CGIAR researchers present new methodology for farmers to co-design, adopt climate-smart agricultural systems

In a new journal article, researchers from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), have presented a new methodology to co-design farming systems with key actors that allow them to reach a higher scale.

Information on the CGIAR website says that this article is based on the lessons learnt during a participatory research carried out in Honduras and Colombia funded by CCAFS, Fontagro and the Agropolis Foundation.

With the challenges that climate change has brought to agriculture, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) which is considered as a possible solution, has seen the need to build innovative farming systems favouring synergies between adaptation, mitigation and sustainable increase in productivity.

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Building spaces that promote interaction among farmers and the actors that support farming systems, becomes one of the key points to facilitate change and make innovation possible through participatory processes that allow them to design and adopt practices that can address climate change.

The new method stated in the article consists of seven steps to get involved in a process of co-designing climate-smart farming systems that could allow implementation at scale.

This methodology will allow farmers to co-design and adopt CSA farming systems in order to address the effects of climate change through an open innovation platform.

This involves defining participatory cropping and livestock systems and including them in their farms with the associated management practices.

At the same time, it seeks to address the specification of a process intended to design climate-smart farming systems by reducing the trade-offs between the three pillars of CSA.

“These trade-offs may also occur at the agroecosystem level when, for example, the decrease in GHG emissions is made at the expense of other environmental impacts,” explains Nadine Andrieu, the lead author of the article.

“Generating local and scientific knowledge is a key factor to identify appropriate solutions to tackle climate change, ensure that the process is on the right track, and convince new stakeholders of scaling out/up their results,” concludes Andrieu.