adminMalvern Mupandawana Correspondent
THE agricultural sector could be one of the most vulnerable economic sectors to the impacts of climate change in the coming decades. Climate change impacts on crop production are related to changes in temperature and precipitation patterns, the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events, and changes in seasonality and growing period, among others.
All of these impacts may have consequences on agricultural production and as a result, agricultural systems are forced to adapt to changing conditions.
In dry regions such as region 4 and 5 in Zimbabwe, rain-fed agriculture forms the basis of livelihoods for most rural folks. Adverse weather resulting from climate change would most likely result in livelihoods of most smallholder farmers in semi-arid parts of Zimbabwe at a precipice.
These farmers in marginal areas have developed several adaptation options to cope with current climate variability, but such adaptations may not be sufficient for future changes of climate.
Gender Dimensions of Climate Change Adaptation
It is well documented that women are front and centre of the smallholder farm systems in developing countries such as Zimbabwe.
The multiplicity of roles played by women include looking after young children, cooking, market gardening, farm activities (weeding, harvesting etc) fetching water and firewood among others.
An ever increasing incidence of drought imply the burden on women inevitably has increased over the years.
Conservation farming activities such potholing, zero tillage etc, imply roles generally reserved for women such as weeding, transfer of crop residues will increase drastically. Notwithstanding that women still have to do other household roles mentioned above.
As forests become more and more depleted due to deforestation and effects of climate change, women have to walk for long distances to look for firewood. This means farm activities such as planting, weeding that are socially reserved for women will suffer. Planting or weeding late will consequently affect the yield which will exacerbate an already dire food security situation for most rural households that survive on subsistence agriculture.
The Case for an Integrated
Climate Change Adaptive Smallholder Farm Household Model
A lot of information has been gathered around drought tolerant, moisture conserving or so called smart agriculture yet not much has been done to come up with a model that fits a smallholder farmer grappling with the ever changing weather conditions due to climate change.
On the production side, most of the research at best has been compartmentalised into either a soil science, crop science, agricultural engineering disciplines with very limited integration of strategies across disciplines to come up with an optimal production mix for a typical resource poor smallholder farmer.
Thus, these farmers have not benefited from the mass of knowledge that could potentially leverage them from the poverty traps accentuated by adverse effects of climate change.
The choice that farmers face are not only on the production side. The market plays a pivotal role in providing incentives for either scaling production of a particular or divestment in some cases. The choice of markets is compounded by challenges to do with a plethora of risks such as price fluctuations, missing or incomplete markets, poor road networks and archaic communication system and a rigid policy environment.
Given the foregoing, farmers in nascent agriculture based economies such as Zimbabwe face the challenge of striking a balance between multiple, often conflicting goals.
In these poor economies, competing crop and livestock enterprise mix choice, uncertain economic environment coupled with effects of climate change makes striking this balance an even more difficult undertaking.
In light of these challenges, a model that incorporates both production and market choice mix against the background of severely limiting resource constrains price and climate risk is an imperative, yet no such model exists that fits a typical resource constrained farmer in areas such as Matebeleland North and South and Masvingo provinces in Zimbabwe.
Going forward, there is need for government, private sector and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working with farmers to prioritize developing a model that incorporate available climate adaptation strategies and package it in a way that smallholder farmers will find easy to follow.
About the Writerk: Malvern Mupandawana is a Research Economist and Consultant with a keen interest in Macro-Economics, Agriculture, Development and New Business Models. He has presented and published his work in USA, UK , Zimbabwe , Canada and China. You can email him on [email protected]. His twitter handle is @malmupa
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