, expressed that there needs to be policy adjustments for increased adoption of climate-smart agriculture to help reduce contributions of agricultural productions to changing climate conditions. Climate changes have greatly impacted the output from agriculture because of unpredictable weather conditions caused by unsafe practices, such as unpredictable rainfall patterns and flooding. Reports have it that Kano lost over 40% of wheat crops due to unexpected rainfalls in 2019, and the National President of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Alhaji Farouk Rabiu Mudi, listed the major reasons as the lack of policy continuity and consistency.
A large part of climate-smart agriculture involves combining livestock and crop farming on the same land because the waste from the animals can be used as manure for the crops. Dr Eni emphasized that farmers need to adopt such strategies to alleviate the consequences of climatic uncertainties. The three main objectives of CSA are: Sustainability increasing agricultural productivity and income, adapting and building resilience to climate change and; reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions, where possible.
The ability to anticipate the impact that any combination of such events would have requires tools and data at the spatial scale of actual production areas. CSA, therefore, provides the means to help stakeholders from local to national and international levels identify agricultural strategies suitable to their local conditions.
