Bundling Climate Smart Agriculture Systems in Morocco: Insights, Advances and Perspectives in a Changing Climate

In Morocco, food and nutrition security are threatened by the combined complex impacts of land degradation processes, climate change and water scarcity, ballooning demography and diet shifts. In order to mitigate and curb these impacts, several climate-smart agriculture (CSA) options were experimented and implemented by research and development consortia with support from international organizations and are at the high priority of the recently launched agricultural strategy termed Green Generation 2020–30. The review will focus mainly on conservation agriculture (CA), organic farming (OF) and agroforestry (AF) as pillars of regenerative agriculture and climate change mitigation and resilience. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the area of cultivated organic crops in 2020 is estimated to 10,300 ha in addition to spontaneous picking of around 300,000 ha. While the area under conservation agriculture is approximatively 25,000 ha. Green Generation strategy is aiming to reach 100,000 ha and 1 million ha by 2030, respectively, for OF and CA. In this chapter, a review on knowledge advances is addressed with relation to food sustainability and environment stewardship. It is clear from the review that ensuring that farmers and producers of all scales and sizes adopt CSA systems and gain access to innovation, technology, training and knowledge will help foster greater productivity and secure food and feed and lessen impacts on soil, water and air quality, as well as effectively use external resources and scarce labor. In other terms, efficient, sustainable and productive use of inputs, resources and capital under CSA systems helps farmers control costs during volatile business cycles and increasing climate uncertainty. Major challenges, main drivers, potential and perspectives from CSA mainstreaming were also elaborated and discussed. For all these stakeholders, CSA brings changes in behavior and lifestyle as well as new insights and paradigms. Still stepping up adoption of these options is no regret with little significant trade-offs. Overall, the goal of achieving sustainability, heedlessly of the farming system, should be based on science and impartial, risk-based decision-making process.