Water Scarcity Compounds India’s Food Insecurity

      A woman carries firewood in Gujarat on Aug. 6, 2012, as others rest under a tree after they migrated because of a water shortage. Reuters photo: Ahmad Masood

Since India’s independence, the mammoth task of feeding its hundreds of millions, most of whom are extremely poor, has been a major challenge to policymakers. In the coming decades, the issue of food insecurity is likely to affect almost all Indians. However, for the poorest amongst us, it could be catastrophic. India ranks 65 of 79 countries in the Global Hunger Index. This is extremely alarming.

In the past few years, uneven weather patterns combined with over exploited and depleting water resources in various parts of India have wreaked havoc on food security, particularly for small and marginal farmers, as well as the rural poor.

The recently launched Global Food Security Index (GFSI) estimates that in 2012, there are 224 million Indians, around 19 percent of the total population, who are undernourished. The same report also estimates that while the Indian government has various institutions designed to deal with the impact of inflation on food prices, it only spends 1 percent of agricultural GDP on research to build food security for the poorest. Overall, India ranked 66th on the GFSI. It is estimated that one in four of the world’s malnourished children is in India, more even than in sub-Saharan Africa.

Water insecurity, further exacerbated by climate change, is arguably the most important factor for India’s food security. India’s total water availability per capita is expected to decline to 1,240 cubic metres per person per year by 2030, perilously close to the 1,000 cubic metre benchmark set by the World Bank as ‘water scarce’.

Factors such as increasing usage, poor infrastructure, and pollution have led to a decline of water quantity and quality in India. Climate change, meanwhile, is expected to cause a two-fold impact.

One, increasing temperatures have hastened the rate of melt of the Himalayan glaciers, upon which major Indian rivers like the Ganges, Indus and Brahmaputra depend.

Second, the effect of climate change on monsoons in India will cause them to become more erratic, arriving earlier or later and lasting for shorter, more intense periods of time. India’s farming communities depend overwhelmingly on the monsoon, as their cropping patterns are built around it. The combined effect of climate change and over exploitation is violating the water cycle, degrading aquifers and  eroding ground water resources.

Over 50 percent of agricultural land in India depends entirely on groundwater. In North and Northeast India, where perennial rivers (rivers that have water year round, i.e. glacier fed rivers in India, such as the Ganges) sustain the agricultural land, have to deal with issues such as flooding caused by climate change impacts such as speedier glacier melt and erratic monsoons.

Meanwhile, farmers in states in West and South India, where rivers are seasonal, have to depend heavily on rapidly depleting groundwater resources.

The worst affected by this type of water-fuelled food insecurity are the small farmers of India. Estimates suggest that between 1995 and 2010, over 2,50,000 farmers in India, mostly from states like Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, killed themselves. Most of these farmers were drowning in vicious cycles of debt caused by failed monsoons and increasing droughts.

Responses to this crisis, including the National Action Plan on Climate Change, lay out various solutions and intended interventions, but most focus on the long term. To secure the future of India’s water resources vis-à-vis its agriculture in the future, it is important that certain steps be taken immediately. First and foremost, authorities will have to remove the mindset that water is an endless resource and the solution to water woes is simply a further development of India’s fast depleting groundwater.

Indeed, Dr. Mihir Shah, co-Founder, Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS) and member of the Planning Commission of India has stated that the ‘era of further water development may be over’ and emphasized that we have to urgently introduce more efficient water management. In this regard, promotion of irrigation efficiency will be crucial in the future.

Systems such as drip irrigation and System of Rice Intensification (SRI) to farmers across India will be essential. It will also be necessary to promote water conservation methods such as rain water harvesting, which has been successful in urban India, in villages as well.

At the same time, reducing inefficiencies and water wastage through conveyance losses will require governmental and NGO support in actions such as replacing faulty pipes and pumps.  Hence, India needs to invest on improving its water productivity, and any capacity to produce more food like rice with less water will be an important contribution to sustainable water and food security.

In short, India is facing a bleak future of becoming water scarce and painfully food insecure. How exactly are the country’s hundreds of millions, who depend entirely on agriculture for their livelihoods, as well as those that depend on agriculture for their food needs, to make ends meet?

Delaying this issue is simply not an option for India as this could lead to increased instability, poor human development and enhance inter-generational poverty. India needs to ensure food security through sustainable development and create resilience amongst the most vulnerable in the country: the poor.


reuters.com

Water, Water, Not Everywhere

Few people in the world are more water-conscious than California farmers.

The state leads the nation in farm revenue and produces nearly half of the domestic supply of fruits, nuts and vegetables. It also boasts nine of the top 10 producing counties in the nation, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

Yet California is one of the driest states in the U.S., getting an average of just 22 inches of precipitation annually compared with more than 40 inches for states like Missouri and New York. And, with nearly 40 million people, California is also the most populous state—meaning there's a lot of competition for that precious rain and snow.

How do the farmers make do with so little water? They use technology and the state's topography to stretch existing supplies as far as they can. "If you have limited water supplies, you have to be as careful and efficient as you can with it," says Larry Schwankl, an irrigation expert with the University of California Cooperative Extension.

The efficiencies start at the northern end of the Central Valley, the 400-mile corridor that's home to most of the state's farmland. There, farmers along the Sacramento River use a system called flow-through, which means that the water they take but don't use flows back into the river by a network of valves and drains.

As water flows to the driest southern reaches of the valley via the California Aqueduct, many farmers use drip irrigation, microsprinklers and extensively plumbed groundwater caverns—filled with runoff from the Sierra Nevada—to maximize their water usage.

Daniel Errotabere, for instance, says his 5,200-acre farm's conversion to drip irrigation over the past five years has helped yield water savings as high as 50%—helping to cushion the blow during the most recent drought. "You can't deliver water much more efficiently than what we are doing today," Mr. Errotabere said on a recent tour of the farm near Riverdale, Calif.

The accompanying images outline how irrigation and water conservation work in California's Central valley.

By JIM CARLTON@The Wall Street Journal

Somaliland: Drought Leaves Nothing Untouched

The village elders are quick to tell me that Boodhlay, the name of this village, means dusty. A quick glance around shows that this name is very apt indeed.

There is hardly any vegetation here at all. No grass, just pockets of dry scrub, spiky acacia trees and dust as far as the eye can see. Unusually for this part of Somaliland, I can't see a single camel.

Almost everyone in the village is a pastoralist. This means that they are largely reliant on their herds of camels, goats and sheep to provide food, milk and income for their families. When there is not enough rain, the pasture soon disappears and people are forced to move in search of food and water for their animals.

"It is affecting every aspect of life"

Yusuf, one of the village elders tells me: "There have been droughts here for a long time now. The situation is very difficult. It is affecting the food and water supply, our incomes and the children's education. It is affecting every aspect of life."

When the drought came last year many people lost animals. In a place where your livestock are your livelihood, some families lost everything.

Recently, the humanitarian situation in Somaliland has modestly improved. The rainy season – known in the region as the Gu rains – was not as meagre as predicted this year. But there are many pockets of land, like Boodhlay, where the rains have been both late and insufficient. In these areas pasture remains extremely limited and water – both for livestock and human consumption – is scarce.

As Yusuf told me: "People think that because we have had some rains recently everything is OK. But they are wrong. Ten days ago it rained for two days. We've had nothing since. These two days of rain will not fix things. It takes a long time to recover. Nothing has changed."

Our response

Unless assistance is provided, these factors could lead to destitution for many of the pastoral communities that call eastern Somaliland home. We're calling for urgent funding to contribute towards sustainable early recovery in these areas.

We have also have launched an emergency intervention to address the lack of water in villages where we are already working, such as Boodhlay.

The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) component of our response is already underway, and we're aiming to provide immediate access to safe water for more than 7,000 families. This is being achieved via emergency water trucking, the restoration of water sources (berkads), or a combination of both.

In total we're targeting 21 villages in eastern Somaliland. To date, we've reached 13,557 people, including 6,110 children in the area through our WASH intervention.

somalilandsun.com

In response to 2011's famine in parts of southern Somalia, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) more than doubled its support to Somali farmers, especially in the cereal producing parts in the country's south.

To restore the crop production capacity, FAO distributed appropriate agricultural inputs (cereal seeds and fertilizers) and provided technical assistance in conservation agriculture. In the cropping season that followed 2011's famine declaration, FAO procured and distributed 3750 tons of Urea and 1300 tons of DAP fertilizer to Somali farmers. Other farm inputs included 135 tonnes of maize seeds, 935 tonnes of sorghum seeds and 120 tonnes of sesame seeds.

Distribution of these inputs is aimed at restoring the productive capacity (and improving food security) of some 150, 000 farming households (equivalent to 900 000 people) in Somalia.

However, 2012 has seen the introduction of tractor hours per beneficiary, through which farmers access tractors to cultivate their land resulted in cultivation of over 1,533hectares of land. Through a creating irrigation scheme, farmers pay money to access water pumps to irrigate their fields. As a result, some 8496 hectares has been irrigated to date.

FAO's agricultural activitiesEuropean Commission, United Kingdom, United States, Australia Aid, The World Bank Belgium, Spain and Italy.

Does Your Gas Tank Hold Enough Food To Feed 22 People?

Here's a little math problem for you: How many calories go into the ethanol that's in your tank of gas?

Enough to feed 22 people, if you're talking the bare minimum calories needed in a single day, according to researchers at theNew England Complex Sciences Institute.

Their calculation, published today, is based on all the corn-based ethanol that's sloshing around in most U.S. gas tanks; it's really just grain alcohol — a quaff familiar to many college students.Most of the gas sold at the pump contains about 10 percent ethanol. You would never eat the ethanol once it's blended into gasoline, of course. But a lot of corn goes into making ethanol, and the researchers recently crunched the numbers on that corn's food energy value, which you can see in the graphic below.

Source: Yaneer Bar-Yam, NECSI

Credit: Stephanie d'Otreppe, NPR

The researchers detail their facts and figures here. A few caveats: The corn used to make ethanol doesn't all get turned into fuel. About a third of it comes back out of the ethanol factory as distiller's grains, which are then used to feed animals.

So some of those corn calories still end up in your steak, not your car. And if that corn weren't used to make ethanol, it wouldprobably go into animal bellies (and, only indirectly, into human ones). Only a relatively small percentage of field corn gets processed into foods — from corn meal to sweeteners; the majority becomes animal feed or ethanol.

Still, the bigger question here — whether so much food should be burned up as fuel — is getting asked a lot these days. This year, ethanol could consume as much as 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop. But with the worst drought in more than 50 years leading to soaring corn prices, many people are calling on the U.S. to rethink its mandate requiring refineries to make a minimum amount of ethanol — 13 billion gallons this year — and blend it into gas.

The EPA is currently accepting public comments on whether to waive the ethanol mandate for next year. By law, a decision is due by Nov. 13. Farmers blame the mandate for driving up the price of livestock feed (some have resorted to feeding their cattle candyas a cheaper alternative).

That's why several governors and members of Congress haveasked the EPA to lower or suspend the Renewable Fuel Standard requirements for next year.

But the researchers at NESCI say there's an even more pressing reason to consider dropping the ethanol mandate than hungry cattle: the risk of hungry, rioting people.

For Americans, higher corn prices will likely translate into higher meat prices at the grocery store next year. But it's the world's poor who really feel the impact. A growing number of studies have blamed the ethanol mandate in the U.S. — by far the world'slargest corn exporter — for pushing up food prices around the world.

And as we told you earlier this week, mathematical modeling by NECSI researchers shows a strong link between high food prices and social unrest in places sensitive to price swings — so strong that it may be predictive of when riots are more likely to break out. That model found that the conversion of corn to ethanol isone of the key factors pushing food prices higher.

"What happens here ... is driving the global food crisis," Yaneer Bar-Yam of the New England Complex Sciences Institute tells The Salt. "We've put into place policies that affect food in a very large way."

But corn math can get complicated, and freezing or easing the ethanol mandate may not help as much as its critics hope. Apaper by economists at Purdue University recently looked at several different possible scenarios. Their conclusion? Changing the ethanol mandate could make a big dent in corn prices next year — or not. The folks at WONKBLOG do a good job ofbreaking down the findings. As they succinctly put it, "there's no simple solution here."

By MARIA GODOY@npr.org

Florida Governor Says State Needs More Water From Georgia

Empty shells outweigh live oysters at some oyster bars in Apalachicola Bay. Predators that are getting into the bay due to higher salinity levels are part of the problem, but a lack of nutrients flowing in from the Apalachicola River is also inhibiting the growth and regeneration of the oyster bars

Florida's oyster industry appears near collapse and needs help to survive, including getting more fresh water into Apalachicola Bay from Georgia, Gov. Rick Scott said Wednesday in pledging to try to help.

Scott said the crisis affecting the Gulf Coast shows that federal officials need to adjust how much water is flowing downstream, a dispute that has triggered years of lawsuits among Florida, Georgia and Alabama. Oysters require a mix of fresh and salt water to survive. Drought is contributing to the problem according to state agriculture officials.

In jeopardy in the immediate future are as many as 2,500 jobs in Franklin County in the Florida Panhandle that are either directly or indirectly impacted by the oyster industry. The outlook for any type of commercial harvest this year is bleak – and residents are in dire need of help with food, rent and light bills.

"What's out there right now is dead," said Cody Brannen, a 25-year-old oystermen, who showed up at the local fire station where Scott was meeting with county residents and helping hand out food.

Brannen said he has turned to construction lately and that he is "barely making it." For many others, all they know is harvesting oysters, he said.

During his visit, Scott heard lots of suggestions on what could be done to help those in the industry.

Officials suspect drought is a contributing factor. Others may be higher temperatures and overfishing due to pressure from closures of oyster harvesting areas in nearby states. Millender and Brannen also wonder if dispersants used to clean up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 are to blame as well.

Florida officials said that during last year's harvesting season. nearly 2.4 million pounds of oyster meat came out of Apalachicola Bay. This year state officials say it is unlikely commercial harvesting levels can be sustained.

After meeting with residents, Scott promised to look into suggestions for additional dredging in the bay, a multi-million dollar project to spread shells on the floor to help re-seed the oyster beds and even filling in a channel to help keep fresh water in the bay.

"They don't want to come here and get a hand-out," said Shannon Hartsfield, president of the Franklin County Seafood Workers Association. "They want to earn a living."

The governor has already asked for federal disaster assistance to aid those in the seafood industry, but three weeks after he sent in the request to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the state has yet to get a response.

Scott called the lack of a response so far "disappointing." Agency spokesman Ciaran Clayton said the federal government is still conducting a "preliminary assessment."

Bruce Millender, who runs Seaquest Seafood, said the availability of oysters was the worst he had seen since back in the mid-'80s when hurricanes hit the area and wiped out oyster beds.

Kim Bodine, executive director of the Gulf Coast Workforce Board, said that there has been more than $100,000 worth of emergency assistance requested from area residents struggling to pay rent and utility bills. On Wednesday, a truck with 42,000 pounds of food arrived.

Scott, however, said one long-term solution is for Florida to get the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to release additional water from Lake Lanier, a federal reservoir in Georgia that is a major supply of drinking water for the metro Atlanta area.

Scott said he talked to federal officials and was told they have no plans to increase water flowing south. He said that the state may need to turn to Congress for help.

"It's going to be incumbent on all of us to call on the Corps of Engineers to do the right thing and make sure we get more water flow here," Scott said.

Florida has battled for years over the amount of water coming downstream from Georgia. But this summer the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene in the latest round of litigation which left stand a ruling favorable to metro Atlanta.

The Chattahoochee flows south from Atlanta, forming part of the border between Alabama and Georgia. It merges with the Flint River at the Florida state line and becomes the Apalachicola River, which cuts south across the Florida Panhandle and empties into the Gulf of Mexico.

By GARY FINEOUT@huffingtonpost.com/politics

Fish farming in Kiambu, Kenya

Now, as Mary Wambui ponders her next move, here in Kiambu women are seeking a revolution of sorts with the coming of a new constitution. The county is not known to vote women into political office. But something may be about to change, take a look at we found.

Ocean Acidification Threatens Food Security

Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines, Iran, and China are among the top 50 nations whose food security may be threatened by the effects that the rise of manmade carbon-dioxide (CO2) gas emissions are already starting to have on fish and shellfish, according to a new report by Oceana, an international ocean conservation organization.

While global warming is expected to affect the food supply of many nations by increasing drought, heat waves and torrential downpours, this report focuses on countries that depend heavily on the oceans for sustenance.

“Fish and seafood are an important source of protein for a billion of the poorest people on Earth,” said Matthew Huelsenbeck, a marine scientist with Oceana, “and about three billion people get 15 percent or more of their annual protein from the sea.”

In order to assess which countries are at greatest risk, Huelsenbeck and his colleagues looked at two entirely different effects of CO2 on the oceans: the warming caused when carbon dioxide traps extra heat from the Sun, and the rise in the acidity of seawater as it absorbs some human CO2 emissions to form carbonic acid.

Increased acidity makes it harder for shell-forming organisms, such as clams, oysters, and corals, to build their shells. That in turn affects people who depend on these sea creatures for food, or who eat the fish that depend on coral reefs for their habitat.

Rising temperatures, meanwhile, have forced some fish to migrate away from their normal territory. “Some fish just don’t like it too hot,” Huelsenbeck said. A recent NOAA study, for example, found that Atlantic cod populations in the Gulf of Maine are shifting northeastward in response to rising ocean temperatures. In fact, the waters off the coast of New England were the warmest on record this year. Fish migration may not be a big problem for countries with modern fishing fleets, such as the U.S., but poorer nations with more local fishing fleets can’t simply follow their food supplies as they swim away.

The disparity in resources between rich and poor countries, combined with projections of population growth through 2050 and the percentage of the population that’s undernourished, were the main factors that went into the national rankings, under the heading: “Lack of Adaptive Capacity.” Another main factor was “Exposure,” meaning the vulnerability of nearby seafood supplies to both warming and acidification. The final factor in the rankings was “Dependence” — the degree to which each country relies on protein from the sea in its mix of food sources.

Put all of these factors together, and the most endangered country in terms of marine food security turns out be the Maldives, the low-lying island nation in the Indian Ocean that’s already under imminent threat from rising seas. Pakistan, at number eight on the list, is the worst-off of major countries, followed at number 10 by Thailand. Iran occupies the 27th spot, the Phillipines are ranked 34th, followed by China at number 35. Peru and South Africa also are ranked among the top 50 countries lacking adaptive capacity.

While it’s possible to deal with some aspects of climate change through adaptation — building sea walls to keep out the rising ocean, for example, or irrigating crops affected by drought — there’s really no way to de-acidify the ocean once it’s undergone that chemical change.

Even the wildly ambitious geoengineering schemes that propose to cool off the planet by reflecting extra sunlight back into space would do nothing to keep seawater from growing progressively more acidic. “Reducing emissions,” Huelsenbeck said, “is the only way to prevent it.”

The report urges governments to “establish energy plans that chart a course for shifting away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy production” and to end fossil-fuel subsidies — but environmentalists have been saying pretty much the same thing for years, with little effect.

The authors also urge a reduction in overfishing and other destructive fishing practices. They call for the establishment of marine protected areas where fishing is banned entirely and pollution is cut back dramatically, to give marine populations at least a fighting chance of staying somewhat healthy. And they urge fisheries managers to take climate change and ocean acidification into account when putting together fishing regulations and policies.

These suggestions are ambitious as well, but they may be a more realistic bet — for the moment, at least — for keeping the nations at greatest risk from losing some of their crucial supply of nourishment from the sea.

By Michael D. Lemonick@climatecentral.org

Little Consolation for Central Java's Rain-Starved Farmers

A villager traversing a dry dam that came about as a result of a long drought period in the Bojonegoro district of Indonesia's East Java province earlier this month. Asia's channelling of 82 percent of its water for food production is not the only startling statistic. Consider another astonishing figure: almost 74 percent of the total global fresh water used for agriculture is in Asia alone.

The rain hasn’t fallen here in three months,” says Sofyan Ansori, sweeping his arm over a vast expanse of dried-out rice fields. 

“The irrigation canals have been dry for almost as long, and the rice crops aren’t getting enough water. Even the rivers have gone dry.” 

Sofyan, the head of Tabah Terunjam village in Central Bengkulu district, says the crop is already two months old and just a few weeks away from harvest. 

But that won’t happen this year. 

“The drought has killed nearly the entire crop, so most of the farmers have just abandoned their fields,” he says. 

Forty-five hectares of rice paddies across the village have been destroyed by the long dry season. A few patches continue to grow, but will yield a negligible amount of the grain — assuming the rains begin sometime in the next few days, Sofyan points out. 

Nasron, a farmer, has already begun clearing the dead rice stalks from his fields in preparation for sowing a new crop with the advent of the rainy season. 

“There would be no point in planting anything now because there’s still no water in the irrigation canal,” he says. 

The district agriculture office has promised to give the farmers free seed crop to plant once the rains begin, and is currently gauging their losses to determine how much to distribute to each farmer. 

The offer is small consolation for the farmers in Tabah Terunjam, whose livelihoods depend on a successful harvest. 

But they are not the only ones affected by the unusually intense dry season this year. Farmers all over the country have seen their crops die before they can be harvested, as the aquifers and rivers feeding the irrigation canals run dry amid the lack of rain. 

In Sragen, Central Java, officials are calling on the central government to seed rain clouds to prevent the failure of at least 405 hectares of rice paddies. 

“We hope that the plan to induce artificial rain to fill up the empty reservoirs will be done soon because this is currently a crucial stage for the rice, which is 70 to 80 days old,” says Budiharjo, the head of the district agriculture office. 

“At this stage the crops need a lot of water, but there’s virtually no supply.” 

He warns that without any rains in the next two weeks, the amount of failed farmland in the area will expand rapidly. 

In neighboring Sukoharjo district, farmers are urging the company managing water supplies from the Bengawan Solo River not to cut off supplies for their irrigation network. 

Subari, one of the farmers calling on the district legislature to support their cause, says the water company is planning to shut down the water supply next month because of the dwindling water level in the river. 

He says that in Sukoharjo’s Weru subdistrict alone, 907 hectares of rice crop are dependent on the irrigation network. Some fields have already failed because of the decreasing amount of water. 

“Sixty hectares of rice paddies there have failed,” Subari says. 

The situation has become so dire that some farmers have taken extreme measures to highlight their plight. On Tuesday, farmers in Weru held three river water management officials hostage for two hours to demand answers on why their area was not getting any water. 

“We just want clarity on the issue,” said Sugeng Darmawan, the head of the local farmers’ association. 

“Will Weru get any water, yes or no? The farmers are really worked up about this because they stand to lose their crops if there’s still no water.” 

The standoff was resolved after district legislators got the water company to promise to increase their supply to the farmers from the Colo Barat Dam. 

However, the solution may be too little, too late. The company said it could only provide water at a rate of 5 cubic meters per second, less than the 7 cubic meters per second that the farmers wanted. 

In addition, the supply will only be available until the end of the month, after which it will be throttled down again. 


thejakartaglobe.com

How Will Climate Change Affect Food Production?

Food is one of society's key sensitivities to climate. A year of not enough or too much rainfall, a hot spell or cold snap at the wrong time, or extremes, like flooding and storms, can have a significant effect on local crop yields and livestock production. While modern farming technologies and techniques have helped to reduce this vulnerability and boost production, the impact of recent droughts in the USA, China and Russiaon global cereal production highlight a glaring potential future vulnerability.

There is some evidence that climate change is already having a measurable affect on the quality and quantity of food produced globally. But this is small when compared with the significant increase in global food production that has been achieved over the past few decades. Isolating the influence of climatic change from all the other trends is difficult, but one recent Stanford University study found that increases in global production of maize and wheat since 1980 would have been about 5% higher were it not for climate change.

All else being equal, rising carbon dioxide concentrations – the main driver of climate change – could increase production of some crops, such as rice, soybean and wheat. However, the changing climate would affect the length and quality of the growing season and farmers could experience increasing damage to their crops, caused by a rising intensity of droughts, flooding or fires.

The latest IPCC report predicted improving conditions for food production in the mid to high latitudes over the next few decades, including in the northern USA, Canada, northern Europe and Russia. Conversely, parts of the subtropics, such as the Mediterranean region and parts of Australia, and the low latitudes, could experience declining conditions. For example, across Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could decline by as much as 50% by 2020. Beyond this, if global temperatures rise by more than about 1–3°C, declining conditions could be experienced over a much larger area.

The future course of global food production will depend on how well societies can adapt to such climatic changes, as well as the influence of other pressures, such as the competition for land from biofuel production. The IPCC concluded that in the poorer, low-latitude countries, climate change could seriously challenge the capacity to adapt for a warming of more than 3°C. The richer, higher latitude countries are likely to have a greater capacity to adapt and exploit changing climatic conditions.

But we can't ignore the potential for "surprises" down the line. There are many uncertainties in such predictions. The world has not seen such changes in climate for millennia, and so it is impossible to know how our agricultural systems will react in the real world. For example, the complex interlinkages with the impacts of climate change on pests, diseases and pollinators, like bees, are largely unknown. Also, climate models have difficulty in accurately predicting the detailed local environmental changes that are important for food production, particularly weather extremes.

A looming vulnerability is the world's fisheries, which provide an important source of protein for at least half the world's population. Fisheries are already stressed by overexploitation and pollution. Warming surface waters in the oceans, rivers and lakes, as well as sea level rise and melting ice, will adversely affect many fish species. Some marine fish species are already adapting by migrating to the high latitudes, but others, such as Arctic and freshwater species, have nowhere to go. The absorption of carbon dioxide emissions by the oceans also has a direct impact on marine ecosystems through ocean acidification.

But what does this mean for food security – the price and availability of food for the world's seven billion people? A 2011 Foresight reportconcluded that climate change is a relatively small factor here, at least in the short term, when compared with the rapid increases in global food demand expected in the next decade. On current projections, by 2050 there will be between one and three billion additional mouths to feed. As people become wealthier, they also demand more food and disproportionally more meat, which requires far more land and water resources per calorie consumed. When these factors are combined, it points toward a future of increasing and more volatile food prices.

As was seen during the 2007–08 food price spikes, the poorest countries and communities will be hit first and hardest. The Foresight reportconcluded that international policy has an important role to play here – today, despite plentiful supplies of food globally, almost one billion people are undernourished.

Finally, food production itself is a significant emitter of greenhouse gases, as well as a cause of environmental degradation in many parts of the world. Agriculture contributes about 15% of all emissions, on a par with transport. When land conversion and the wider food system are taken into account the total contribution of food may be as high as 30%. This means that to limit the long-run impacts of climate change, food production must become not only more resilient to climate but also more sustainable and low-carbon itself.

By Nicola Ranger of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment 

Changing Rainfall Boosts Number of Ethiopians in Need of Food Aid

                                                   In this 2009 file photo, Ethiopian farmers collect wheat in their field in Abay, north of Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa

Millions of Ethiopians face severe food shortages as a result of the failure of crucial seasonal rains, a problem increasingly linked to climate change.

The Ethiopian government announced last month that 3.7 million of its citizens will require humanitarian assistance between August and December of this year, up from 3.2 million in January. The 16 percent increase follows the failure of the Belg rains, which normally fall between February and May and are essential to the country’s secondary harvest.

The lack of rainfall is being blamed on climate change, with experts saying it is leading to erratic rain patterns and disruption to normal seasonal changes.

Mohamed Ahmed, a farmer in his early 40s, is one of the millions dealing with the consequences of the rainfall changes. He feeds his family of seven by farming a one-hectare (2.5 acre) plot inherited from his father in the village of Doba in the east of the country, 325 km (203 miles) from the capital, Addis Ababa.

But Ahmed’s land has declined in productivity over the past two decades, even as the size of his family has grown.

“Last season (Belg) I (could) barely sow,” the farmer said grimly. “The rain came almost a month later than the usual time. It is sometimes heavy and sometimes light. The yield is not impressive at all.”

Agriculture is the backbone of the Ethiopian economy, employing 62 million people (about three-quarters of the population), ensuring more than 85 percent of the country’s export earnings and contributing 43 percent of GDP, official figures show.

Most parts of Ethiopia have two rainy seasons and one dry period. Long heavy rains from mid-June to mid-September, known as kiremt, enable the main crop growing season, Mehir, which leads to a harvest from October to January.

The shorter and more moderate Belg rains are important for short-cycle crops such as wheat, barley, teff, and pulses, which are harvested in June or July, and for long-cycle cereals such as corn, sorghum and millet.

FARMING MORE LAND

Faced with deepening food insecurity and poverty as a consequence of changing weather conditions, the government has responded by trying to boost agricultural production.

Ethiopia harvested more than 218 million quintals of crops in the most recentMehir season, surpassing the previous season’s production by 13 million quintals and beating government targets by 3 million quintals, according to the government’s Central Statistical Authority. Produce from smallholder farms grew by 7.4 percent compared to the same season last year.  

The increases are due to additional land being put under cultivation, following large-scale resettlement programmes by the government, aimed at relocating farmers to more productive land. The government has not yet produced an official tally of number of people resettled, but unofficial figures give the total as more than 1.5 million over the past five years.  

More than 12.8 million hectares (31.6 million acres) of land are now under cultivation in Ethiopia, almost one million hectares (2.5 million acres) or 8 percent more than in the last Mehir season.

Despite the increased yields, production is still less than 90 percent of the amount required to provide sufficient nutrition to all the population, according to a report issued last year by the Ethiopian Economic Association, a nongovernmental organisation.

Throughout the country, prices for staple foods remain relatively high, and with inflation hovering around 20 percent in July, they are not expected to decrease before the next harvest enters the market, experts say.

The failure of the Belg crop is raising fears of a humanitarian crisis among organisations working to provide drought relief in the country.

In July, the World Food Programme (WHP) forecast a significant drop in long-cycle Mehir crops such as maize and sorghum in many lowland and mid-altitude areas of Ethiopia during the next harvest season, following below-average Belg rainfall. The majority of crops produced in Ethiopia are categorized as long-cycle crops, needing at least six months to grow.

In a speech last month, Abdou Dieng, the WFP’s humanitarian food coordinator in Ethiopia, said that the lateness and weakness of the Belg rains had taken a toll on agricultural production in areas of the central highlands, particularly in the regional states of Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region, central Oromiya, and eastern Amhara.

Pastoralist areas also have been hard hit and “vulnerability remains high due to the lingering impact of last year’s drought emergency,” Dieng said.

Somali and Oromiya are the regional states most affected by food shortages, together accounting for two-thirds of those seeking relief assistance.

While the Belg harvest accounts for no more than 10 percent of the country’s total annual grain production, it may provide up to 50 percent of the yearly food supply in some highland areas, such as Wollo and Shewa regions, experts say.

PASTORALISTS AFFECTED

The Belg rains are also the main annual rains for the pastoral and agro-pastoral areas of southern and south-eastern Ethiopia, where they supply critical pasture and water for livestock. Even in regions where the rains do not irrigate an extra harvest, they are still crucial for seed-bed preparation for Mehir crops.

The failure of the Belg crop ironically comes at a time of strong economic growth for Ethiopia. Speaking at a national workshop for disaster reduction last year, the state minister of agriculture, Sileshi Getahun, cautioned that the country’s growth rate of 11 percent for the past seven years was vulnerable to changes in the climate.

“While we are proud of this achievement and realize the benefits, we are also aware of how much natural disasters can hinder growth,” Getahun said. “These disasters are becoming more regular and pronounced in terms of frequency, intensity, and coverage due to climate change.”

By Pawlos Belete@trust.org/alertnet

A Tree Grows in the Sahel

Fighting back the desert with the zai holes of Yacouba Sawadogo

Around 1980, Yacouba Sawadogo, a farmer in the parched Yatenga region of Burkina Faso, started experimenting with the ancient local tradition of “zai holes” or planting pits, as a way of restoring limited fertility to utterly degraded land. He increased their dimensions to about 10 inches wide and 8 inches deep and stuffed them full of organic fertilizer such as manure and crop residues.

The manure attracted termites, which dug tunnels that helped break up the soil, allowing rainfall to flow through the ground and collect in the zai basin. The result, according to researchers who have studied the spread of zai hole planting practices throughout the region, has been extraordinary. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of semi-arid land that could no longer be cultivated have been restored to productive use.

Sawadogo’s initial plan was to reclaim land for sorghum cultivation. But he discovered that tree seeds tended to end up germinating in the zai holes, and over time, he and other Burkina Faso farmers have begun a slow but steady process of successful reforestation.

The practice has spread throughout the Sahel region of West Africa, helped along by the Association for the Promotion of Zai, founded by Sawadogo, and development NGOs that support “farmer managed natural regeneration” agricultural methods. At a symposium in Nigerlast week sponsored by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Chris Reij, a Dutch expert in West Africa who has spent the last 25 years working in the region, presented the results of astonishing levels of reforestation in Niger: Some 3 million hectares of “degraded semi-arid land in Niger have been rehabilitated by farmers on their own initiative.” (Thanks to SciDev.Net for the tip.) Farmers have been digging zai holes to puncture through the desert crust, planting trees, and bit by bit, reclaiming land once considered lost for good. Continue>>>

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