Crop Management for Climate-Smart Agriculture

Abstract

Crop management contributes significantly to the three pillars of climate-smart agriculture (CSA). It directly contributes to food security and effective crop establishment practices indirectly enhance the system reliance and reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. We know crop production in agriculture acts both as a source and sink of GHG emissions and plays an important role in climate change adaptation and mitigation. Several efficient crop management practices have already impacted the sustainable agricultural goals, however, among them those address all the three aspects of CSA should be considered as “climate-smart” practices. In this chapter, we will primarily focus on those ‘climate-smart’ crop management practices with some associated options. Climate-smart crop management having both mitigation potential and adaptive capacity can play a key role in sustainable agricultural production and food security under climate change scenarios. The principles of climate-smart crop management are sustaining the crop yield by increasing input (water, nutrient, fertilizer, etc.) use efficiencies, enhancing intrinsic system resilience (through natural biological processes) in an environmentally friendly (avoiding damage to the climate and natural resources) manner. The practices include the introduction of stress (climatic stress) tolerant cultivars, development of tolerant varieties through plant breeding (conventional and molecular breeding), site-specific changes in cropping sequences/patterns, encourage the farming system approach, and propagate the ecosystem management options. For example, the integrated farming system approaches include rice-fish systems, crop-livestock systems, and agroforestry that ensures assured income throughout the year, strengthen farmers’ livelihoods, diversified food-cum-nutritional sources, and thereby enhancing the system resilience. Through recycling of energy within the system reduces the external input use (fertilizer, water, etc.), it often opens the opportunity to mitigate climate change. Similarly, increasing nitrogen use efficiency through judicious fertilizer management and controlling flooding in rice-paddy have high potential to mitigate GHG emissions and at the same time maintain high rice yield. Agro-ecosystems based agroforestry and cropping system approach (cereals-pulses, cereals-oilseeds, etc.), using custodian farmer’s traditional knowledge suited for local priorities is CSA, need to be promoted. However, it needs strong financial support and regulation, inclusive to policies both at the national and international levels.