Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change in Africa

Intensive Agriculture as Climate Change Adaptation? Economic and Environmental Tradeoffs in Securing Rural Livelihoods in Tanzanian River Basins

“…Interviews were conducted in the Great Ruaha Basin shortly after the 2015-16 drought prompted by El Niño adversely affected this area but covered a longer period since the beginning of irrigation at the case study in 1998 to understand whether these strategies enabled smallholders to withstand droughts. The findings are to a significant extent consistent with the outcomes of the literature review: climate impact on natural resources and food production has been worsening in Tanzania (e.g., Lema and Majule, 2009;Arndt et al, 2012b;Warner and Afifi, 2014;Komba and Muchapondwa, 2015;Komba and Muchapondwa, 2018). Farmers indicated that the drought that year was more intense than in the past, with decreased rainfall starting later and ceasing earlier than usual.…”

“…Encroaching on wetlands to cope with water stress has been prevalent, depleting water resources and degrading ecologically rich river basins (Kikula, et al, 1996;Paavola, 2008;Kangalawe and Lyimo, 2013;Munishi and Jewitt, 2019). To fight water stress and increased land infertility, farmers switched to hybrid seeds and intensified fertilizer use, but harvest losses remained as high as 50 percent during dry spells (AATF African Agriculture Technology Foundation and COSTECH Tanzania Commission for Science and Techology, 2010; Shikuku et al, 2017;Komba and Muchapondwa, 2018). Government officials and extension agents lacked the budget and skills to improve land use management (Shemdoe et al, 2015;Pardoe et al, 2018) and passed on short-term solutions that did not foster long-term adaptation (England et al, 2018).…”

“…Some studies explored their reproductive qualities, stress tolerance, and input dependence under diverse environments (Li et al, 2013;Assefa et al, 2015;Abberton et al, 2016;Ma et al, 2016). Others found that African farmers extensively adopted them to combat extreme droughts (Howden et al, 2007;Mengistu, 2011;Li et al, 2015;Elum et al, 2017;Komba and Muchapondwa, 2018). Still, their costs and whether the low-income farmers most vulnerable to climate stress can afford them are under-researched.…”

Climate-resilient horticulture forsustainable county development in Kenya

“…According to the World Bank Climate Country Adaptation Profiles (climate knowledge portal https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org), projections under the worst-case scenario (RCP 8.5 1 ) show that temperature is projected to increase by 1-2.8°C by 2060, with the western regions of Kenya experiencing the greatest warming. The reliance on rain-fed agriculture is a major risk to the agricultural sector of climate change, which is expected to affect food security and increase poverty levels (Kabubo- Mariara, 2015;Kabubo-Mariara and Kabara, 2018).…”

“…Most studies on the potential threats of climate change to the agricultural sector in Kenya (Herrero et al, 2010;Bryan et al, 2013;Kabubo-Mariara and Kabara, 2018) take a broad approach to understanding the effect of climate on the sector, offering a general view of the effects and potential adaptation and mitigation measures with only limited analysis of the specifics of the different subsectors. The threats of climate change affect both productivity and profitability of the sector, limiting their growth and sustainable development (Abewoye, 2018).…”