Harare — Africa has long suffered the devastating impacts of climate change, despite contributing little to the climate crisis, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
With an emphasis on sharing training and experiences, Environmental Monitoring Group (EMG) hosted a workshop that provided resources on agroecology as well as sharing strategies to set up viable and sustainable agroecological practices.
Agroecology supports the soil, and biodiversity which is important for resilience. It allows farmers to adapt to climate change, and sustainably use and conserve natural resources, and is a holistic and integrated approach that simultaneously applies ecological and social concepts and principles to the design and management of sustainable agriculture and food systems.
FAO describes agroecology as an initiative that "seeks to optimize the interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment while also addressing the need for socially equitable food systems within which people can exercise choice over what they eat and how and where it is produced".
Its activities that improve soil, plant, and animal health, can improve resilience to climate change. Regenerative agriculture practices such as no-till cultivation, not burning stubbles, and planting cover crops, can ensure that plants and soil are in the best condition to tolerate drought and erratic rainfall, according to the Asian Development Bank.
So one of the key issues with agroecology that's particularly important with regards to climate change is that it allows for diversity of last for farming that is adaptable to issues of water, but also to diseases.
In a webinar on Agroecology: Local Solutions to Global Crises - Presenting Research and Advocacy, aimed at pushing the message of agroecology to broad a sector of society, Mandy Moussouris - Director of Environmental Monitoring Group, said EMG is now involved in the agroecology project that involves Burkina Faso, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Morocco, Senegal, and South Africa.
The project has four different components.
"There's the learning component with the farmers, shared knowledge and learning across the countries but amongst themselves as well, and involves research. So an extensive research project was conducted in each of the countries and in involved advocacy.
In South Africa, EMG did research and the two key initiatives were the Heiveld Cooperative, which is a cooperative of member-owned businesses based on agroecological principles that processes and markets organic and fair-trade certified rooibos tea produced by its 64 members in the Suid Bokkeveid. Meanwhile, The Overberg Initiative is made up of a diversity of different farming organizations including cooperatives, family run farms and medium scale commercial farm all of whom belong to the Overberg Participatory Governance System.
EMG says the biggest benefit is that it has strengthened networks and contributed to building stronger advocacy and knowledge sharing, both within the country but also internationally.
Stephen Greenberg of Agroecology, Civil Society and Advocacy spoke about the importance of working with the public sector. He says Corporate investment is very minimal, while overseas development assistance is limited and also short term.
"So if you get those kinds of resources, they're very good because they do orient towards agri-ecology, but you need to use them very efficiently to set things up because they don't stay for long. So after all of that, you end up looking at the public sector as the source of sustained long term funding. So we need to kind of get programs into government and get governments to agree to programs on these issues."
Brett Sander, a farmer from Cold Mountain Farm Cooperative & Overberg PGS, converted a family bought farm to an organic agroecology operation.
"Our focus has been on creating a local supply for Stanford, a small riverside village in Overberg District Municipality in the Western Cape, as well as where we have enough volume and capacity to provide into Cape Town and some of us even into export markets," he says.
According to Sander, support to both semi commercial and subsistence organic farming from a government point of view is very limited, but despite this, their project did open a bit of a niche market for a lot of farmers.
"So the PGS was a breath of fresh air, really to get practices pollinated between farmers, guys understanding the local soils, good practices for certain crops. And that really started to align with what was happening in at least the Western Cape market where farmers were looking or consumers especially in the more urban centers," he says.
Sander says farmers in South Africa are struggling with finding that support mechanism to bring small subsistence holder farmers, indigenous holders of land, tribal and to a point of semi commercialization and good livelihoods.
"That's the part where the practical and the civil society movement does not really see eye to eye and that there needs to be some commercialization in some of our processes and at least a viable income, realized performance and families and the governmental support."
He also called on civil society to bring models and methodologies able to work with government so that when there's political changes or regime changes, or a new mayor or minister coming in, from a local level, there won't have major disruptions.
"I think once civil society starts finding mechanisms to deal with municipality in a very structured and strategic manner, that we will start having a bit more impact on the ground because civil society and smallholder farmers, I think, in isolation, are fighting a very big current from agribusiness and political forces," he says.
Clifford Ceasar is involved with Green Project at Pelican Park High School and teaches agriculture, technology and agriculture management practices. These are the two subjects that the national government has introduced into certain schools in the Western Cape.
Ceaser says his concern is that the government doesn't acknowledge the damage of chemical inputs because the inputs still come from the Department of Agriculture.
"So lucky for me, I am quite familiar and I have been practising organic farming. So I'm glad that now with the help of PGS and EMG, I got that support system at Pelican Park. We also introduced the students not only for farming practices for agriculture as a subject, but get down to the real thing of looking at the environment, you know, safe agricultural practices and farming the right way," he says.
