Three Countries to Test Climate Smart Farming

January 16, 2012

Malawi, Zambia and Vietnam will take part in a new project to transition to climate-smart agriculture. The goal is to help farmers adapt to climate change, while helping to control farming’s carbon emissions.

The EU and U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization are funding the $6.7 million initiative.

FAO’s Wendy Mann is a special advisor to the project called:

Climate-Smart Agriculture - Capturing the Synergies between Mitigation, Adaptation and Food security.

She said, “Climate-smart agriculture is defined as growth in agricultural incomes and productivity to support food security and poverty reduction. And to do this you need to incorporate necessary adaptation to changing climate conditions, but also trying to capture the potential mitigation benefits, which could bring financing to some of the agricultural development goals of those countries.”

Tailor made

The FAO considers Zambia and Malawi low income developing countries. However, they already have climate change adaptation policies that rely heavily on agriculture. Mann said Vietnam has different reasons for taking part in the three year project.

“Vietnam has changed from being a rice importing country to a rice exporting country. So they have had a certain degree of success in their agricultural sector. But they’re very worried and concerned about what climatic changes will do, particularly in the Mekong Delta with sea level rise, which is one of their big rice growing areas. So, they’re afraid of sort of falling backwards,” she said.