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Purpose: The consequences of extreme climatic events that threaten food security have created the urgent need to properly adopt climate-smart adaptation techniques to improve productivity. The study examined the sustainability responses to climate-smart adaptation and the implication it has for explaining the food security situations among farm households in the Central Region of Ghana. Design/methodology/approach: We estimated Heckit treatment effect model to analyse cross-sectional data collected from randomly selected farmers in the Central Region. Findings: Analysis of farm sustainability index suggests that farmers' agricultural practices in response to climate change are lowly or moderately sustainable. We further found that while majority of the farm households are severely food insecure or food insecure with hunger, only about one-third are food insecure without hunger and the remaining few being food secure. The sustainability of farm practices is being impacted by the farmers’ choice of climate smart adaptation measures at the farm level. Consequently, the farm households' food security situation is found to be improved when sustainable farming practices are employed in the face of managing climate change effects. Practical implications: Conclusions drawn from the study findings give rooms for policy implications that suggest responsibilities for policymakers, farmers and other stakeholders to promote CSA practices in food crop production in Ghana. These policy implications will contribute to improve crop productivity, increase incomes and thus enhance food security among farm families. Awareness campaign about benefits of CSA practices and technologies need to be strengthened among farmers in Ghana by government and NGOs that matter in promoting farm resilience to climate change. Given the important impacts of sustainable farm practices on household food security situation, policies that seek to build the adaptive capacity of farmers to climate vulnerability impacts should take into consideration the sustainability dimensions of the adaptation and mitigation measures to be advocated for use at farm levels. Originality/value: Our paper contributes to literature knowledge on climate-smart adaptation practices effect on food security as evidenced in some recent literature. The paper makes a unique contribution by highlighting the food security implication of the sustainability impact of CSA practices, thereby exploring sustainability as an impact pathway between climate smart adaptations practices and food security in a developing country like Ghana. We approached our study aiming at making new contribution by introducing in the study implementation a quasi-experimental research design which future studies on impacts of climate smart adaptation practices can replicate.

Many studies of climate change adaptation have relied on farmers’ perceptions of climate change to explain why farmers are adopting new farming methods, and to advise adaptation policy framework that justifies Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) especially in Africa. These studies have rarely verified whether farmers’ perceptions are consistent with observed changes in meteorological conditions to establish sufficient premise. This study compares farmers’ perceptions of changes in precipitation and temperature in a rainfed agriculture region of Ghana against objective measurements made in nearby weather stations in the region. The study finds that farmers correctly perceived the increase in temperature over time but incorrectly perceived a reduction in precipitation, while objective data showed high fluctuations with no clear trend. It is possible that farmers mistakenly assumed reduction in soil moisture meant to support crop growth requirements was caused by less rainfall when in fact it was caused by higher temperature.