Dr. Lindiwe Majele Sibanda
Technological innovation has been described as a major panacea to help African farmers overcome and cope with the ever increasing challenges posed by climate change.
The Chief Executive Officer of the South-African based Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network, Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, who stated this in a forum said that temperatures have increased and the danger is that agriculture is the backbone of Africa's economies.
Increased Temperatures Means Farmers Have Less Water
She noted that the increase in temperatures means farmers have less water in some places and Africa is already a drought-prone region stressing that the technologies that African farmers have on the shelf, like the seeds, may not be compatible with the increased temperatures.
She stated: "Malawi recorded world renowned success in terms of food security because we have experienced a fairly stable climate regime over the last 100 years. The technologies that were there, such as, the hybrid seeds, could be taken in and planted. As long as they were accessible to the farmers, we could then register increases in yields.”
Sibanda said that the challenge African farmers face now is that there will be new diseases, new vectors and pests that isn’t known or seen before adding that all these challenges are being superimposed on a system that has not been food-secure.
About One Billion People Worldwide are Food Insecure
She observed that Africa spends at least US$19 billion on food imports annually, yet it has the capacity to be the global breadbasket and that most of African farmers are smallholders and they are in the business of subsidizing the urban population.
“But for as long as we are not creating an environment where they can increase their income and step out of poverty, we will always have more poor people yet we have the potential to be food-secure. About one billion people worldwide were food insecure in 2009, according to estimates, with the food price crisis hitting millions,” she added.
In his own contribution, the United Nation (UN) Environmental Program (UNEP) Executive Director, Achim Steiner, speaking to a conference organized by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and the Earth System Science Partnership said that the response to the crisis was similar to the cause of the problem.
He stated: "We are reducing soil fertility, continuing to bank on water, increasing reliance on fertilizer, the emphasis cannot just be both from an environmental and cost basis. We need to rethink agriculture as a platform from which the world will learn to ensure that 50 years from now we can produce food to feed nine billion people.”
Need to Increase Soil Fertility
Steiner proposed the "vertical expansion of agriculture" through methods such as plant breeding with perennial food crops, and improved farm management practices to increase soil fertility and moisture retention adding that perennial crops are less disruptive to the soil structure as there is less tilling and they help trap nutrients.
He noted that farming in the future will not just be about food production but other services rendered captured in an economic model. "By all means let us have a green revolution but let us give it a capital 'G' this time."
Speaking on India's experience, Pramod Aggarwal of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute said that India saw food production rise from about 65 million tones in the 1960s to 230 million tones in 2008 due to higher yielding varieties adding that but large yield gaps remain, with India accounting for 25 and 40 percent of the world's hungry and malnourished women and children, respectively.
Aggarwal said improved crop, pest and risk management as well as improved crop varieties, irrigation and fertilizer efficiency could further mitigate climate effects while increasing production.
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