While an estimated 70% of the population of Southern Africa relies on agriculture for livelihoods as well as food and nutrition security, there are growing challenges, resulting from climate change and variability, which affect production. The situation is further worsened by the ill adapted production practices which cannot cushion farmers from the blow of the effects of climate change and variability, especially recurrent droughts.
The increasing impact of climate change and variability, particularly droughts and other production stressors, on agriculture has seen an estimated 41 million people facing various levels of food and nutrition insecurity and loss of livelihoods in Southern Africa. In order to address this, regional institutions are doubling up efforts get more farmers to adopt climate smart / Conservation Agriculture (CA).
In Zambia, FAO, the African Conservation Tillage Network (ACT) and the Ministry of Agriculture in the country, in collaboration with the Conservation Agriculture Regional Working Group (CARWG), working under the theme, “CA Now” held a Regional Conservation Agriculture Dialogue meeting. The three-day meeting took place bweteen 25th -27th September, 2019 at Neelkanth Sarovar Premiere Hotel, Lusaka, Zambia.
The Purpose of the meeting was to strengthen CA partnerships and develop a roadmap that will result in increased CA traction through alignment to Regional and National development frameworks. In his speech, the guest speaker, Hon. Micheal Z. J. Katambo, MP, Minister for Agriculture acknowledged that CA is a climate smart approach that offers a variety of resilient building benefits to farmers especially smallholder farmers. He further reiterated that through the 2014 Malobo Declaration, CA received political will and direction. This provided opportunities for huge investment to bring the desired transformation. However, we are not yet there, and that is why this meeting is critical to chat a way forward on how to have massive adoption of these technologies.
In a speech read on his behalf, the FAO Subregional Coordinator for Southern Africa (a.i), Alain Onibon, said it was clear that current productivity and production levels by smallholder farmers cannot be expected to meet food requirements nor can they make serious contribution to support the growth of an agro-based industrial sector in the Southern Africa.
“According to the Southern African Development Community (SADC), of the last four seasons - except for the 2016/17 season, the production of cereal staples in the region has been on the decline. The number of food and nutrition insure people oscillated between 26 million and 41.2 million from 2015 to 2019,” said Onibon.
The meeting aims to galvanize a multi-stakeholder transformation partnership to accelerate the uptake of tailored CA by smallholder famers in the region. This is part of the contribution to enhancing the Resilience of Livelihoods and Production Systems to Climate that is espoused by the 2014 African Heads of State Malabo Declaration which targets 25 million farmers on the continent by 2025. Read More
To access the presentations visit : https://tinyurl.com/y2w8bmk6