Pramod Aggarwal

Regional Program Leader – South Asia

Agricultural practices and technologies to enhance resilience, food security and productivity

New CCAFS Working PaperAgricultural practices and technologies to enhance food security, resilience and productivity in a sustainable manner: Messages to the SBSTA 44 agriculture workshops

Key messages

• A diverse range of suitable practices and technologies are already available

• Interventions must be appropriate for agro-ecological zones and socio-economic contexts

• Mechanisms for capacity building and technology transfer are necessary for success

• Funding is required to overcome initial barriers to implementation and ensure scaling up

• Many agricultural practices provide the opportunity to achieve environmental, mitigation, and gender co-benefits

Read the Working Paper

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5 practices and technologies for Asia in 5 minutes

An Asia perspective

1. Laser-Assisted Precision Land Levelling (LLL)

• Uses tractor-towed laser-controlled devices to remove soil undulations

• Applied on over 500,000ha in Haryana, India

• Improves yields

• Saved 82,000t CO2, and 1 billion cubic metres of water

• Involves periodic drying and re-flooding of rice fields

• Field tested in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Philippines Myanmar and Vietnam

• Lowers water use by 30%, and reduces methane emissions by 48%

2. Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) in irrigated rice production

• Covers 30 million farmers

• Improved products piloted with 56,623 farmers in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh

• Insurance payouts based on CCAFS- generated weather ‘triggers’ beyond which crops suffer

• Insurance protects farmers from increasing climate uncertainty

3. Weather based insurance in India

4. Climate-smart villages (CSVs): philosophy

• Three pillars (food security, adaptation, mitigation) – and other measures of success too

• Integrated portfolio of technologies, practices and services

• Participatory decisions and testing with farmers

• Capacity strengthening for farmers and services

• Building evidence for scaling up

• Demonstrating options to governments and companies

4. CSVs: ‘Growing’ solar power as a remunerative crop

• Solar panels on farmland generate energy for on-farm needs—excess power can be sold back to the grid

• Piloted in Gujarat, India

• Supplements farmer incomes, incentivises good water use, and reduces emissions and dependence on fossil fuels

5. Stress-tolerant rice for Africa and Asia (STRASA)

• Development of new and improved rice varieties to combat numerous climate change impacts

• More than 1.1 million farmers in India use STRASA rice to combat flooding

• STRASA rice is capable of improving yields under drought, flooding and poor soil conditions

Thank you

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