Integrated environment-smart agricultural practices: A strategy towards climate-resilient agriculture

Abstract

This article proposes an integrated farming approach, namely environment-smart agriculture (ESA) that determines the climate-resilience potential of a farm. A composite index is formulated including various environment-smart agricultural practices (IEP) that focus on the five most affected target areas of farm environment and climate. The IEP is then validated by analysing the on-farm environmental impact and farmers’ behaviours in the underlying theory of planned behaviour (TPB) framework. The TPB components, attitude and subjective norm are defined by the index of benefits from the ESA, and the index of experienced climate change conditions respectively, while perceived control corresponds to the index of constraints in adopting ESA and farm-specific agro-economic and socio-economic attributes. The empirical testing employed a structural equations model (SEM) to estimate the proposed IEP on a sample of 103 farms in two north-western districts of Bangladesh. Results demonstrate that the adoption of integrated ESA practices mitigates post-harvest environmental problems and helps cope with existing climate change conditions. Therefore, farm-level investment in ESA practices, i.e., the use of corrective, preventive, and local standard measures in an integrated way will contribute to the climate-resilience potential of a farm.