The future of farming is climate-smart, integrates both mitigation and adaption measures
“The Future of Farming” is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) developed by the University of Reading and Future Learn that’s running from 5 March for a new cohort of students. Here, we interview Matthieu H. Arnoult, CSA Booster, University of Reading, about the role education can play in empowering the agricultural industry to adopt climate change mitigation and adaption efforts.
What’s the problem you’re hoping to address via this course?
“The course aims to raise awareness of the dual threats towards agriculture and the global environment. Climate change is indeed a threat to farming for instance through rising temperatures, increase in extreme weather events frequency and intensity, increased pest pressure, etc., while agriculture exacerbates the pressure on the environment in general through pollution, and on climate change in particular through greenhouse gas emissions. These complex interactions between agriculture and the climate are the reason why farmers need not only to adapt to changing circumstances, but also to mitigate their emissions; climate-smart agriculture practices address these concerns while ensuring at the same time financial sustainability.”
