Enhancing household resilience through Climate Smart Agriculture in the Lake Chilwa Basin

Abstract

Even though maize is the dominant crop among smallholder farmers in Malawi, over the last two decades maize productivity has been erratic largely due to poor land use practices and climate variability. Conservation agriculture (CA) practice is gaining attention from various stakeholders promoting crop production in Malawi and is expected to be instrumental in the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). CA is thus widely acknowledged as an innovative practice that offers opportunities to mitigate the impact of climate change among others. The Lake Chilwa Basin Climate Change Adaptation Programme (LCBCCAP) has been working with smallholder farmers to promote CA practice under rain fed agriculture which is increasingly becoming unreliable within the basin. The aim has been to enhance the resilience of households to the impacts of climate change and variability. This chapter, therefore, shares a detailed LCBCCAP experience during CA implementation as an innovative agricultural practice that enhanced household resilience within the Lake Chilwa Basin. It gives an insight into the fundamental aspects of the practice by highlighting the implementation approaches used including key lessons learnt and challenges. The experiences provide a framework on which future CA projects can be modelled with some improvements to further enhance household resilience. Scaling up CA practice will thus depend on having the support of experts, project implementers and the private sector who can ensure appropriate support mechanisms are in place.