Le climat et l'agriculture africaine (1)




Agriculture is the mainstay of African economies. In Africa it is made up of several subsectors for example, crop farming, rearing livestock, aqua culture, apiculture and others.  60% of Africa’s jobs are in the agricultural sector and about 80% of the income in Africa is derived from agricultural activities.
A wheat farm in Kenya - courtesy of agribourse
Now, when it comes to climate change, agriculture is both a causative factor as well as a victim.
Some facts, first of all.
1)      Africa produces only 4% of greenhouse gas emissions, and this is majorly through land use and forestry.
2)      Of the 10 countries most affected by climate change, 6 of them are in Africa.
3)      However Africa gets only 5% of climate finance. Do you how skewed the situation is?

The Horn Of Africa has some of the worst affected countries by climate change
-courtesy of agritech blog.uk
In Africa, agriculture is the biggest sectoral producer of emissions, and it does so in several ways, some of which are covered below.
v  Agriculture and the environment
§  Now, most people who practice agriculture are subsistence farmers and are of humble means. They depend on agriculture as a means of livelihood. In a bid to eke out a living, these farmers will most oft than not over exploit the environment. That means that they will farm in riverbanks and other riverine areas. They cut down forests to create farms regardless of the environmental services that this vegetation provides. Cutting down of vegetation e.g. forests reduces the ability of trees to absorb atmospheric CO2.

§  The second example is burning of land before sowing. Though some people cite it as a necessary practice to clear the land and bring forth new growth, it actually kills useful microorganisms (e.g. nitrogen fixing bacteria) and earth worms (they aerate and mix up the soil). The burning of organic matter also releases stored up carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
ΓΌ  Plus, the land looks ugly after burning. Please don’t.
§  Rearing of livestock is also a teeny weeny problem. Simply put, cows eat grass, they release methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas. This however is not a major problem. It is completely natural. The biggest problem has been and continues to be burning of fossil fuels.

Passons maintenant a:

 How Is Agriculture Affected By Climate Change?

 I’ve already covered the actual workings of global warming but for the benefit of new visitors, here goes.

 The major greenhouse gases are 7. Per fluorocarbons, hydro fluorocarbons, nitrous oxide, nitrogen trifluoride, sulphur hexafluoride, methane and of course carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is major consequence. What normally happens is that when the sun’s rays hit the earth, some of them are reflected into outer space, but as they are leaving (pack your bags and get out Jack!) they meet an ever increasing layer of CO2 which absorbs and stops the rays from leaving. What follows is that the atmosphere heats up and so does the planet (calamitous relationship, Jack should just have left in peace).

 Anyway, this causes the planet’s climate to change.
 Erratic weather patterns basically come and threaten us with no food (hold a sword to our heads).

 What does this mean?
*     Food security

 What is food security? What does it mean to be food secure? It is simply being able to feed yourself, all of you, that is, having enough food for everyone.

 Most countries in Africa are not entirely food secure. They do not have enough food for their populations. Now, I do not want to perpetuate the myth by Western media of an African child with a begging bowl. For the record, if that was true, then a major human catastrophe would be in the offing as the lives of 1 billion people would be at risk. That clearly is not the case.

So anyway, agriculture in many parts of Africa is rain fed, that is, we depend on the heavens and thus a lot of what we do is seasonal.

 Here in Kenya, we have the long rains season from March to May and the short rains season in October to December.

 But recently, this natural rhythm has been interrupted gravely with the rains out rightly failing or either coming at the wrong time or being too little or too much.

What is happening?

 Climate is changing.

 What does this portend for this continent and the ability to feed itself? There is going to be trouble. A fine example of this is already happening in Kenya. About 11 counties are faced with drought with the rains missing for the last six months in the hardest hit, Kilifi. Waterways have dried and animals and people are at grave risk.

 The Meteorological department recently announced that the next time the rains will fall will be in April 2017, which means that the harvest will be ready around September.
What do we do until then? Do we have enough grain reserves? Has the government planned ahead?

 This people is why we need intelligence (so as to speak) and early warning systems. If we could predict weather patterns for the next 6 months, this (lack of enough food) wouldn’t have happened. People, especially those in positions of influence and responsibility need to sit up and take notice.
It is also a wake up call for the developed world to deliver on their pledges for climate finance. This is why i mentioned earlier the minimal role of Africa in climate change, the huge impacts it faces as well as the gross unfairness in allocation of climate finance.


*      Agriculture and the economy

 Most of African countries are global producers of various cash crops. Two African countries, Ivory Coast and Ghana follow each other as the leading global producers of cocoa. Kenya has two competing cash crops, tea and coffee. The two are top foreign exchange earners for the country.

 If we can’t rely on the rains, you can see why there’ll be big trouble for the millions of farmers in Africa who practice both subsistence and cash crop farming. The economy will be gravely affected.

 This also leads to other chain effects such as more poverty, increased gender inequality etc. As I mentioned earlier, most African farmers are in subsistence farming. That’s how they get a livelihood. Again, most of these farmers are women. So if agriculture is affected by climate change, so are they.

  But we won’t lose hope.  As long as we are alive, there’s still hope.
In the next part this two part series, on va discuter des solutions concernant l’adaptation d’agriculture au changement climatique.

But for now, I’m sure we’re all hungry.

 Let’s break for a while and go shoot the breeze

 See you after lunch break class!


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