The Climate-Smart Agriculture Papers

Whereas many technologies are available to help farmers better cope with climate risks, improving farmers’ access to these technologies, while strengthening incentives around their adoption, remains the more significant challenge. Despite millions of dollars of investment, adoption rates of new agricultural technologies in much of eastern and southern Africa remain low (Giller et al. 2009; Asfaw et al. 2016). The majority of farmers continue to struggle with the costs and risks of new technologies. Increasing climate risks simply make these efforts more difficult.

This volume highlights current efforts being made by scientists in eastern and southern Africa in developing and disseminating climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technologies. Emphasis was placed on getting previously unpublished data written up and presented. Unlike many edited volumes, the book started with an open call for chapters on five key topics. More than 70 applications were submitted and evaluated against the criteria, which included: relevance of the topic, whether new data were being presented, and the quality of the science. Twenty-three applications were selected to move on to full chapter development. Twelve specific contributions were then commissioned by the book’s editors to fill gaps in the discussion. After at least two technical reviews and multiple rounds of revision, 25 of these papers were accepted for publication within this volume. Unpublished chapters, which still contain important content for development, can be found on the webpage that accompanies this book.