Protecting Africa’s Backbone: transforming agriculture in the face of climate change

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By Alice Marks, @alicemarks0

Smallholder farmers in Africa are already aware that the climate is changing. For many, the growing seasons are becoming shorter and more difficult to plan, because of erratic and unpredictable weather including droughts and floods. Often this means that crops fail or yields are lower and livelihoods are impacted with less produce to feed the household, let alone surplus to sell at markets to gain an income. Unfortunately, the climatic conditions are likely to only get worse, with mean temperatures across Africa expected to rise faster than the global average, reaching as high as 3°C to 6°C greater than pre-industrial levels. The pressure on African countries to boost productivity and accelerate growth is now higher than ever and is being further complicated by the potential adverse impacts of climate change and extreme weather events.

In this context the Montpellier Panel  has launched a new briefing paper today – Set for Success: Climate-proofing the Malabo Declaration . The Panel urges African governments to fully recognise the scale of the threat posed by climate change to smallholder farming and to build climate-smart agriculture strategies into their National Agricultural Investments Plans that will help farmers mitigate the risks and adapt to the changing weather conditions. The paper also highlights more than 15 examples of success stories and programmes that have been shown to be impactful and can be scaled-up. Building resilience will be key to achieving the shared agendas of the Malabo Declaration, the 2015 Paris Agreement, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To this end, the Montpellier Panel make the following recommendations:

1. Supporting the Malabo Declaration by building comprehensive information on climate-related stresses and shocks, both nationally and regionally, as well as their impacts on food and nutrition security.
2. Mainstreaming climate-smart agriculture programmes into the next generation of National Agriculture Investment Plans to ensure a stronger focus on climate change and extreme weather events.
3. African countries need support, through the African Union, NEPAD, CAADP and regional associations of National Agricultural Research Systems, to develop country investment plans that reflect a stronger, collective voice for Africa in international climate policy processes
4. Facilitating African governments’ access to climate funds through the Green Climate Fund and other innovative finance mechanisms that will help countries implement climate-smart agriculture programmes.
5. Improving Africa’s scientific capacity which will guide climate change adaptation and mitigation interventions in agriculture.
6. Improving training for farmers on sustainable farming techniques, through improved extension services, farmer field schools and utilisation of digital technologies.

Global soils

Soil is a declining resource for a variety of reasons such as conventional agricultural practices and overexploitation of forests. Soil loss and erosion – half of the topsoil on the planet has been lost in the last 150 years – has a huge impact on our ability to produce food and, due to erosion, around 30% of the world’s arable land has become unproductive in the last 40 years. Tipped as an environmental problem second only to population growth, sustainably managing our soils should be a global priority.

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On the 4^th of December, the Montpellier Panel published its latest report ‘No Ordinary Matter: Conserving, restoring and enhancing Africa’s soils’, this time focusing on the importance of soils to global food security. The report explains the contribution of soil to alleviating many of today’s pressing challenges is overlooked. The report finds that soils have become politically and physically neglected, triggering land degradation and recommends the following action be prioritised:

1. Strengthen political support for sustainable land management
2. Increase financial support for investment in land and soil management.
3. Improve transparency for land and soil management.
4. Attribute a value to land degradation.
5. Start a ‘Big Data’ Revolution on soils.
6. Create incentives, especially secure land rights.
7. Build on existing knowledge and resources.
8. Build soil science capacity in Africa.
9. Embrace integrated soil management (ISM).
10. Climate smart soil helps agricultural systems become more resilient.

From research to impact: the stories behind the successes

A recent Montpellier Panel Briefing Paper, Innovation for Sustainable Intensification in Africa, highlights the need for change in the way we innovate and do research if we are to increase food production while protecting natural resources (in other words sustainable intensification). Added to this need for change is the increasing focus of donors and civil society to measure success as the level of impact. International aid has come under criticism for failing to ensure long-term impact of research investments.

In a new report by Joanna Kane-Potaka of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) entitled The Story Behind the Success, 10 case studies are presented, which exemplify how research for development (R4D) can be translated into real results and uptake by people on the ground.  Some broad lessons from the case studies were the need for monitoring and evaluation to feed back into the uptake planning process, the need to design a proactive uptake strategy that is informed by and informs the research itself, and the need for effective engagement, ultimately aiming for stakeholders to take ownership of the research and become ambassadors for the outputs. Effective communication and the integration of cultural factors in uptake planning were also important.

In one case study, farmers in Northern Thailand who use termite mounds on poor quality soils to help them retain water and nutrients, were looking for an alternative as natural termite mounds began to become scarce. International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and Khon Kaen University scientists began trialling the use of bentonite clay, found by Australian researchers to help conserve water and nutrients in soil. Researchers found that in Northern Thailand the use of bentonite clay helped reduce crop failure due to drought and increased crop yield by 73%. Three years after the trials around 600 farmers in Thailand and Cambodia had adopted the practice and increased their yields by an average 18%. In this case adoption took a long time but was driven largely by targeting early innovator farmers, in particular members of the Farmer Wisdom Network (FWM), which individuals at Khon Kaen University had previously built a relationship with. Another key relationship, between IWMI and the Thai government, built over time, aided in the early trials, which were conducted on government experiment stations. The government is now developing a plant where waste bentonite from the production of vegetable oils is converted to composting for use on soils. This product is to be free (excluding transportation costs) to farmers. Farmer field trials and Farmer Field Schools were not only used to communicate the technology but to obtain feedback used in the research process. Identifying early innovators, building strong relationships with local farmers and partners and having meaningful engagement with them were key to ensuring this solution actually had impact.

Human innovation to feed the world

Professor Sir Gordon Conway and Katy Wilson highlight the need for innovative solutions to food insecurity

Article originally appeared on The Economist Insights

With global population expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050 the world faces unprecedented demands on its resources – not least water, biodiversity and land. Add to this the likely impact of climate change, and the challenge of feeding a world where some 870 million people are already chronically hungry appears a difficult one.

Governments, NGOs, academia and the private sector are searching for long-term sustainable solutions to global food insecurity and future resource scarcity.  One solution, first proposed by Jules Pretty in the 1990s, and backed by the Montpellier Panel, a high-level group of European and African experts in the fields of agriculture, trade, policy, and global development, is sustainable intensification. At its heart sustainable intensification is about producing more food, more efficiently.

Achieving global food security will not be possible if food is produced at the expense of other natural resources such as water and soil. Instead we need to find ways of maximising both agricultural output and the health of the environments and ecosystems upon which farming relies.

Sustainable intensification is, at its core, about balancing the trade-offs between short-term gains and long-term sustainability. This is a shift in thinking that is not going to be easy but one that members of the Montpellier Panel think is achievable. A large part of their optimism results from historical evidence of human ingenuity in the face of challenges, as well as from the ground-breaking technologies and innovations being developed today.

While much can be achieved by using existing knowledge and technologies, the scale of the challenges we face will need innovation. In a new Montpellier Panel briefing paper, Innovation for Sustainable Intensification in Africa, we emphasise the importance of innovation to drive sustainable intensification and to overcome Africa’s hunger and development issues in general. As an example, a study by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture found that agricultural research in sub-Saharan Africa yields an estimated aggregate rate of return of as much as 55%. This same research also reduces the number of poor people by 2.3 million each year in the region, with about half of this impact originating from international agricultural research conducted by the CGIAR.

Since sustainable intensification is about reducing trade-offs and maximising benefits across economic, environmental and societal objectives we need to redesign our innovation systems to aid multidisciplinary and collaborative research.

Current increases in crop yields will not meet future food demand

Global food production must increase if we are to meet the rising demand for food, feed and fuel brought about by growing populations, incomes and western diets. It must increase in the face of severe natural resource constraints.  Current production growth, however, will not meet the world’s food needs, as a recent article by Ray et al, entitled Yield Trends Are Insufficient to Double Global Crop Production by 2050, attests.

To achieve food security we need to increase food production between 50 and 100% by 2050. Ray et al, however find that for four key global crops, maize, rice, wheat, and soybean, which currently produce nearly two-thirds of global agricultural calories, yield increases between 1961 and 2008 were only 1.6%, 1.0%, 0.9%, and 1.3% per year. To put this in perspective, a 2.4% per year rate of yield gains is needed to double crop production by 2050.

This high level analysis masks a lot of geographic variation. For example, maize yields are improving in Ethiopia, Angola, South Africa, and Madagascar but decreasing in such countries as Morocco, Chad, Somalia, Kenya and Zambia. There is a similar diversity in yield changes for soybean, wheat and rice.

One answer is to expand the amount of land we grow crops on (extensify), a solution that would be disastrous for the environment, for carbon emissions and for biodiversity, for which habitat loss is the biggest threat. The other is to intensify, increase the yields from existing agricultural land. Often intensification is associated with large-scale high-input commercial agriculture, also detrimental to the natural resource base. The UN estimates that 80% of the required increase in food production between 2015 and 2030 will have to come from intensification. Additionally strategies to reduce food loss and waste, change consumer eating preferences and ensure the food system is more equitable could also have a large impact.

In another recent article in Science, Garnett et al discuss a new paradigm that is gaining traction, one outlined by the Montpellier Panel in their 2013 Report, Sustainable Intensification: A New Paradigm for African Agriculture. Sustainable intensification (SI), which aims to reconcile food production and environmental protection, has been much discussed on this blog and is receiving increasing attention from decision makers. Garnett et al outline the four premises underlying SI:

Sustainable agricultural intensification: Tackling food insecurity in a resource-scarce world

By Lindiwe Majele Sibanda and Katy Wilson.

Reblogged from AlertNet

Today, the world is searching for solutions to a series of global challenges unprecedented in their scale and complexity. Food insecurity, malnutrition, climate change, rural poverty and environmental degradation are all among them.

A recent meeting hosted by the Irish government and the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice (MRFCJ) in Dublin convened experts and practitioners from around the globe to discuss how the next iteration of development goals following the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) can respond to this set of challenges, as part of the so-called “post-2015” development agenda.

Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly vulnerable to these threats as both supply-side and demand-side challenges are putting additional pressure on an already fragile food production system. Indeed, current systems of production will only be able to meet 13 percent of the continent’s food needs by 2050, while three out of four people added to the planet between now and 2100 will be born in the region.

Improving agricultural yields efficiently and sustainably must be central in addressing Africa’s food insecurity challenges. This calls for “sustainable intensification”. 

Sustainable intensification offers a framework for producing more food with less impact on the environment, intensifying food production while ensuring the natural resource base on which agriculture depends is sustained, and indeed improved, for future generations.

Unfortunately, in recent years, the term has taken on a highly politicised meaning, with some arguing it is synonymous with industrial agriculture reliant on a high use of fertilisers and pesticides. But this does not have to be the case.

The term’s original scientific intent was for it to be relevant to all types of agricultural systems, including smallholder farmers in Africa. It is now time that the term is re-embraced to help meet the challenges we face as a global population of 9 billion people by the year 2050.

REPORT POINTS THE WAY

A new report from the Montpellier Panel, an eminent panel of international experts led by Sir Gordon Conway of Agriculture for Impact, provides innovative thinking and examples of how sustainable intensification can be used by smallholder African farmers to address the continent’s food and nutrition crisis.