An acute food security and food supplies challenge are already shaping up in Africa following the spread of the covid-19 coronavirus.

This creates a complex scenario for the continent which has not been food secure for decades worsening an already bad situation occasioned by climate change effects, conflicts and lack of quality farm inputs among others.

Climate change has been the bane of most smallholder farmers who remain the backbone of the continent’s breadbasket despite their productivity reducing every consequent season as the vagaries of weather continue lambasting the continent.

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According to ActionAid, East Africa remains one of the most challenged when it comes to food security due to a number of factors.

This year, countries including Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia are dealing with a large outbreak of desert locusts. Locust swarms have destroyed crops and vegetation leading to loss of food and income for families. The pests are exacerbating the ongoing food crisis in the region spawned by drought due to below-average rainfall during expected rainy seasons.

This has led to massive crop failure and animals dying, forcing families to leave their homes in search of food and water.

Prior to the invasion, the region’s incessant cause of food insecurity was climate-induced. Weather changes have caused extended droughts and created events like cyclones and floods. With the erratic weather changes, crop failures and loss of livestock have become the norm.

As these challenges continue pummelling the region as well as other parts of the continent, countries like Kenya and Tanzania in East Africa, Zambia in Southern Africa and Ghana in West Africa have adopted Conservation Agriculture With Trees (CAWT) to improve their land productivity.

According to the African Conservation Tillage Network (ACTN), the overall goal of the CAWT initiative is to see a continental-wide adoption of conservation agriculture and agroforestry to sustain the productive potential of the natural resource base. This, in turn, can improve incomes, food security and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

In April 2014, the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) published a CAWT guide for farmers and extension staff to assist extension agents in conducting training events on CAWT for farmers and other stakeholders in the East African region.

ICRAF notes that CAWT involves integrating crop-friendly trees, particularly nitrogen-fixing trees and high-value agroforestry tree species, into conservation agriculture (CA). Minimum tillage; maximum soil cover; and crop rotation and association, which can be applied singly or concurrently, are the CAWT principles.

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The practice emphasizes protecting the soil’s top layer which is the most vulnerable to degradation through erosion and leaching.

Despite the advantages that CAWT has for agriculture, conservation agriculture’s adoption was low and slow in the four study countries where less than five per cent of smallholder farmers adopted all three components of the practice.

While more research on the benefits of CAWT needs to be conducted, the practice works with some crops and not others.

In April this year, the government of Ethiopia committed to upscale conservation agriculture in partnership with, amongst others, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) supported Sustainable Land Management programme.

Ethiopia’s State Minister of Agriculture, Natural Resource and Food Security, Dr Kaba Urgessa said that the East African nation has to feed its growing population while reclaiming degraded lands and maintaining the ecosystem.

Dr Stephano Haarhoff from the Stellenbosch University of South Africa says that maize farmers practising no tillage or conservation agriculture could considerably benefit from higher yields in dry seasons since the farming methods allow them to plant crops closer together.

Dr Haarhoff who received his doctorate in agronomy from Stellenbosch added that conservation agriculture applies agronomic principles like no-tillage, crop diversification, and soil-cover maintenance, and livestock integration into a farming system thus increasing productivity.

The scholar quoted by the BizCommunity website noted that large-scale soil erosion currently taking place in South Africa’s maize production regions must be combatted since it directly impacts soil fertility and its ability to store water.

With increased and diversified crops and trees on farming land, Africa could gain more since the dangers associated with mono-cropping are reduced.

In addition, the variety of crops enables the integration of other practices like beekeeping which could indirectly increase productivity through cross-pollination especially if fruit trees are intercropped.

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