Africa has the seeds of the solutions to climate adaptation

Tavares Anselmo Chauque, 68, has spent all his adult life working the soil in the Infulene Valley, Maputo's green belt where horticulture provides a living for thousands of people.

Farmers take advantage of the Mulauze River, between the cities of Maputo and Matola and the Costa do Sol, to grow vegetables. 

The land, however, is no longer as productive as it used to be when Chague started farming 35 years ago. Decades of unsustainable farming practices have resulted in biodiversity loss, and soil and landscape degradation, forcing him to use more agrochemicals and fertiliser to produce food for family and sale. 

Increased awareness of the harmful effects of industrial agriculture in recent years has led to the adoption of various practices and strategies that aid in the repair of the soil while mitigating climate change.

Chaque wants to change, but he fears that stopping agrochemical use, which he believes are responsible for higher yields, will, in the short run, spell doom for him and the urban residents who depend on his production.

He is not alone, millions of farmers across Africa are now switching to agroecology, yet they lack support in transitioning.

African policy

The current dominant African policy profiles industrial agriculture as the sure path to progress. This is piling pressure on small-scale food producers to participate in industrial agricultural programs such as climate-smart agriculture, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) seeds, and chemical inputs derived from fossil fuels.

To transition to more sustainable farming practices, Chaque and other farmers in Africa need support to access bioinputs and enact policies to support a transition to what farmers call agroecology.
As the COP27 climate summit starts on Sunday, African civil society leaders hope that agroecology can be placed at the centre of agricultural adaptation efforts at the talks in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

They hope that smallholder farmers, a majority of whom are in Africa and bear the brunt of the climate crisis, can be supported in their adaptation efforts.

In September, civil society groups, scientists, environmentalists, academics and consumers from across Africa meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, sent out a communiqué calling for agroecology to be placed at the centre of adaptation talks.

Participants at a three-day conference organised by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), in partnership with the Consortium for Climate Change Ethiopia and the Environment Protection Authority, said agroecology was Africa’s surest path to food sovereignty and an essential climate adaptation and mitigation measure.

With more than 200 million people undernourished every year in Africa in part due to climate change as well as the harmful effects of industrial agriculture, African groups want a change of course.
The communique notes that the effects of the climate emergency, characterized by rising temperatures, floods, storms, droughts, and depleted lands, impact small-scale food producers across Africa who are forced to adapt to sustain livelihoods and feed families yet are met with negligible support or access to climate finance.

Sustainable food systems

The groups want climate change financing to be focused on sustainable food systems, saying that there is an urgent need to increase funding for small-scale farmers, fishers, pastoralists, and indigenous communities.

The convening followed findings of the UN’s sixth IPCC assessment report which supports the call for agroecological principles and practices, ecosystem-based management in fisheries and aquaculture, and other approaches that work with nature, support food security, nutrition, health and well-being, livelihoods, and biodiversity.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) also notes agroecology is a transformative paradigm that places social justice and sustainability at the centre while simultaneously addressing climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Agroecology also supports ecosystem services such as pest control, pollination, cushioning from temperature extremes, as well as carbon sequestration and storage. 

Natural farming proponents worry that the Paris Climate Agreement opened the floodgates for unsustainable payments for carbon credits for companies that emit greenhouse gasses if they invest in “removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.”

During COP26, Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM for Climate) was launched by the US government to address climate change and global hunger by raising $8 billion in investment in science-based and data-driven “climate-smart agriculture” and food systems innovation over five years (2021 – 2025). 

Critics fear this is a reframing of industrial agriculture which will only lead to more emissions. 
“Small-scale farmers will be pushed off the land for large-scale farming. They will increasingly be replaced by robots, data, machines and gene-edited seeds, all for the profits of big agriculture and big tech corporations,” says Peter Gubbels of Groundswell International. 

Agroecology, on the other hand, cools the world and absorbs carbon sustainably through conservation, restoration, and improved land management.

Diversification

A key principle of agroecology is the diversification of farming systems in which mixtures of crop varieties are grown through intercropping and agroforestry. Livestock is also integrated into farms to support the ecosystems above the ground and in the soil.

This has been proven to raise agricultural productivity in ways that are economically viable, environmentally restorative, and socially uplifting. 

“The exhortation to pump soils with chemicals in order to grow more food pollutes the soil, makes farmers dependent on external inputs and exacerbates climate change,” says Dr Million Belay, the General Coordinator of AFSA. At the climate summit, the alliance is seeking to integrate agroecology in the climate policy spaces by engaging the African Group of Negotiators and working with youth and women to build resilience.

As Dr Susan Chomba, the director of Vital Landscapes for Africa at the World Resources Institute (WRI), believes Africa offers what she calls a “latecomer advantage,” the ability to transform its food systems without damage to nature by avoiding the excessive use of synthetic fertilizer and other inputs.

“Clearly the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is not going to be achieved by more industrialization,” says AFSA programme coordinator Bridget Mugambe.

Critics claim agroecology cannot “feed the world,” but Anne Maina, the national coordinator of the Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya (BIBA Kenya), rejects the assumption that industrial-scale commodity production feeds the hungry. “Agroecology feeds the world’s growing population, one community at a time. More diverse farms grow the foods best suited to their areas and communities, rather than the most grain for the global market.” 

Africa is at a stage when it is pulling in both directions. While Kenya’s and Senegal’s recent move to allow Genetically Modified Organisms, progress within these countries and elsewhere on the continent on the march to agroecology offers hope. Africa offers climate negotiators a range of successful models of adaptation based on agroecology.

Burkina Faso is one sparkle of light. "For us, agroecology is essential because it allows us to preserve soil fertility. This is why the ministry has undertaken to draw up a national strategy for the development of agroecology (2023-2027), with an action plan at a provisional cost of about 20 billion CFA francs," says Adama Sawadogo, national agroecology correspondent at the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Resources and Fisheries. 

The strategy aims to meet four major challenges: "systematically integrating agroecology into agricultural policies and strategies", "making agroecology a national priority for achieving sustainable food and nutrition security", "applying agroecological practices on a large scale throughout the country" and "establishing good governance of agroecology". 

Facilitating producers' access to organic fertilisers through subsidies, as it does for chemical fertilisers, and by setting up a green tax system to encourage agroecological entrepreneurship is one role governments can play.

 “All that is needed is strong relationships and collaboration among climate, food, and land actors to promote agroecology in national climate policy spaces,” says Muketoi Wamunyima of Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM) Zambia.

Mr Sigei, a senior training officer at the Media Council of Kenya and former Agriculture Editor at ‘Nation’, is a journalist with an interest in restorative agriculture and climate change adaptation. [email protected].