After years of failing to produce enough maize to feed his family, lifelong farmer John Oboum had completely given up growing crops on his one-hectare plot of land in Kenya’s Nyando Basin. Droughts were becoming more frequent and his situation was dire. Recalling that time, he says “We would go to bed hungry most days and the situation would be worse when there was drought. It was useless to farm, as crops would fail.”
Today, Mr. Oboum’s farm is an example to his community and he makes enough extra income to send his children to school, in addition to providing them with healthy meals. The turning point was the arrival of the Climate-Smart Village program in 2013, where he learned about crops that could survive the now-arid conditions of his hometown after climate change. Now, instead of growing just maize (a farming technique known as monocropping), he produces legumes, fruits, and vegetables, and owns chicken, sheep, and goats, all on the same one-hectare plot. Mr. Oboum’s farm is an example of agricultural intensification, producing more food than before in the same space, made possible by planting varietals of crops and raising specific animals, which thrive in the new climactic conditions of the Nyando Basin.
The Climate-Smart Village program is a collaboration between the Consortium of International Agriculture Research Centers (CGIAR), Future Earth, and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). The goal is to build farmers’ resilience to climate change and help them manage risks, by providing them knowledge about which types of plants and animals fit best with new climatic conditions. For example, many farmers in Mr. Oboum’s village own traditional breeds of sheep, but the Red Maasai sheep, which Mr. Oboum now owns, is better suited to heat and internal parasites, two problems which cause other farmers to lose livestock. With access to CGIAR’s research findings about the best types of crops and animals for a changing climate, many more farmers could benefit the way Mr. Oboum has.
While at COP23, I heard a story from Dr. Felix Diesner, an employee of International Climate Initiative. He said that his organization identified a community of farmers in Columbia, whose potato crops were failing because of warmer soil. In order to help them adapt, his team of researchers conducted studies on hybrid potato species, which they presented to the farmers. But by that time, the farmers had already come up with their own solution: growing strawberries instead. Sometimes, the best adaptation is to completely diversify the crops grown in a certain area. That way, if one fails, there will still be additional sources of food and income.
Changing, diversifying, and intensifying the types of crops one grows based on new environmental conditions can help increase smallholders’ income and resilience. However, farmers often don’t have the resources to come across effective solutions on their own. The UNFCCC needs to immediately allocate more funding to research and teaching programs like Climate-Smart Villages. With research, there is potential to increase farmers’ output beyond even the levels before drought and warming. Farmers should be involved in the whole process, as evidenced by the Columbian farmers’ strawberry discovery, because they are more likely to quickly adopt new plant and animal species that they are familiar with. With additional funding to expand agricultural research and disseminate the findings, farmers like Mr. Oboum around the world can improve their lives.
Cover image: John Oboum and his daughter picking fruit from one of the new varieties of crops he has planted.
Cover image source: CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)
Meggie Stewart 