Methods of prevention and increase adaptability to off-set societal disorder

It’s not all doom and gloom and that there are a wide availability of literature that talks about how to increase adoptability of agriculture to future climate change. As pointed out last week that Africa remains predominately a rain-fed agriculture system. Currently within season rainfall variability is already causing concerns, and in the future it is predicted to be more likely (Cooper et al 2008). Below we can see that IPCC prediction for rainfall is highly uncertain in that these modelling cannot give a definitive answer as to rainfall in general will decrease or increase. So can farmers cope with these future changes especially those in the arid regions?

Human-side approach to future decrease in crop yield

Farmers have their own methods, but Cooper et al are sceptical at their future effectiveness because they mainly perform the task of “risk spreading”. For example, to cope with drier environments, pastoralist would hold a larger number, with anticipation that a number of them will die and still be able to make a profit. However, this tends to lead to overgrazing and overstocking. Not only does this have a negative impact on the environment, it also doesn’t improve resilience and could led to future societal disorder in these farming communities in Africa. Which also contribute to the wider security concern in Africa (Will go more indepth in the next post) (Cooper et al 2008).

Cooper et al (2008) largely comes from a humanistic approach and relays heavily on investment. They believe that the best way to enhance adoptability is to increase a community’s livelihood assets. To do this, there much be “investment into crop tolerance to drought, improving water productivity, integrated management of land and water”. An example from India where income from agriculture fell from 88 to 47% due to a drier climate over a 25 year period. They adopted by diversifying their livelihood strategies by increase their income through non-farming activities. This may not be applicable in Africa since some places are very rural, but can be used in most cases. This result from India is that there current income is greater than from just farming. This means they are actually better off. The downside is that this approach depends largely on investment and local politics. These could be problematic in some places and I have reservations for it.

An environmental approach to compliment increase in livelihood assets- through local knowledge

This is an alternative approach to Cooper et al (2008)’s approach to improve livelihood assets. To some extent, this relays less on the socially controversial GM approach (as cooper et al proposed). GM crops have been widely debated and the positives of GM crops has been discussed in-depth in this blog entry. Knox et al (2013) found that there is a consensus that there is a lack of evidence for the negative impact of GM crops adaptation. Therefore GM crops can be use inline with agroforestry.

Ofori et al (2014) has recommended that the increase domestication of high-value trees species in the agricultural landscape in Africa. Similar to the progress made by Coffee, Coca, Rubber around the world. However, they suggest that it should be a bottom-up approach to minimise the environmental impact we seen from the damages seen in Rubber etc.

The benefit of agroforestry is immense. It will contribute to the overall improvement and resilience of Africa farmers in rural settings. The upward trend in population will led to future demand for resources and tree domestication would satisfy this demand. The results have been seen in Central Africa, where the bottom-up approach to domestication has resulted in improvement in incomes, diets and rural business development. In most cases, the has been adopted alongside of other farming activities which reduces vulnerability by spreading risk and generating higher incomes which has increased wellbeing (Ofori et al 2014)

An example would be the domestication of Allanblackia tree found in wild in the humid forest of central, east and west Africa. Referring to last post, these places coincides with future reduction in crop yield, the seeds of the tree has significant future potential in the global food market (>100,000 tones annually). Again, this could increase the income of farmers and bring greater resilience to climate change. (Ofori et al 2014)

Bayala et al (2014) looks more in-depth into agroforestry parklands and looks at the relationship between trees and crop in more depth. Soil carbon is a major limiting factor in semi arid areas where it has negative impact on crop growth and productivity. Beyala et al (2014) found that trees in agroforestry parkland systems have a “direct positive contribution to soil carbon content”, this means this would be important in encouraging this method of adaptation in semi-arid areas. There has been uncertainty in the idea about trees and its contribution to soil fertility and Sanou et al (2012,) have claimed that they actually compete with crops. At the same time, Bayala et al 2008 have shown that a root of trees and crops actually coincide and competes with each other. However, with the right kind of crops and tree combination, Bayala et al (2014) points out positive effect on soil fertility was observed.

This approach utilities local knowledge and with the correct implementation method (bottom-up) the negative environmental effect seen with other agroforestry like Coca or rubber can be mitigated. At the same time, it has a positive impact for farmers livelihood assets which increase their adoptability to future climate change. Coupled with the positive impact agroforestry on the nutrition cycle and food security, it could mitigate future food crisis as shown in the last entry and represent and compliments Cooper et al’s approach.