“Climate-smart agriculture and food security: Cross-country evidence from West Africa”

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  • Martin Paul Jr. Tabe-Ojong
  • Ghislain B.D. Aihounton
  • Jourdain C. Lokossou

In the face of climate change and extreme weather events which continue to have significant impacts on agricultural production, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has emerged as one important entry point in reducing the emission of greenhouse gases and building climate resilience while ensuring increases in agricultural productivity with ensuing implications on food and nutrition security. We examine the relationship between CSA, land productivity (yields), and food security using a survey of farm households in Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria. To understand the correlates of the adoption of these CSA practices as well as the association between CSA, yields, and food security, we use switching regressions that account for multiple endogenous treatments. We find a positive association between the adoption of CSA practices and yields. This increase in yields translate to food security as we observe a positive association between CSA and food consumption scores. Although we show modest associations between the independent use of CSA practices such as adopting climate-smart groundnut varieties, cereal-groundnut intercropping, and the use of organic fertilizers, we find that bundling these practices may lead to greater yield and food security gains. Under the different combinations, the use of climate-smart groundnut varieties exhibit the strongest association with yields and food security. We also estimate actual-counterfactual relationships where we show that the adoption of CSA practices is not only beneficial to CSA adopters but could potentially be beneficial to non-CSA adopters should they adopt. These results have implications for reaching some of the sustainable development targets, especially the twin goals of increasing agricultural productivity and maintaining environmental sustainability.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
Artikelnummer102697
TidsskriftGlobal Environmental Change
Vol/bind81
Antal sider12
ISSN0959-3780
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2023

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
This study relies on a farm household survey conducted as part of the USAID-funded groundnut upscaling project meant to increase the productivity and profitability of groundnut in Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria ( Fig. 1 ). The project follows up on earlier projects such as the Tropical Legumes projects I, II, and III funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and led by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-arid tropics (ICRISAT). The groundnut upscaling project was implemented in the Northern, Upper East, and Upper West regions in Ghana; Koulikoro, and Sikasso regions in Mali; Jigawa, Katsina, Kano, Kebbi, and Sokoto States in Nigeria. Our study regions are mostly located in the Sudano-Savannah zone of Africa, whose rainy season lasts from June to October with an average yearly rainfall ranging between 800 and 1200 mm. The areas have a mean annual temperature of about 26.9 °C with monthly temperatures ranging between 24 °C and 38 °C.

Funding Information:
We thank the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) for survey funding and implementation of the data respectively. The data was collected as part of the USAID-funded project “Increasing Groundnut Productivity of Smallholder farmers in Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria” which was implemented by ICRISAT. This paper has benefitted from comments after presentations at the Norwegian Council for Africa in Norway and the 2022 edition of the African Economic Conference in Mauritius. We are grateful to Marilou Goussard Vincent for her research assistance. The usual disclaimer applies.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s)

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