Mitigating climate change impacts on food security via climate-smart agriculture
Temesgen Begna, Rusha Begna Wakweya
Abstract
• Climate-smart agriculture enhances crop resilience and stabilizes yields under climate extremes by integrating drought-tolerant crops, precision irrigation, and sustainable nutrient management. • It reduces greenhouse gas emissions, increases soil carbon sequestration, and promotes low-impact farming systems. • Digital tools and climate forecasting enable adaptive, resource-efficient management. • By combining technology, resilient practices, and policy support, CSA secures food production while mitigating climate change impacts. Climate change poses a significant and escalating threat to global food security by exacerbating temperature extremes, altering rainfall patterns, and increasing the frequency of droughts, floods, and pest outbreaks. These stressors collectively reduce crop productivity, degrade soil fertility, and undermine agricultural sustainability, particularly in vulnerable regions dependent on rain-fed systems. This paper explores how climate-smart agriculture (CSA) offers a transformative pathway to mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change while enhancing food production resilience. CSA integrates three interlinked pillars: productivity enhancement, adaptation, and mitigation through the adoption of stress-tolerant crop varieties, precision nutrient and water management, conservation agriculture, and agroforestry systems. Emphasis is placed on the synergistic role of improved crop breeding under combined drought and heat stress, alongside digital and biotechnological innovations that enable real-time climate risk assessment and adaptive management. Case studies from Africa and Asia demonstrate that implementing CSA practices can improve yields by 15–30 %, enhance soil carbon sequestration, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 25 %. However, large-scale adoption remains constrained by inadequate policy support, limited access to technology, and insufficient awareness among farmers. Strengthening institutional frameworks, investing in climate-resilient research, and promoting inclusive capacity building are therefore crucial for scaling CSA innovations. This review study underscores that mainstreaming CSA into national agricultural development agendas represents a practical and sustainable strategy for safeguarding food security under a changing climate.