Abstract
Across sub-Saharan Africa, climate change is leading to increasingly erratic weather patterns that challenge farming practices, particularly for smallholder farmers. Preparing farmers for these changes and increasing their resilience to extreme weather events is critical for food security in areas where populations are increasing. The El Niño event of 2015/16 led to drought conditions in Malawi which are expected to become more normal in the future. This resulted in widespread crop failure and the need for external food aid. The experiences of Malawian farmers during this time creates an opportunity to identify areas where adaptations in land management practices as part of resilience building initiatives can prepare farmers for future climates. This paper presents results of household surveys and interviews of 201 farmers from a case study in southern Malawi. Half of the farmers surveyed practice Conservation Agriculture (CA), a Climate Smart Agriculture technology that increased resilience to this drought event. The majority of households relied on agriculture for all their livelihood streams, indicating that diversification away from sole dependence on agriculture would increase resilience. Our study shows that poorer, female farmers are less likely to practice CA than wealthier male farmers. Results also illustrate that while farmers had access to seasonal weather forecasts, a key tool to guide land preparation and planting, they remained reluctant to believe them or to amend cropping or land management practices. Agricultural extension services within Malawi can play a vital role in preparing farmers for future extreme weather events and ensuring forecast communication link to predicted agricultural impacts and land management actions for building resilience into agricultural systems. Extension services need to focus on supporting poorer female farmers to adopt CA practices and providing farmers with the tools and knowledge to respond effectively to seasonal and sub-seasonal climate information.
Highlights
Climate change and weather variability are key factors affecting food systems in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa (Kotir, 2011), especially among rural subsistence farming communities (Shisanya and Mafongoya, 2016)
Results from this case study demonstrate that hybrid maize cultivated under Conservation Agriculture (CA) performed better than under traditional tillage during the El Niño event of 2015/16, which resulted in prolonged dry periods
Participation in CA can help to increase food security and preparedness for extreme weather events, and this bias against the involvement of female farmers in CA should be addressed as a priority
Summary
Climate change and weather variability are key factors affecting food systems in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa (Kotir, 2011), especially among rural subsistence farming communities (Shisanya and Mafongoya, 2016) This has been seen recently in Malawi, where agriculture is predominantly rain-fed and practiced by 76% of Malawi’s population (National Statistics Office, 2017). Flooding in 2014/15, followed by droughts in 2015/16, led to a 30.2% year-on-year drop in maize production (World Bank, 2019), which is grown on 90% of cultivated land (Mutegi et al, 2015) This was due to the El Niño event of 2015/16, one of the strongest on record (NOAA, 2015; Whitfield et al, 2019). Are El Niño events predicted to become more extreme (Wang et al, 2019), but these types of conditions (erratic rainfall, droughts and flooding) are expected to become more normal according to predicted future climate change scenarios (Niang et al, 2014; Mittal et al, 2017; Hart et al, 2018)
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