This blog is part of the Agriculture and Ecosystems Blog’s month-long series on Restoring Landscapes.
Can Ecosystem Based Approaches help get Africa ahead of the food insecure pack under the changing climate?
If most of the nearly 70 million smallholder families in sub-Saharan Africa fail within the next decade to adopt sustainable land and water management practices on their farms, long-term food security, productivity and income will be jeopardized.
Within the next fifty years, we will be seeing food prices rise dramatically. Coming at a time when the global population is projected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, huge demand will be placed on states and the environment to provide sufficient food. Today, the world is already searching for solutions to a series of global challenges unprecedented in their scale and complexity. Food insecurity, malnutrition, climate change, rural poverty and environmental degradation are all among them.
Africa is particularly vulnerable to these threats because both supply-side and demand-side challenges are putting additional pressure on an already fragile food production system. Current systems of production will only be able to meet 13 percent of the continent’s food needs by 2050, while three out of every four people added to the planet between now and 2100 will be born in the region.
Many countries in Africa have pursued industrialization vigorously as part of their developmental plan over the decades. This has given rise to a lot of commercial agriculture where agro-industries are concerned. As a result, larger arable lands have been dedicated to industries. The question that behooves us all is:
Will Africa export food while over 200 million people of its people are chronically undernourished?
Read the full post by Richard Munang on the Agriculture and Ecosystems blog
Photo: N. Palmer (CIAT)
