Climate-smart agriculture is Evergreen
Evergreen Agriculture, the integration of appropriate trees into food crop systems, is fast emerging in Africa and South Asia as a science-based approach to increasing smallholder productivity under a more variable climate, and at low marginal costs to poor smallholder farm families. This learning event will share latest findings on the performance of Evergreen Agriculture in terms of adaptation and mitigation, success in upscaling, the role of policy reform and public-private financing models. Co-hosted by the World Agroforestry Centre, African Development Bank (AfDB) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
Agroforestry has been a greatly under-appreciated and under-resourced means of increasing the climate resilience of agricultural systems. This is unfortunate since it represents a very practical and accessible route to enhance adaptation and mitigation while increasing food production and incomes across a very wide range of agro-ecosystems. Evergreen Agriculture, the integration of appropriate trees directly into food crop systems, is fast emerging in Africa and South Asia as a science-based approach to increasing smallholder productivity under a more variable climate, and does so at low marginal costs to poor smallholder farm families.
The learning event will share the latest findings on the nature and performance of Evergreen Agricultural systems in terms of climate change adaptation and mitigation. It will refresh participants’ knowledge on the record of rapid upscaling of these systems across millions of hectares in Southern, Eastern and Sahelian Africa. Particular attention will be given to the role that forest and agricultural policy reform has played in stimulating breakthroughs in the spread of Evergreen Agriculture at the farm level in several countries.
A major focus will be the analysis of the range of national strategies and scaling-up programmes that are currently being implemented across Sub-Saharan Africa and India. The discussion will also highlight the public and private financing models that are evolving for Evergreen Agriculture. These were recently reviewed at an African Investment Forum convened in Nairobi. Ultimately, the event is geared to stimulate discussion on how these developments can be the basis for new partnerships involving governments, civil society, and the agricultural science community.
The event will be co-hosted by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), the African Development Bank (AfDB), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).