Climate-Smart Agriculture Using FAO Framework Training Course

Course overview

Agriculture programmes increasingly need to show how proposed practices will protect yields, strengthen household resilience and manage emissions under variable rainfall, heat stress, land degradation and market pressure. Yet many project teams still select interventions from generic menus without testing trade-offs between productivity, adaptation, mitigation, food security, labour demands and affordability. This creates weak investment cases, difficult stakeholder conversations and monitoring plans that cannot demonstrate whether climate-smart results are being achieved.

This course applies the FAO Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) framework to the design, appraisal and improvement of farm and landscape interventions. Participants learn to diagnose climate risks and agricultural system constraints; define CSA objectives across the three pillars; screen practices for synergies and trade-offs; use the FAO CSA Sourcebook; apply SHARP resilience assessment concepts; and estimate greenhouse-gas effects with the FAO EX-ACT approach. They will translate evidence into practical intervention packages, indicator sets, implementation assumptions and investment recommendations.

Instructor-led briefings are combined with worked FAO cases, spreadsheet-based emissions exercises, small-group design studios and peer review of intervention choices. Participants work through a realistic agricultural development scenario, using climate, livelihood and production evidence to prioritize practices such as improved water management, climate-resilient crop varieties, agroforestry, soil organic matter management and livestock feed improvements. Each participant leaves with a CSA intervention design brief: a documented climate-risk diagnosis, CSA practice portfolio, trade-off matrix, preliminary EX-ACT estimate and monitoring framework ready to adapt for a live programme or proposal.

The course is suited to professionals working with smallholder farming systems, producer organizations, value-chain investments, rural advisory services or climate-finance proposals. It is relevant whether participants are developing a new programme, strengthening an existing agricultural portfolio or reviewing the climate claims of project partners.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Apply the FAO Climate-Smart Agriculture framework to define productivity, adaptation and mitigation objectives for an agricultural intervention
• Diagnose climate hazards, exposure, vulnerability and farm-system constraints using a CSA context analysis template
• Screen agricultural practices with a CSA synergies-and-trade-offs matrix
• Select climate-smart crop, livestock, soil, water and agroforestry practices for a defined farming system
• Use FAO EX-ACT inputs to prepare a preliminary ex-ante greenhouse-gas balance estimate
• Interpret SHARP resilience assessment dimensions to identify household-level adaptation priorities
• Construct a CSA results framework with indicators for productivity, resilience, emissions and food-security outcomes
• Produce an evidence-based CSA intervention design brief with assumptions, risks, implementation actions and monitoring measures

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Agricultural Programme Managers — who must design and justify climate-resilient farm and value-chain investments
• Climate Change and Resilience Advisors — who translate climate-risk evidence into practical agricultural adaptation actions
• Agronomists and Extension Managers — who need to recommend feasible climate-smart practice packages to producers
• Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Specialists — who must define credible CSA indicators and evidence plans
• Development Project Officers — who prepare agriculture proposals, project documents and donor investment cases
• Agribusiness and Producer Organization Managers — who need to assess climate risks across sourcing areas and farmer services

Requirements and prerequisites

This is a foundation-to-intermediate course. Participants should be comfortable discussing basic crop, livestock or farming-system concepts and should have some awareness of how rainfall, temperature, pests, soil condition or water availability affect agricultural production. Experience with agricultural projects, extension services, rural development or climate adaptation is useful but not essential. Participants need basic spreadsheet confidence, including entering data and reading simple tables, because EX-ACT exercises use Excel-based templates. A laptop with Microsoft Excel or compatible spreadsheet software is recommended. No prior greenhouse-gas accounting, GIS, carbon-market or advanced statistical experience is required; complete beginners should expect structured guidance through each method.

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor-led modules to introduce FAO concepts, followed by guided application to a shared smallholder farming-system case. Participants interpret climate-risk and livelihood evidence, complete a CSA practice-screening matrix, enter scenario data into an EX-ACT-style spreadsheet exercise and define results indicators. Small groups compare intervention choices across productivity, adaptation, mitigation, cost and inclusion criteria, then defend their recommendations in a structured review. The final session is an application-planning workshop in which participants adapt the course templates to an actual or planned programme.

Course outline

Day 1: FAO Climate-Smart Agriculture foundations and context diagnosis

• FAO definition of Climate-Smart Agriculture and the three CSA pillars
• Food security, productivity, adaptation and mitigation linkages
• Climate hazard, exposure, sensitivity and adaptive-capacity concepts
• Farming-system boundaries and landscape-level interactions
• Using the FAO CSA Sourcebook to frame technical choices
• Climate-risk evidence sources for agricultural programme design
• Stakeholder and livelihood analysis for smallholder farming systems

Workshop: Participants complete a CSA context diagnosis for a drought- and flood-exposed smallholder farming system and produce a prioritized problem statement.

Day 2: Selecting climate-smart agricultural practices

• CSA practice typologies for crops, livestock, soils, water and trees
• Conservation agriculture conditions, benefits and implementation limits
• Climate-resilient seed and crop diversification options
• Soil organic matter, nutrient management and erosion-control practices
• Water harvesting, irrigation efficiency and watershed-management options
• Agroforestry, silvopastoral systems and landscape restoration measures
• CSA synergies-and-trade-offs screening matrix

Workshop: In groups, participants screen a set of farm and landscape practices against CSA criteria and produce a ranked intervention portfolio with stated trade-offs.

Day 3: Resilience assessment and emissions estimation

• SHARP resilience assessment dimensions for farmers and pastoralists
• Household assets, agency, access and adaptive-capacity indicators
• Agricultural greenhouse-gas sources and carbon-stock change pathways
• EX-ACT project boundary, baseline and with-project scenarios
• Land-use, crop, livestock and input data required for EX-ACT
• Interpreting preliminary ex-ante carbon-balance results
• Uncertainty, assumptions and limitations in CSA emissions claims

Workshop: Participants enter scenario assumptions into a guided EX-ACT worksheet and produce a preliminary emissions-and-carbon narrative for their selected practices.

Day 4: Designing implementable CSA investments

• From practice lists to integrated CSA intervention packages
• Targeting criteria for farm types, gender, youth and vulnerable groups
• Labour, finance, input access and land-tenure adoption constraints
• Climate information services and advisory-delivery models
• Cost, benefit and affordability considerations for smallholders
• Risk registers for weather, market, institutional and safeguarding risks
• Stakeholder roles across producers, extension, finance and markets

Workshop: Participants develop an implementation pathway for a CSA package and produce a stakeholder map, adoption-risk register and mitigation actions.

Day 5: CSA monitoring, investment justification and application planning

• CSA theory of change and causal pathways
• Indicators for yields, income, food security, resilience and emissions
• Baseline design and practical data-collection methods
• IPCC-aligned activity data and emissions-factor considerations
• Monitoring practice adoption, disadoption and unintended effects
• Presenting CSA evidence in proposals and investment decisions
• CSA intervention design brief structure and quality review

Workshop: Participants finalize and present a CSA intervention design brief containing their diagnosis, practice portfolio, trade-off analysis, EX-ACT assumptions and monitoring framework.

Tools & standards covered

FAO Climate-Smart Agriculture Sourcebook, FAO EX-ACT, FAO SHARP, IPCC 2006 Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions