Sustaining the smallholder agriculture in changing climatic regime: Issues and strategies

Smallholder Agriculture is concerned with the evolution of policies for smallholder development, including the role of value chains, and the linkages that exist with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Smallholder farmers could suffer impacts of climate change that will be locally specific and difficult to predict. The variety of crop and livestock species produced by any of these households and their interactions, and the importance of other related (social and other) relations in production and marketing, will increase the complexity both of the impacts and of subsequent adaptations. Besides these, small farm sizes, low technology, low capitalization, and diverse other non-climatic stresses will tend to increase vulnerability. Yet, the resilience factors such as family labour, existing crop/farm diversification and ITK (indigenous technical knowledge) should not be ignored and undermined. The future impacts of climate change on poor rural people in developing countries is more concerned with the increased frequency of extreme events with large and diversified/intensified impacts. Given the short to medium term importance of extreme events, and the difficulties of predicting any trends, climate-related or otherwise, in the longer term, these should be analyzed and taken due consideration holistically. There must be adequate and genuine awareness for an interdisciplinary attempt to apply the rapidly growing scientific knowledge of the effects of climate change on crops and livestock to the “ complex, diverse and risk-prone” farming systems of developing countries. This will not only improve our understanding of the situation, but also supports in its remedial measures to have a sustainable small holder's income/sustenance. In this paper, an attempt is made keeping in view sustainability considerations for smallholder agriculture in developing countries in relation to changing climate scene with appropriate (technological and other) considerations.