Smallholder Climate Adaptation and the Yield Gap in the Global South
Context: Smallholder farmers in the Global South produce substantial shares of regional food while facing rising climate hazards, market volatility, and limited access to land, finance, irrigation, and advisory services. Findings: Yield gaps are shaped not only by biophysical limits but also by social and institutional constraints: degraded soils, water insecurity, weak input systems, insecure tenure, gendered labour burdens, and exposure to drought, heat, floods, and pests. Evidence shows that adaptation can reduce risk and improve productivity when locally tailored, combining soil health restoration, diversified cropping, water management, climate services, social protection, and farmer-led innovation. However, adaptation is uneven and may fail when interventions ignore affordability, labour, land rights, or ecological trade-offs. Implications: Closing sustainable yield gaps requires treating smallholders as climate knowledge partners, not merely technology recipients, and aligning adaptation finance with food security, equity, and ecosystem resilience.
Introduction
Smallholder farmers are central to food systems across the Global South, yet they farm under some of the most climate-exposed and resource-constrained conditions in the world. The term “smallholder” covers diverse realities, from rain-fed maize growers in eastern Africa to rice farmers in South Asia, Andean potato producers, and mixed crop–livestock households in drylands. Many cultivate less than two hectares, rely heavily on family labour, and combine farming with wage work, migration, livestock keeping, forest use, or petty trade [3].
The yield gap—the difference between potential or water-limited yields and actual farm yields—has become a major concept in debates over…
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