Climate-Smart Agriculture for Sustainable Agricultural Development in Nigeria: An Empirical Review

Abstract

Feeding over 200 million people in Nigeria requires a radical transformation in agricultural sector. These therefore require growing more food and achieve food security. Meanwhile, the resources needed for sustainable food security in Nigeria are already stretched, coupled with a negative effect of climatic change on agricultural production and food storage in developing countries like Nigeria, where the capacity to adapt to changes in climate is weak. Therefore, the paper reviewed climate-smart agriculture for sustainable agricultural development and establish that climate-smart agriculture can increase agricultural productivity, increases farm incomes, food security and agricultural development in a sustainable manner while building resilience of agricultural products to climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. The noticeable climate-smart agriculture practice adopted by the farmers in Nigeria includes the use of improved crop varieties, laser land leveling, zero tillage, residue management, nutrient management, and crop diversification. Nigerian farmers should be adequately trained in climate-smart agriculture by government at all levels and motivated to adopt its practices for mitigation and adaptation measures to climate changes. Also, adequate information and communications channels should be established in order to pass weather forecast information to farmers in Nigeria. Likewise, Socio-economics characteristics of the farmers should be considered in making any agricultural policies in Nigeria.