Dougill, AJ orcid.org/0000-0002-3422-8228, Hermans, TDG orcid.org/0000-0003-1481-1552, Eze, S et al. (2 more authors) (2021) Evaluating Climate-Smart Agriculture as Route to Building Climate Resilience in African Food Systems. Sustainability, 13 (17). 9909. ISSN 2071-1050
Abstract
Efforts to meet the growing demand for food across Africa have led to unsustainable land management practices that weaken the resilience of African Food Systems. Soil health is key to building more climate-resilient agricultural systems and can be improved through Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices that also enhance soil carbon storage. Many CSA practices are being implemented by African farmers, whereas others are being actively promoted but adoption remains low due to multiple factors including weak policy integration, limited institutional support, and inadequate agricultural extension advice. This Short Communications paper presents overview findings from trans-disciplinary research projects from Southern, East, and West Africa to evaluate the potential importance of integrated participatory soil health studies designed to inform context-specific recommendations and policies for resilient African food systems. The use of soil health indicators to measure the effectiveness of implemented CSA practices including Conservation Agriculture in maize-based systems and Soil and Water Conservation in Highland African systems are discussed. The paper identifies how more integrated research can help to enable shared learning and the enhanced knowledge exchange required for the upscaling of sustainable land management practices enabled through enhanced farmer participation in the chain of CSA activities from intervention design to community evaluation of impacts.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | conservation agriculture; soil and water conservation; Malawi; Tanzania; Ghana |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number BBSRC (Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council) BB/P027784/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 27 Aug 2021 07:34 |
Last Modified: | 15 Dec 2021 13:00 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/su13179909 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:177404 |