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OCHIENG’
OGOBO
Nairobi, September 5, 2009 – The stresses of climate-induced crop
failures could be avoided if more small farmers in Africa also raised
livestock, say researchers. Climate change will result in a 10–20 per
cent drop in yield for crops such as beans, maize and millet in Africa’s
drylands by 2050, researchers from the Kenya-based International
Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the United Kingdom’s Waen
Associates found.
“We [looked] specifically at the areas of Africa where the rainfall is
currently just about enough to grow some crops — although with low and
variable yields — and where the rainfall changes to 2050 may limit this
crop production even further,” Philip Thornton, an ILRI scientist and
one of the co-authors, told SciDev.Net.
“In such areas — where rainfall will still be enough for some pasture
production — including more livestock in the system may be one way in
which households can cope,” he says.
The study focused on arid and semi-arid regions where scant rainfall is
already causing crops to fail in one out of every six growing seasons.
They found that from 500,000 to one million square kilometers of
farmland in these areas will be incapable of supporting even subsistence
for food crops by 2050. Carlos Seré, director-general of ILRI, told
SciDev.Net that communities should prepare for the inevitability of
adding livestock to their farms.
The researchers warn that the change to livestock farming must be done
sustainably, for example by limiting the number of livestock in an area
during dry conditions so the pasture can recover quickly when rains
come.
Mario Herrero, ILRI’s systems analyst, acknowledges that an increase in
livestock would increase greenhouse gas emissions but says the impact
from the alternative — of herders migrating and cutting down forest to
grow crops — could be worse.
“We have to consider the increased emissions in terms of trade-offs in
the number of livelihoods protected,” he says.
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