THE Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives in collaboration with the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has developed an innovative policy support programme aimed at implementing climate change adaptation policies.

A Senior Agriculture Official in the Ministry, Ms Mary Majule, said the programme dubbed the Environment Policy Action Node would mainly focus on advocating elements of a climate strategy that promotes climate smart agricultural practices.

"This will address food security and climate change problems at once, rather than in isolation," said Ms Majule while opening an Inception Workshop for the AGRA supported Environment Policy Action Node held at the Open University of Tanzania (OUT) in Dar es Salaam over the weekend.

She said the programme will be facilitating the uptake of agricultural technologies largely seeds and soil health technologies hence strengthen land, and focus will be on translating evidence-based policies into action through evidence-based policy advocacy involving all stakeholders.

"This focus is in response to growing knowledge on the impacts of climate change and weather variability on small-scale farmers," said the official.

She pointed out that with technical and financial support from AGRA, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security engages key stakeholders in the sector to form policy action nodes along areas such as seeds, soil health, markets, land and property rights plus environment and climate change policy thrust.

"These are groups of institutions with the expertise and willingness to work together to address agricultural policy bottlenecks," she said. Mr Liston Njoroge, a representative from AGRA, said climate change was a threat to food security in Africa and that there was need to introduce climate smart agricultural practices.

"The alliance (AGRA) will keep on facilitating such programmes to strengthen food security in Africa," he said.