Climate Talks | Farm to table: how viable is climate-smart agriculture?

Agriculture supports the supply and access of food and nutrition and is the main source of livelihood in the South Asia region.

However, climate change adaptation will require climate-smart sustainable agricultural practices and innovative technologies to address short crop growing periods, extreme temperatures, droughts, and floods, and approaches to deal with water shortages, food insecurity, and loss of livelihoods.

Join Professor Vellingiri Geethalakshmi as she explores the uses and development of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) while Dr. Arun Khatri-Chhetri and Mr. James Giles clarify its regional practicality and policy needs. Dr. Pashupati Chaudhary also identifies ADPC’s role in supporting CSA through its CARE for South Asia project.

Panelists:

Professor Vellingiri Geethalakshmi is the Director of Crop Management at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India. She has professional experience in agronomy, crop and water management, and hydrological models and has published over 70 research papers on such topics. Read a transcript of her interview here.

Dr. Arun Khatri-Chhetri is an Agricultural Economist on Low Emissions Agriculture with the International Center for Tropical Research (CIAT) based at the University of Vermont, USA. For the last 8 years, he has been working in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) program on climate change, agriculture, and food security (CCAFS).

Mr. James Giles is a Climate Strategy Specialist with the Alliance of Bioversity International & CIAT in Viet Nam, where he works under the Climate Action team and coordinates the Asia Climate Policy Hub. His research focuses on the evaluation of localized climate-smart agriculture initiatives and their capacity to influence national-level climate policies in the agricultural sector. He also supports the development of CSA investment plans, working with key national stakeholders and development partners to design programs for implementing CSA at scale.

Dr. Pashupati Chaudhary is Senior Resilient Agriculture Specialist at ADPC. He has more than two decades of experience in climate change adaptation, biodiversity conservation, natural resource management, food security, and sustainable development disciplines.

Chapters:
0:00 Welcome by the Moderator
2:14 Overview of climate-smart agriculture
4:55 Prof. Vellingiri Geethalakshmi
10:00 Dr. Arun Khatri-Chhetri and Mr. James Giles
24:06 Dr. Pashupati Chaudhary
26:17 Acknowledgements

‘Climate Talks’ is a panel discussion series launched by the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) to share information on the impact of climate change across different sectors and the urgency of adaptation at the policy and public level. The series is an outcome of the ADPC’s Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CARE) for South Asia project supported by the World Bank.