Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) has been identified as the best way forward to contribute to mitigating climate change for enhanced agriculture. The study was conducted in Asokwa Municipal in the Ashanti region of Ghana as a case study with the following objectives;to identify existing CSA practices adopted by vegetable farmers;to evaluate existing institutions and their role in facilitating the adoption of CSA practices and to establish the likely factors that may promote or inhibit adoption of CSA practices. Purposive sampling was used to select twenty-seven participants due to restrictions on COVID-19 and limited resources. The significance of this method is that participants are selected by virtue of their capacity to provide rich-textured information relevant to the phenomenon under study. Results from the field showed that the commonly adopted CSA practices were improved crop varieties, irrigation and manure management scoring 100% each followed by crop rotation (66.7%). The least adopted practices, from the highest to the lowest were agroforestry (12.5%), mulching and rain harvesting (8.3%) each and compost application with 4.2%. The key factors inhibiting the adoption of CSA consist of insufficient information, water scarcities and financial constraints. The conclusion drawn was that the Agricultural sector must become climate-smart to successfully tackle current food security and climate change challenges. Beyond doubt, it will require management and governance practices based on ecosystem approaches that involve multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral coordination and cooperation.
Climate Smart Agriculture from the intensive vegetable farmers perspectival