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This unique compendium describes the development status and trends of international climate-smart agriculture, research methods and development strategies, monitoring, evaluation and extension, typical cases and their implications for the development of climate-smart agriculture in China.
The useful reference text also comprehensively summarizes the relevant achievements and experiences obtained by the Climate-Smart Staple Crop Production Project, and highlights future policy suggestions and technical systems.
Sample Chapter(s)
Preface
Introduction
Contents:
Readership: Researchers, professionals, academics, and graduate students in environmental technology and crop science.
https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811283567_fmatter
The following sections are included:
https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811283567_0001
The introduction summarizes the relationship between global climate change and agricultural production, defines the background of climate-smart agriculture (CSA), outlines the theoretical framework of CSA, clarifies the objectives of CSA, and concludes with the preliminary practical effects of CSA in China. Specifically, CSA is a new approach to guide the transformation of agricultural production modes, aiming to solve the common issues of food security and climate change. CSA has three core objectives of: (1) improving the ability of agricultural production to adapt to climate change; (2) reducing or removing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions; (3) sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes, which is the main development direction of global agricultural production to cope with climate change. CSA basically coincides with China’s agricultural transformation and development goals, and it is an important way to promote the green and sustainable development of China’s agriculture. The successful implementation of CSA crop production projects in China has promoted the theoretical development and practical application of CSA, providing scientific support for China’s agricultural transformation.
https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811283567_0002
Over the past century, global climate change, mainly arising out of temperature rise and uneven distribution of rainfall over time and space, has led to frequent occurrences of extreme weather events, such as high temperature, drought, and floods, which have caused uncertainties in food security and carbon sequestration, reducing GHG emissions, stabilizing crop production, and increasing farmers’ incomes. How to effectively deal with the challenges caused by climate change is still a global concern. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) aims to better respond to the challenges of food security and climate change by integrating three important aspects of sustainable development: economy, society, and environment. It is a key approach to implementing the sustainable development of international agriculture and provides new ideas and solutions for mitigating climate change and ensuring food security. International CSA mainly includes three aspects: building climate-smart crop production system, improving systems and policies, and financing and capacity building. International institutions such as the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the World Bank, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have led a number of CSA projects in different countries and regions, which promoted the establishment of the International Coalition for CSA and resulted in the development of theories and practices of CSA. Based on the achievements of the past 10 years of CSA in various countries, the experience for future CSA development mainly includes three aspects: (1) formulating the detailed goals and plans of CSA; (2) emphasizing on the integration and application of new materials, new technologies, and new methods in the practice of CSA; and (3) supporting projects with longterm stable funding. Developing countries are facing more severe challenges during the development stage of CSA. They demand favorable national policy environments, available data acquisition and information dissemination channels, and practical subsidy incentive mechanisms and insurance services.
https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811283567_0003
Climate change has led to significant negative impacts on agriculture and food security in many regions, especially in developing countries that highly rely on dryland farming. The Fifth Assessment Report from IPCC found that tropical regions are most sensitive to climate change, where most of the poor and agriculture-dependent populations reside. Increasing the growth rate of agriculture in these regions is essential for achieving poverty eradication and the goal of meeting growing food demand. The idea of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has gained considerable attention around the world. The goal of CSA is to incorporate adaptation to and mitigation of climate change particularities into sustainable agricultural development policies, programs, and investment strategies. The principles and practices of CSA should follow the requirements of sustainable agriculture and food systems. FAO published a set of guidelines and guidance for the sustainable development of agriculture and food production systems, including: (1) improving the efficiency of resource utilization; (2) conserving, protecting, and restoring nature resources; (3) protecting and improving rural livelihoods; (4) enhancing the resilience of people, ecosystems, and communities; and (5) building effective governance mechanisms. The emphasis of CSA is on evaluating the trade-offs and synergies among its three main goals and remove the obstacles to CSA. CSA actually solves one of the most important issues in sustainable agriculture: what are the needs of agricultural production practices to achieve large-scale transformation? The trade-off between multidimensional goals of CSA is an improvement to many sustainable agricultural methods. However, confusion persists in the concept and theoretical basis of CSA, and practical experience is relatively lacking at the national level. This chapter systematically organizes the main practical approaches of CSA and provides support for further improvement of CSA theory and technical system. The content includes the innovations in technology, management, and systems of CSA, methods of climate vulnerability assessment, and their effects, and the methods and approaches to reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and the development strategy of CSA.
https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811283567_0004
Monitoring, assessment and extension are important links in the development of climate-smart agriculture (CSA). To facilitate these, the first task is to build a complete set of CSA monitoring and assessment systems and clarify their scopes, purposes and frameworks. Second, the assessment of CSA is completed through the following steps: designing assessment, climate impact assessment and CSA option assessment. Finally, the methodology and practice of CSA extension are improved with respect to various aspects, including agrometeorological forecast and farmers’ field school. Extension and technical innovation of CSA were further strengthened through the application of digital agriculture, early warning system, CSA and farmers’ organization, etc. We should make efforts together in monitoring, assessment and extension to coordinate and jointly promote the sustainable development of CSA.
https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811283567_0005
This chapter compares and analyzes typical cases of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) in developed and developing countries and summarizes the existing problems and challenges of CSA. The case study in Italy, representing developed countries, mainly introduces the impact of climate change on Italian agriculture and economy, the effect of forecast on CSA there, and the opportunities and challenges that Italy is faced with in the development of CSA. In Mozambique, a representative of the developing countries, the development of CSA is much poor than that of Italy. For Mozambique, this chapter gives the introduction on the impact of climate change on its agriculture and food security, mainly applied CSA technologies, practices, systems, and policies. Based on the introduction and study of these two cases, this chapter emphasizes the characteristics and development priorities of the climate-smart crop production system, which includes crop variety improvement, construction of diversified planting systems, climate-smart soil management, climate-smart irrigation, integrated pest and disease management, agricultural mechanization level, and weather forecast. The mature CSA production systems such as European crop rotation system, American soybean-maize system, and rice production system are briefly introduced. The objective of this chapter is to provide relevant support for China’s CSA crop production system.
https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811283567_0006
Climate-smart agriculture is an emerging concept and popular in recent years. Its core objective is to improve the ability of agricultural production to adapt to climate change while continuously increasing agricultural productivity and farmers’ income, and reducing or eliminating agricultural greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible. This chapter systematically summarizes the background of the development of China’s climate-smart agriculture from the perspective of the multiple challenges facing China’s agriculture such as climate change, the role played by climate-smart agriculture in China’s agricultural transformation and development, and the relevant foundation of China’s climate-smart agriculture. It focuses on the needs of China’s agricultural transformation for ensuring food security, coping with and mitigating the impacts of climate change, protecting resources and the environment, promoting farmland carbon sequestration and emission reduction, and increasing farmers’ income. The chapter also analyzes the theoretical path of realizing the multidimensional goals and demands of agricultural transformation by climate-smart agriculture. At the same time, it attempts the current understanding and research of climate-smart agriculture theory in China and summarizes the supporting policies of CSA in the recent stage. The research and application progress of key climate-intelligent agricultural technologies such as conservation tillage and straw returning technology are also summed up.
https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811283567_0007
Climate-smart food crop production project was implemented in the Huaiyuan County, Anhui Province, from 2015 to 2019. This project aimed at technical practices, technical training, service consultations, monitoring, evaluation, and other works of wheat–rice production system. During the implementation stage, the project team made phased achievements in terms of reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, high yield and high efficiency of crops by exploring the impact of different new materials of carbon sequestration and emission reduction, new modes and supporting cultivation techniques of conservation tillage on farmland in wheat–rice production system. At the same time, the project team conducted systematic training on wheat–rice production for local farmers, agricultural machinery personnel, village cadres and other personnel, not only carrying out a large number of lectures on “climate-smart agriculture” but also providing technical guidance and demonstration of pest control on local production. A new combination technology of planting and breeding and the teaching of new knowledge and new content in supporting sales of agricultural products encourages the rural areas and farmers in the project area embark on real rural revitalization. Production monitoring and evaluation of climate-smart wheat–rice system promotes the comparative effects of carbon sequestration and emission reduction, environmental effects, pest management, and social impact of the production system under project conditions and baseline conditions. The experimental results proved that the effects of increasing production and reducing emissions were based upon the China’s climate-smart agricultural wheat–rice system, and at the same time, it could improve water quality, better prevent and control farmland pests and diseases in the demonstration area, reduce the cost of medicine, and increase the effective utilization of pesticides. The project results have achieved the expected results. Farmers were able to gain further understanding and acceptance of the concepts, technologies, and policies of climate-smart agriculture and had a strong willingness to apply them into production, which strongly promotes the development of climate-smart agriculture in the winter wheat–rice system application.
https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811283567_0008
The practice of climate-smart wheat–maize production technology mainly focuses on new materials for carbon sequestration and emission reduction, new patterns for carbon sequestration, and cultivation techniques for conservation tillage. The positive effects of urease inhibitors, nitrification inhibitors, biochar fertilizers, and other new carbon sequestration materials in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving resource utilization efficiency were illustrated through experiments and model integration demonstration in the past 5 years. The effects of conservation tillage on carbon sequestration, emission reduction, and yield stabilization and efficiency enhancement in the wheat–maize system were clarified. The effects of carbon sequestration, emission reduction, and steady yield increase in new climate-smart agricultural production modes such as winter wheat-summer peanut and winter wheat-summer soybean were explored. The popularization and application of climate-smart agriculture ideas and technologies are promoted through activities such as training of climate-smart agriculture ideas and related technologies, training related to crop high-yield and high-efficiency management techniques and guidance, crop production conservation tillage technology, and crop green-integrated control technology. By carbon sequestration and emission reduction, environmental effect, pest management, and social impact of monitoring and evaluation, through 5 years of follow-up investigation, the differences of pest and disease frequency, pesticide use, mechanization degree, crop yield, agricultural production cost and soil carbon storage between farmers of wheat–maize planting system in the project area and the non-project area were systematically analyzed, the application effect of climate-smart agriculture was explained, and the feasibility and social influence of climate-smart agriculture were quantitatively evaluated. In general, the implementation of climate-smart projects has strongly promoted carbon sequestration and emission reduction of crop production, environmental green ecology, and stable production and income increase of farmers in the project areas.
https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811283567_0009
China’s agriculture is in an important transition period. In order to make a long-term impact, we emphasize on energy conservation and emission reduction, adapting to and mitigate climate change, and exploring the development path of climate-smart agriculture in China to be of great practical significance for guaranteeing China’s food security, realizing farmers’ poverty alleviation, and achieving the goals of implementing the climate change agreement. China’s climate-smart major food crop production projects have explored innovative institutional approaches such as establishing subsidy policies, technology demonstration, publicity and training, and large-scale production for carbon sequestration and climate change adaptation, laying a good foundation for the development of climate-smart agriculture. It has been proved that climate-smart agriculture is an important mode of green agricultural development in China and can be regarded as a sustainable agricultural development mode integrated into the internationalization. The core of promoting climate-smart agriculture into the mainstream mode of Chinese agriculture is to further promote agricultural subsidy policy and the innovation of technology mode. Based on the experience of foreign countries, the establishment and improvement of China’s climate-smart agriculture policy system, technology, theoretical system, and popularization mechanism are important measures to promote China’s climate-smart agriculture development. Specifically, China’s climate-smart agriculture needs support from the following aspects: (1) climate-smart agriculture development planning and supporting incentive policies and measures; (2) national stable and sustainable financial support for climate-smart agriculture technology research and development and model integration; (3) strengthening the integration, demonstration, and application of climate-smart agriculture production technology; (4) developing climate-smart agriculture model according to local conditions; and (5) strengthening international cooperation and communication of climate-smart agriculture.
https://doi.org/10.1142/9789811283567_bmatter
The following section is included:
Sample Chapter(s)
Preface
Introduction