Online Reporter
Sifelani Tsiko
Fact Check Editor
IN a new report the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has warned that several major crops, including wheat, coffee, beans, cassava and plantain could lose half of their optimally suitable land by 2100.
The findings are based on the organisation’s Adaptation, Biodiversity and Carbon Mapping Tool (ABC-Map) geospatial app with a new indicator providing information on the suitability of the major crops under changing climatic conditions by the end of this century.
What is the ABC – MAP tool?
Designed for policymakers, technicians and project designers, the Adaptation, Biodiversity and Carbon Mapping Tool (“ABC-Map”) offers an initial screening of the climate-related risks, essential biodiversity indicators, and the carbon reduction potential of a selected project. It is an open-source satellite imagery app, based on Google Earth Engine, with information from global datasets.
Following its upgrade, ABC Map now features a new indicator, providing information on the suitability of major crops in evolving climate scenarios to the end of the century. FAO senior natural resources (Climate Change) officer Martial Bernoux says the new information could help ensure our capacity to cope with climate change and its impacts in the long term.
What is the significance of this tool?
“Given the increasingly erratic weather and extreme events, including droughts, extreme heat and floods, farmers, policymakers, and technicians need to know if the crops, investments or projects they are considering will work or if they need to adjust and consider other crops or more adaptation measures instead,” Bernoux says. “Our ABC-Map tool can now better assist them with these considerations, further reinforcing climate resilience.”
Brief on development of the new indicator
The new indicator, developed by FAO, incorporates data from a study by French fintech start-up Finres, commissioned by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and funded by the French Development Agency (AFD). The study, “Have crops already reached peak suitability: assessing global climatic suitability decreases for crop cultivation,” uses a new method to assess crop suitability in varied climate scenarios. It concludes that five out of nine major staple and cash crops—including wheat, coffee, beans, cassava, and plantain—are already losing optimal growing conditions, and some could lose half their optimal suitable land by 2100.
In particular, the study’s researchers suggest that coffee production in some of the major coffee-growing regions could decline sharply by 2100. They say beans and wheat could experience significant losses, especially in regions such as North America and Europe. Maize and rice, however, could initially find more suitable areas for cultivation, the researchers suggest, but this situation could reverse by the end of the century under high-emission scenarios.
How does it work?
The ABC-Map geospatial app features indicators in three sections: adaptation, biodiversity, and carbon. This new indicator expands the scope of the adaptation section, which previously displayed only information on past trends in a given area, including past temperature and rainfall. Now, the new indicator also adds information on future trends.
A user inputs a location, then selects a crop from 30 options, including coffee, maize and wheat. The tool then displays the suitability of the selected crops in that area, for time periods stretching to 2100, providing a crop suitability score for two different climate emission scenarios. Also planned for this year is an indicator with information on livestock heat stress and another for crop water requirements, which would estimate expected rainfall and potential irrigation needs.
Drive to strengthen national capacity
ABC-Map, launched in 2024, is one of the technical tools in the COP28 Agriculture, Food and Climate National Action Toolkit, helping governments to develop and implement policy measures on climate action and agrifood system transformation. It was launched last year during an expert panel on the Food and Agriculture for Sustainable Transformation (FAST) Partnership, at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture in Berlin, Germany.
The tool helps users better understand the synergies and trade-offs among the three pressing and interlinked challenges of climate change mitigation, adaptation and countering biodiversity loss in the context of safeguarding agriculture and food security. It promotes holistic environmental actions in agriculture and with its latest upgrade, ABC-Map will further boost FAO’s support to countries to fulfil their obligations under the three Rio Conventions and strengthen their capacity to assess and confront climate related shocks and impacts.
Is Africa experiencing loss of cultivable land?
Agric experts say Africa is experiencing significant loss of cultivation land due to land degradation, which affects a large portion of the continent’s agricultural land. This degradation, they say, is primarily caused by water and wind erosion, leading to nutrient depletion and decreased agricultural productivity. Consequences include decreased food production, economic losses, and impacts on rural livelihoods. Experts estimate that about 46 percent of Africa’s entire arable land area is degraded and if this degradation goes unchecked, over half of the arable land in Africa will be uncultivable by 2050. The rate at which land in Africa is degrading is worrying and experts say work towards preserving and regenerating land health is now urgent in Africa.
Rising demand for land and food
This rapid loss of healthy and productive land is getting worse each day and at least 100 million hectares are lost each year, according to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Africa faces a growing risk of accelerated soil erosion and loss of biodiversity due to high levels of deforestation, overgrazing, chemical contamination, water pollution and depletion. A growing population coupled with land overuse is increasingly stripping the health and productivity of cultivable land.
What then needs to be done?
Land regeneration is now more critical than ever before. This is one way that could increase resilience in the wake of the climate crisis. Promoting sustainable farming is the answer as this could help bring back the health of vast tracts of agricultural land and support communities to achieve food security. This could include – Planting trees amongst crops helps to protect and stabilise soil against erosion, landscape protection and regeneration, nutrient recycling — returning the organic plant or crop residues back into the soil to replace nutrients and increase organic matter, water harvesting and protecting water sources and promoting community-led land management.
