Centre for Agroecology and Food Security

The increasing trend of climate change has led to growing concern on its impact on different sectors of the economy particularly on agriculture. Coping with the vulnerability and negative effects of climate change on agriculture requires mitigation at the policy level and adaptation at the farm level. However, the ability of farmers to adopt the various adaptation strategies may be constrained by a number of factors. Therefore, this study identified the climate adaptation strategies adopted by farmers in Makurdi, Nigeria and subsequently examined the determinants of farmers' adaptation strategies to climate change. The primary data used in this study were collected through structured questionnaires administered to 120 randomly selected farmers. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used in analyzing the data. Results shows that about 58% of the farmers adopted at least one of the following climate change adaptation strategies: cultivating diff type of crop, shortening growing season, changing extent of land put in crop production, use of irrigation as water source, use of chemical fertilizer, mulching, planting of cover crops, planting of resistant crop varieties, changing of planting dates, adoption of new techniques Original Research Article

The increasing trend of climate change has led to growing concern on its impact on different sectors of the economy particularly on agriculture. Coping with the vulnerability and negative effects of climate change on agriculture requires mitigation at the policy level and adaptation at the farm level. However, the ability of farmers to adopt the various adaptation strategies may be constrained by a number of factors. Therefore, this study identified the climate adaptation strategies adopted by farmers in Makurdi, Nigeria and subsequently examined the determinants of farmers' adaptation strategies to climate change. The primary data used in this study were collected through structured questionnaires administered to 120 randomly selected farmers. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used in analyzing the data. Results shows that about 58% of the farmers adopted at least one of the following climate change adaptation strategies: cultivating diff type of crop, shortening growing season, changing extent of land put in crop production, use of irrigation as water source, use of chemical fertilizer, mulching, planting of cover crops, planting of resistant crop varieties, changing of planting dates, adoption of new techniques Original Research Article

Recent decades of agricultural research and development have focused mainly on maximising growers’ incomes through intensification of external inputs and increases in volume of production, while being less concerned with food quality and resources depletion (Raviv, 2010; Stefanelli et al. 2010). In order to face such issues, a shift to a more quality-focused system would be preferred, opting to develop alternative and more environmentally friendly applied technologies and farming techniques, based on
agroecological principles that respect biological cycles and use natural resources in a sustainable way (Altieri, 1995). Organic agriculture and horticulture has always tried to achieve this, however it too, often tries only to replace conventional external inputs with those certified organic, without really changing the production, distribution and consumption system – the food system.
Horticulture is considered a major contributor to food systems because it offers a wide range of high-value crops such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, mushrooms, spices and medicinal plants, which are all integral parts of a healthy human diet. Some diets only rely on horticultural products. However, when crops are grown inside protected structures, horticulture turns into a labour- and input-intensive farming system. Growing vegetables in these environments has raised many contrasting views between experts; on one hand, plants are protected from external agents, their living cycle modified, their quality potentially improved and yields increased, not to mention the all-year round provision of products (Pardossi et al. 2004; Simson and Straus 2010). On the other hand, it is argued that protected horticulture (non-organic and organic) requires a huge amount of energy and generates large quantities of wastes (Vox et al. 2010).
Organic greenhouse horticulture is the central issue of the COST Action FA1105 “BioGreenhouse”, which was created to tackle multiple challenges spanning the different dimensions of sustainability:
• Designing sustainable strategies for irrigation and fertilisation.
• Implementing resilience, robustness and suppressiveness for pest and disease management.
• Integrating eco-system services, energy saving, replacing fossil fuels.
• Carbon neutral production and supply chains.
The main purpose of this COST action is to coordinate, strengthen and focus the activities of the partners involved. It improves the communication, offers a common agenda and a better knowledge exchange, shares new techniques, builds an improved dissemination network for organic greenhouse horticulture, while offering the basis for further collaboration in joint research proposals and support in the development of further private or EU-wide standards for the organic food and farming system.
Given the standard definition of sustainable development ('the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs' (WCED, 1987)) from the 1987 Brundtland Commission, the necessity evolved into gaining a better understanding of the interactions between the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability and challenging the
scientific community to provide tools to assess sustainability, as an aid for decision-making and policy-makers (Ness et al. 2007). Although there is a growing interest towards sustainable food systems and their performance assessment, there is no common way to define or measure sustainability in the organic greenhouse sector, so
presenting a shareable framework would be a step towards the quality of evaluations (Jawtusch et al. 2013).
This booklet describes different tools currently employed for sustainability evaluation, according to the field of expertise and experience of the authors. Each method serves a different purpose and covers different aspects of sustainability (environmental, economic, social or all together). This body of work will attempt to show the complexity of assessing sustainability in a comprehensive way, by giving a short background and describing the main features of each tool, and supplying the reader with a practical example of application whenever possible.