Harare — ENVIRONMENTAL researchers have predicted that in the next couple of years Southern African countries will take a severe battering from climatic change, which will inevitably halve agricultural production and leave millions vulnerable to food deficits in a region where 70 percent of the population are smallholder farmers.
"Southern Africa will be seriously affected by climate change. Agriculture and bio-diversity will be among the hardest hit," Dr Constansia Musvoto, researcher at South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, told members of the Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions at the organisation's policy conference in South Africa last year.
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