A crippling drought in Africa shows the importance of climate change adaptation
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WPR: Given the increased prevalence of droughts like this due to climate change, what actions can countries take to adapt and lessen the impact of future fluctuations in rainfall?
[William G.] Moseley [professor of geography and director of the Program for Food, Agriculture & Society at Macalester College]: Climate change is leading to increasingly variable rainfall in the African context. This not only includes droughts in some years, but excessive rainfall in others. In many cases, seasonal rainfall is also being distributed differently, coming in shorter and more intense bursts. This means that climate change adaptation strategies must be able to deal with both extremes: excessively dry and excessively wet conditions.
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Farming communities throughout Africa’s semi-arid regions traditionally grew drought-tolerant crops such as sorghum and pearl millet. Given high rainfall variability, farmers also understood that they could harvest a bumper crop in one year, followed by little to no harvest in a subsequent one. As such, many farmers would store excess grain in familial granaries from a bumper year in order to get them through harvest shortfalls in dry years. Lastly, many farmers used rock lines in their fields in order to control soil erosion following rainfall events.
Sadly, colonial legacies and increasing engagement with global markets have resulted in many of these traditional adaptation strategies being compromised. All across Africa, sorghum and millet are being abandoned in favor of maize, even though maize is more demanding of the soil and needier in terms of rainfall. The reasons for this are complicated, ranging from colonial policies that favored maize production, to the introduction of hybrid maize varieties that are more responsive to inorganic fertilizers, to the additional labor required to protect sorghum and millet from predation by birds. Farmers are also less likely to store bumper harvests, instead preferring to sell surpluses on the market in order to earn cash to cover expenses. Lastly, many rock lines have been removed, as they got in the way when ploughs were introduced. Moving forward, it is important to recognize the genius of some of these older strategies and see how they might be brought back in a way that better fits contemporary constraints.
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