Climate-smart agriculture: Greenhouse gas mitigation in climate-smart villages of Ghana

Abstract

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach that helps guide actions to transform agri-food systems towards green and climate-resilient practices and it remains prominent in food systems transformation in the light of increasing climate change impacts. Unfortunately, the quantification of the greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potential of CSA approaches is currently limited. Using the Cool Farm Tool (CFT), this paper quantifies the GHG mitigation of CSA based on farm-level experimental data. Individual interviews and focus group discussions were also conducted to identify farmers’ choices and willingness to adopt CSA practices. The study compared the GHG emission mitigation of CSA practices for two scenarios (baseline and mitigation). The study found that organic fertilizer input, residue incorporation, no-inorganic fertilizer and no-pesticide input reduced GHG emission intensity of sorghum (to 93.2 ± 25 kg CO2e GHG kg− 1 sorghum), rice (79.2 ± 22 kg CO2e GHG kg− 1 rice) and groundnut (69.7 ± 20 kg CO2e GHG kg− 1 groundnut) compared to the baseline. Lower GHG emission intensity was achieved with higher crop yield under CSA interventions. The study recommends that CSA promoters such as the Consultative Group for International Agriculture Research (CGIAR), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Bank focus on crop-specific CSA practices for higher GHG mitigation. CSA promoters such as the CGIAR, FAO and the World Bank should embrace participatory processes such as farmer schools to increase CSA uptake.