Julie Ingram is in Johannesburg, South Africa, at the 4th Global Science Conference On
Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA), where she will be presenting a poster authored by herself and Emilio J González-Sánchez, who is from the University of Córdoba, Spain and Secretary General of the European Conservation Agriculture Federation.
The poster is entitled ‘Scaling up conservation agriculture in Europe: enabling the integration of science- and farmer-based actions’, in which Julie draws on experiences from working on a number of EU funded projects, such as SOLINSA, SmartSOIL and VALERIE, to explore the suite of challenges to utilising these practices in Europe.
The potential of agricultural systems such as conservation agriculture and its associated practices (rotations, cover crops, residue management, reduced tillage) to support CSA are widely recognised, however their implementation can be limited, both in African and European countries. Julie will assess the changes necessary to provide an enabling environment and reviews some examples which have strengthened agricultural innovation systems and fostered both horizontal and vertical upscaling (replication and embedding though institutional capacity building).
CSA aims to sustainably increase agricultural productivity and incomes; build resilience and the capacity of agricultural systems to adapt to climate change; and ensure that agriculture contributes to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases or increase carbon sequestration.
The conference is taking place from 28th to 30th November.
