Justus Lyatuu
10 November 2009
Maize and beans, East Africa's most traded and consumed commodities, are being threatened by climate changes.
A new study published in the peer-review journal on Agricultural Systems, projects that climate change will have highly variable impacts on East Africa's vital maize and bean harvests over the next two to four decades.
This is presenting growers and livestock keepers with threats since maize is a raw material used in the production of animal feeds.
Previous estimates by the study projected moderate decline in the production of staple foods by 2050 for the region as a whole but also suggested that the overall picture disguises large differences within and between countries.
Mr Philip Thornton, who works for the International Livestock Research Institute and is the lead author of the new study, said: "Even though these types of projections involve much uncertainty, they leave no room for complacency about East Africa's food security in the coming decades."
"Countries need to act boldly if they're to seize opportunities for intensified farming in favoured locations, while cushioning the blow that will fall on rural people in more vulnerable areas."
The researchers simulated likely shifts in cropping, using a combination of two climate change models and two scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions, together with state-of-the-art models for maize and beans, which are also the region's primary staple foods.
In the mixed crop-livestock systems of the tropical highlands, the study shows that rising temperatures may actually favour food crops, helping boost output of maize by about half in highland "breadbasket" areas of Kenya and beans to match the same degree in similar parts of Tanzania.
However, harvests of maize and beans could decrease in some of the more humid areas, under the climate scenarios used in the study. Across the entire region, production of both crops is projected to decline significantly in drylands, particularly in Tanzania.
Mr Carlos Seré, ILRI director general said the emerging scenario of climate-change winners and losers is not inevitable.
"Despite an expected three-fold increase in food demand by 2050, East Africa can still deliver food security for all through a smart approach that carefully matches policies and technologies to the needs and opportunities of particular farming areas," Mr Seré said.
At the Seventh World Forum on Sustainable Development held recently in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, African leaders announced a plan to ask the industrialised world to pay developing countries $67 billion a year as part of the continent's common negotiating position for December's climate talks in Copenhagen.
The ILRI study analyzes various means by which governments and rural households can respond to climate change impacts at different locations. In Kenya, for example, the authors suggest that shifting bean production more to the cooler highland areas might offset some of the losses expected in other systems.
Similarly, Uganda and Tanzania could compensate for projected deficits in both maize and beans through increased regional trade.
In the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), maize trade is already worth more than $1 billion (Shs1.8 trillion), but only 10 per cent of it occurs within the region.
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