Making the most of Climate Change - Adapting African Agriculture!

Hi!☺

Glad you dropped by.

Here’s today’s post.

Agriculture is the biggest contributor to Africa’s economy, a source of livelihood; employing over 50% of the continent’s labour force.  A lot of the more than one billion people that live in this our beloved continent rely on agriculture both directly and indirectly for a livelihood, to raise their children, to have a decent quality of life, for human dignity.

Africa has 65% of the world’s arable land. Of this, only 2% is under irrigation while the potential stands at 25%. Also 66% of all land in Africa is arid and semi-arid. 

It is also a fact that agriculture in Africa is largely rain fed and so dependent on the natural weather patterns which are now influenced by climate change. As a matter of fact, agriculture takes up 65% of Africa's labour force  and accounts for 32% of the continent’s overall GDP[i] 

In other words, we depend on agriculture not just for food, but for the economy as well. Climate change affects not just the variability of temperature and the rains but also the amounts and seasonality which all in turn impacts agriculture.

Today, we are going to look at two ways in which agriculture as a sector can be adapted to climate change while also benefiting from it.

Climate Smart Agriculture
Climate smart agriculture is the practice of being smart about agriculture, climate-wise duh what else!? Seriously though, it is practicing agriculture having factored in climate change. That is, the methods and practices employed are conversant with climate change and seek to make the most out of it.

Climate smart agriculture is based on three main principles;
         i.            Increasing agricultural yields sustainably while taking into account present and future climate change.
       ii.            Increasing the resilience of agricultural systems to climate change caused-variations in weather conditions and also extreme weather events.
      iii.            Reducing the amount of greenhouse gases released from agriculture.

In my previous post I examined some innovative ways of farming taking into account the varying and increasingly different weather conditions. To mention a few:

Urban farming where people pool resources , buy land and hand it over to professionals to manage. They get returns after every season.

There is also hydroponics where the need for soil to act as a bed for the plants is eliminated. 
Vertical farming whereby instead of cultivating on a field that pans out horizontally, one can instead create ‘a storeyed farm’ and thus eliminate the constraints of space.


An example of a vertical farm - image courtesy of independent.com
















Use of a greenhouse is also another bright way of dealing with climate change because the conditions inside the greenhouse are controlled by the farmer and not just nature.

A greenhouse - image courtesy of hortidaily.com
inside a greenhouse - image courtesy of liftupafrica.org



Increasing Resilience
When it comes to increasing resilience of agricultural systems to climate change, the use of drought resistant and fast maturing crops is one of the ways of making the most of the resources we have.

Indigenous crops are valuable plant species that are mostly forgotten but are very well suited and adapted to harsh weather conditions. Such foods also tend to be nutritious as well as hardy. These plant species besides naturally occurring in Africa, have been cultivated for centuries and are thus better suited to the increasingly drier weather.

They include tuberous crops such as cassava, yams as well as other types of crops such as millet and sorghum. For African countries, especially those found in arid and semi-arid lands, such crops may be very useful indeed. It is sad to see that we have lost interest in some of these crops because of ‘designer crops[1]’. If there is some truth in the old adage, old is gold, then we must once again re-embrace these traditional crops and not only be able to combat climate change but also make big strides in achieving food security.

Another way to practice climate resilient agriculture is to plant trees alongside other food crops. This practice is known as agroforestry. Agroforestry has numerous benefits some of which include soil conservation, provision of food and mitigation of climate change.

Africa has great potential when it comes to irrigation. There is a lot of idle land which just needs water to bring forth fruit. Morocco and Egypt use irrigation to not only produce food for their populace but also for export. Yet these two countries experience desert like conditions as compared to countries in Eastern Africa.

Reduction of emissions
As for the reduction of emissions, use of renewable energy such as solar and wind which is freely available at minimal cost in large areas of Africa can be used in processing of agricultural produce and value addition.

Conservation agriculture is a branch of agriculture that involves very minimal or no disturbance of the soil. Apart from increasing yields as compared to conventional agriculture, this principle of zero tillage means that there are no emissions of greenhouse gases that would otherwise arise from use of heavy farm machinery (tractors use diesel).

Emissions are also reduced in organic farming where natural systems of pest and weed control are employed. Synthetic (chemical) fertilizers are not used in cultivation hence greenhouse gas emissions which come from manufacture of these fertilizers are reduced.

Conservation agriculture also does not encourage burning of vegetation to clear the land for planting. A common practice, burning not only kills useful microorganisms but also releases carbon bound up in soil organic matter. Conservation agriculture thus helps mitigate against climate change.

Infrastructure
In Africa, we do not have the luxury of debating climate change. We have to deal with it now. One of the challenges is the lack of adequate infrastructure not only to identify but to properly adapt to climate change related weather phenomena. There is need for a well-organized structure that promotes the flow of information from top to bottom, that is, from scientists to farmers and vice versa.

In order to better combat climate change, a strong climate response system would involve widespread collaboration between various organizations and entities both in government and out of government. Different stakeholders such as scientists, financiers, private sector, policy makers, governments, educational institutions and community based farmers groups all need to work together to better strengthen cooperation in the fight against climate change.

There needs to be strong investment in the fight against climate change and collective goodwill in order to move forward and not only save the agricultural sector from climate change but benefit from it as well,

Swell.

In times to come, we shall revisit this issue. Due to the importance of agriculture in Africa it would be difficult to fully exhaust this topic, but we shall try.

Remember if you want to see change, you must be the change.

Young people need to know this. We are the future of this planet and we need to act now.

Right! See you next time.
✌👋

[1] Excessively hyped crops that are purported to bring more returns than ‘traditional crops’



[i] Gross Domestic Product

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