A Review Of Impact Of Climate Change On Food Availability And Adaptation At Farm Level In Sub-Saharan Africa

  Gebremariam Gebrezgabher Gebremedhin

Sub Saharan Africa is highly vulnerable to the impact of climate change. Since small holder agriculture is the main livelihood of SSA which is the most susceptible to the effect of climate change and this climate change worsens the food availability and food insecurity problem in Sab Saharan African countries. To conduct this review, manual searching/ narrative review method and Google scholar search strategies were used in this literature review. As the result of climate change and ever increasing temperature in Sub Saharan Africa is being change in to arid and semi-arid environments that has a significant impact on agricultural production and climate change will be more likely to shorten the period of growing season as well as force large regions of marginal agricultural out of production. Predictable reductions in yield in some countries could be as much as 50 percent by 2020, and crop net revenues could fall by as much as 90 percent by 2100, with small scale farmers being the most affected. This would badly affect food availability in SSA. Particularly in some cereal crops it is projected that by the end of the 2025, grain crops will be most affected with up to 72 percent decline in wheat yields and up to 45 percent yield reduction in maize, rice and soybean. Overall studies predicted that a decrease the yield of cereal crops in Africa through shortening growing season period, magnifying water stress and increasing occurrence of diseases, pests and weeds outbreaks. Coping strategies to climate change in SSA experienced various adaptive mechanisms which are different considerably among regions, countries and socio economic groups since the ability to adapt and cope with climate change is a combined result of governance and national security strategies, wealth and economic development, technology, information, skills, infrastructure, institution and equity. In SSA the agricultural adaptation measures such as the use of crop varieties, planting trees, soil and water conservation, changing planting dates, diverging from crops production to livestock keeping, and irrigation as the most used adaptation methods. To withstand the impact of climate change and to assure food security, developing crop varieties those are more resilient to drought, heat, and pest infestation exploring the wild relatives of common crops linked to agricultural biodiversity is expected to avoid 10 to 15 percent to the projected reductions in yield under changing climate conditions. Therefore, in SSA climate adaptation strategy accompanied by agricultural biodiversity using genetically engineered varieties and green development led policy is effective and sustainable to withstand the climate change and to assure food security.

Keywords- climate change, adaptation, food security

Unique Identification Number - IJEDR1801144
Page Number(s) - 823-833
Pubished in - Volume 6 | Issue 1 | March 2018
DOI (Digital Object Identifier) -   
Publisher - IJEDR (ISSN - 2321-9939)

  Gebremariam Gebrezgabher Gebremedhin,   "A Review Of Impact Of Climate Change On Food Availability And Adaptation At Farm Level In Sub-Saharan Africa", International Journal of Engineering Development and Research (IJEDR), ISSN:2321-9939, Volume.6, Issue 1, pp.823-833, March 2018, Available at :http://www.ijedr.org/papers/IJEDR1801144.pdf