Author(s)

M. Davidson

Abstract

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) interlinks and provides for the two most critical issues for human and ecological sustainability: providing food for impending population growth to reduce poverty and undernourishment, and managing for eco-system resilience in the context of global environmental change. Implementation of CSA in smallholder communities in the least developed countries (LDCs) has proven successful but has not been widely adopted. This paper examines the constraints to replicable and generalizable adoption of CSA methodologies and posits that the absence of professional, local, agro-economic institutions is a key variable that explains the stagnation of agricultural production and the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector. The strategies of the development community (NGOs, development banks, international and national aid institutions) focus on funding large scale irrigation projects, encouraging and supporting new technologies, and correcting perceived market failures. The development community has not engaged professional agricultural organizations and institutions and this disconnect has led to ineffective interventions on the part of the development community. This paper further posits that farming is not an activity that can be sustained by the strategies and tactics of the development community. Agriculture is a business enterprise that requires local agro-economic institutional support.

Keywords

climate smart agriculture, Anthropocene, agricultural dealers, least developed countries, agro-economic institutions