While the climate crisis is a concern for all of us, it is of increasing concern for smallholder farmers in the regions where we work as farmers face the brunt of negtive outcomes caused by climate change–Temperatures are increasing 1.5 times faster in the Sahel Region than anywhere else in the world. Droughts are becoming more and more frequent as the rainy seasons are getting shorter and rains have become more intense increasing the risk for flooding. Without explicitly working to mitigate the impact of climate change, smallholder farmers will continue to see negative outcomes, such as low yield and income, which undermines food security and threatens their livelihoods.
The solutions we are building are creating resiliency against those negative effects and here are four solutions we are applying in our program to help ensure that myAgro farmers grow their income, access nutritional food, and are equipped to overcome the challenges posed by the climate crisis.
Trainings on Applying Compost
Water retention in compost is crucial to the importance of compost in water retention capacity of the soil in combination with the fertilizer from the myAgro package. This combination gives the best ROI but also the safest option to protect the investment from risks related to climate change, i.e. a field with enough organic matter has better chances to withstand a dry spell. In general sustainable management of the soils is probably the most important thing we can train our farmers on, as it is there most important asset. So they can continue to grow enough food building resiliency against climate shocks.
Introducing S-fertilizer
Long-term testing is crucial to discovering what works for our farmers which is why we spent 3 years on testing a new type of fertilizer at trial stations. Through this testing, we have found success in utuilizing sulfur fertizer we launched pilots in Mali and Senegal with farmers. While Sulfur is beneficial to plant growth and yields in all types of soils, it is specifically beneficial in salty soils. With increased droughts due to climate change, soils are at the risk to become saltier, which is detrimental to plant growth.
Access to Weather Information
In Senegal we provided access to weather information coming from ANACIM (national weather institute) through our VE network. The times that a rainy season had a clear beginning and end are over. Climate change makes the rains unpredictable and unreliable. Weather information provides farmers with information on planning farm activities like planting but also on when to weed and apply fertilizer. While there are a lot of challenges in getting that information efficiently in the hands of farmers, there is a lot of potential to develop this further.
Supporting Farmers in Learning More about Climate Change
Climate change can be an abstract idea for farmers and at myAgro, we are working on innovative ways to support farmers by developing solutions that don’t require behavior change. For example, myAgro can switch to more drought-resistant varieties in our packages. This does not require anything different from the myAgro farmer.
Additionally, we also conduct research to find the right messaging and motivators that will show the farmers the impact of the techniques they learn and inspire the to implement them on their farms.
