Posted on August, 30, 2022 at 07:35 am
NEIGHBOURING Zambia has adopted climate smart agriculture (CSA) in its quest to contribute to the country and the continent’s quest to be food secure through the use of drought resistant “tree” seed amid unprecedented climatic change effects and the COVID-19.
The southern African state has in recent years been the regional food basket after many suffered poor yields heightened by drought, floods and other natural calamities.
Despite the country recording to a 25% deficit last season, climate smart agriculture would reverse all loses and bolster food output.
Arguably, CSA, an integrated approach to managing landscapes — cropland, livestock, forests and fisheries — operates on four dimensions-food security: availability, access, stability, and utilisation. It seeks to address the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change.
The recent shortcomings in agriculture output on maize, soya beans and other cash crops spurred by climatic change has helped farmers look beyond rain-fed agricultural practices and adopting the new concept would help sustain crop and food production.
Despite subsidising farmers through providing fertiliser and seed to farmers, it has not helped increase food production, hence the need to adopt smarter ways of farming.
We need to change the scope of farmer input support programmes to general agriculture support programmes.
Besides using both organic and inorganic methods to produce variety of food, adopting CSA is a more sustainable way as some tree types or crops are resistant and are able to keep moisture, with the seed being able to be kept for a long time before being planted in future.
Africa should innovate to become food self-sufficient. Zambia is desirous and well-placed to take the first step and weather the global food crisis worsened by the war in Ukraine through a “home grown” food production agenda to defray costs and fight poverty.
The increasing devastating effect of food insecurity in all regions of the African continent are worrisome, but we should be ready to face the challenge in ensuring the continent’s food security. – Afrikan Farmer
Source: News Day