The world is today, more than any other time in history, staring at an unprecedented climate crisis, a catastrophe which, if untamed, will end the world as we know it.
Unchecked scientific and technological advancement is driving humanity to the brink of its own self-destruction. Carbon emissions from human activity have led to environmental upheaval as deadly heatwaves, floods, wildfires and droughts wreak havoc with increasing intensity.
A leading contributor to the worsening climate crisis is the agricultural enterprise, which alone is responsible for up to 29 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to many estimations.
Agriculture contributes to global warming through use of inorganic fertilisers, which generate nitrous oxide – a potent greenhouse gas, and the disturbance of soil, which breaks down carbon – useful nutrient – into the harmful carbon dioxide as well as generation of methane from ruminating cows.
Input-intensive farming also hurts carbon sequestration by depleting plants’ ability to store carbon in the soil. Yet another major contributor to global warming from the agriculture perspective is the fossil fuel footprints in the manufacture of inorganic fertiliser and its transport across the world.
Nearly all these causes are effects of business-as-usual agriculture, which thrives on synthetic fertilisers and chemical inputs.
That is why some of us have been pushing for a shift to agroecology, which addresses most of the challenges raised above. Continued and expanded use in Africa of inorganic fertilisers, which emit a greenhouse gas 250 times more toxic than carbon dioxide and which persist in the atmosphere for more than 100 years, will cause irrevocable damage to the climate, with related impacts on biodiversity.
This must change now, rather than later, because there is no time. More responsible models of farming such as agroecology, which is regenerative, resilient and efficient, need to be adopted.
The Alliance for a Green Revolution Africa was founded in 2006 to address food security and halve poverty by 2020 by “catalysing a productivity revolution” in Africa. This has not happened, as many studies have shown.
The evidence, including from a donor-funded evaluation of AGRA, suggests that farmer outcomes from Green Revolution initiatives have not enhanced productivity, incomes, food security and sustainable land use.
As we said in our recent press conference, the annual African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), with its gathering of corporate leaders, international donors and African governments, should be taking a bold action to support resilient agriculture that works with nature, builds crop and diet diversity, respects climatic patterns and empowers marginalised farmers.
The AGRF, now assembled in Kigali, should be told that Africa has workable alternatives right here at home, farmer-managed bio-input centres that need government support to scale up.
But international donors have yet to embrace such a decisive shift away from synthetic fertilisers. Some are beginning to talk of a different approach. In a prepared statement to a reporter, the Rockefeller Foundation, a founder of AGRA and one of the key funders of the first Green Revolution in Asia, is signalling a shift towards “decarbonizing agricultural production and supply chains.”
They now expressly talk of “decarbonization” that “extends to reducing dependence on fossil fuel derived fertilisers and pesticides and supporting regenerative agriculture and agroecology.” They say the foundation is engaged in “dialogue with a broad range of organizations” as they define what this means for their programmes, but they have declined to withdraw support from AGRA, as African civil society and faith leaders have demanded. In fact, they are reportedly preparing a new grant for the initiative.
It can only be hoped that their talk will be followed by walk, and that they will finally walk away from AGRA’s failing Green Revolution. Better still, they could persuade other AGRA donors to stop digging the hole they have created, a hole in which up to $1 billion (Sh119.9 billion) has gone without a whimper of a productivity revolution so proclaimed with pomp and fanfare every year. Instead, increasing hunger pangs bite the smallholder farmers in whose name all the fundraising is done.
It is crystal clear from the evidence that AGRA has failed Africa. Yet the goal remains to increase the use of synthetic fertilisers eight-fold by 2050. Such promotion of fossil fuel-based agriculture threatens to put Africa on an unsustainable development path, contributing to climate emissions while weakening farmers’ ability to adapt to the changing climate.
We call that climate-stupid agriculture, and it is time to change course.
National coordinator, Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya www.bibakenya.org
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