Climate-Smart Agriculture: Incorporating Weather Information into Small-Scale Agricultural Producers’ System: South Africa

Abstract

Climate-smart agriculture is a site-specific and knowledge intensive concept that urges the world to pay attention to impacts of climate change on agriculture and food security by promoting sustainable practices that will increase agricultural productivity and build resilience to environmental pressures including adaptation to climate change. The need to meet food demands that support poor small-scale agricultural producers and enhance national food security and development goals is emphasized. Small-scale agricultural producers being the foundation of food security in many countries are able to respond innovatively to rapid changes and challenges provided they receive required policy and technological support. In Southern Africa it has been demonstrated that the small-scale agriculture as practiced in many parts is dynamic; the small-scale producers often come up with innovations that are the result of very complex long-term processes and networks without external interventions. However limited resources hamper meaningful advancement. Thus demand for appropriate policy and collaborative research to assist the small-scale agricultural producers attain success. Required is research that incorporates ideas and innovations evolving from the small-scale agricultural producers’ practices i.e. getting out of the traditional linear model where researchers provide the technologies that are supposed to be taken up by extension services that in turn wait for adoption by the producers. The Response Farming Project initiated to fortify the small-scale producers’ food security by helping them make optimal crop planning decisions through adapting their day-to-day management by responding to anticipated immediate on-hand crop-plant-weather situation and to the medium term forecasts for the coming weeks attest to the ability of small-scale producers to respond and adapt to weather and climate variability. Incorporating weather and climate forecasts as one of the factors to consider in the day to day management of the fields was largely embraced by most of the small-scale producers and extension officers. The participatory and collaborative project involving University researchers, the weather service, provincial departments of agriculture, extension officers, the producers and donor funding agency resulted in successful production of a maize crop under low and unpredictable rain conditions amidst high temperatures and resultant high evaporation rates.