In order to prepare for climate change, farmers need to understand what their future climate is likely to be. As 70% of expected future climates already exist somewhere else on the globe, farmers can start preparing for their future by learning from sites with similar climates.
Connecting farmers to their possible future climates
The Climate Analogues Tool developed by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) takes climate and rainfall predictions for a particular site and searches for places with similar conditions at present. Comparing present-day farming systems to their future analogues can facilitate the exchange of knowledge between farmers in different locations who share common climate interests and allows adaptation strategies and technologies to be tested and validated. The Farms of the Future (FotF) approach uses the CCAFS Climate Analogues Tool to connect farmers to their possible future climates through farmer-to-farmer exchanges between spatial analogue sites.
CCAFS has been organizing farmer learning exchange visits in East Africa for many years to help farmers to learn, share, and adapt new climate-resilient agricultural practices and technologies. A recently published paper co-authored by CCAFS scientists assesses farmer adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices and innovation after being exposed to the Farms of the Future approach. The 2015 study is based on a learning journey in Tanzania that aimed to identify plausible alternative future climate (spatial analogue) sites for Lushoto, Tanzania; sites with a current climate similar to the projected future climate in Lushoto.
Originally published on the CCAFS Website
