Climate change by global warming, which refers to the average increase in global temperature, has become a megatrend that will lead to significant global changes in the future.
Agriculture has always been deeply dependent on the weather, with farmers needing a steady mixture of sun, warmth, and rains to reliably produce the food we survive on.
According to the United Nations, about 80 per cent of the world’s food is produced by family farms. Therefore, climate change’s effect on agriculture could have repercussions that reach far beyond individual farmers and their families.
Unless humans take significant steps to reverse course and cut greenhouse gas emissions, the situation will continue to intensify. No one knows for sure what impact this will have on future food supplies, but models by the International Food Policy Research Institute estimate global maize production could shrink 24 per cent by 2050.
A growing global population and changing diets are driving up the demand for food. As a result, production is struggling to keep up, as crop yields level off in many parts of the world, ocean health declines, and natural resources including soils, water, and biodiversity are stretched dangerously thin.
A 2020 report found that nearly 690 million people or 8.9 per cent of the global population are hungry, up by nearly 60 million in five years. The food security challenge will only become more difficult, as the world will need to produce about 70 per cent more food by 2050 to feed an estimated nine billion people.
By 2050, climate change could cause irrigated wheat yields in developing countries to fall by 13 per cent. Irrigated rice in these countries could tumble 15 per cent. In Africa, many farmers of maize, which is not that well suited to increased temperatures, could lose 10 to 20 per cent of their yields.
The challenge is intensified by agriculture’s extreme vulnerability to climate change. Climate change’s negative impacts are already being felt in the form of increasing temperatures, weather variability, shifting agroecosystem boundaries, invasive crops and pests, and more frequent extreme weather events.
Climate change is reducing crop yields, the nutritional quality of major cereals, and lowering livestock productivity. Substantial investments in adaptation will be required to maintain current yields and to achieve production and food quality increases to meet demand.
The impact of climate change also hits before and after harvest. Every step of the food chain, from the seed to the farm to the cooking pot, is at risk. Increased temperatures and flooding, which exacerbate challenges to food storage and distribution, may cause more outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. This spread of diarrheal diseases, which already kill 1.9 million people a year, and livestock-related diseases, which include zoonoses, infectious diseases transmitted from livestock and other animals to humans, will hit the poor in low-income countries hardest.
In the last three decades there has been, unstable trends in tea production, which have been linked to climate-driven stresses.
In Kenya, agricultural sector has limited diversification with tea being a major cash crop for the economy. Tea production substantially contributes to poverty reduction, job creation, foreign exchange earnings and is a major source of livelihood for most rural communities.
Globally, Kenya ranks third in tea production behind China and Sri-Lanka and is the leading black tea exporter worldwide. Tea is a leading foreign exchange earner, a major source of livelihood for most rural communities and significantly contributes to poverty reduction.
However, in the last three decades there has been, unstable trends in tea production, which have been linked to climate-driven stresses. And over the last two decades, tea producing areas have been exposed to extreme climate events, which include temperature rise, erratic rainfall and growing incidence of extreme weather events such as hail storms, drought and frost.
These events are expected to have adverse effects on the largely rain fed tea production with potentially irreversible socio economic effects.
Climate change poses an imminent threat to tea production as erratic rainfall patterns and increasing maximum temperature are exposing farmers to climate risk leading to lower production.
With climate projection indicating an increase in mean temperature and temperature variability, mitigating and adaptation measures are critical to slow down the adverse effects on tea production.
The observed outcomes make Kenyan tea farmer, especially the smallholder, more vulnerable and exacerbate macroeconomic challenges of reduced incomes, loss of foreign exchange earnings, unemployment and poverty.
To reverse this trend requires collaborative efforts towards developing definite, viable and sustainable adaptation options targeting tea farming. In addition, despite the challenges posed by climate change, the government needs to ensure tea policy reforms are targeted towards raising competitiveness of Kenyan tea in the international market and ensure prices and bonuses are paid on time.
It should also guarantee minimum return to make alternatives to tea farming less lucrative.
Dr. John Chumo is the committee secretary, National Environmental Complaints Committee
