Almost 25 percent of the world’s malnourished population lives in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where more than 300 million people depend on maize (corn) for much of their diet. The most widely-produced crop by harvested area in SSA, maize is also highly sensitive to drought. Because maize in this region is grown largely on rainfed rather than irrigated land, any future changes in precipitation patterns due to climate change could significantly impact crop yields. Assessing the likely magnitude and locations of such yield changes in the coming decades will be critical for decision makers seeking to help their nations and regions adapt to climate change and minimize threats to food security and to rural economies that are heavily dependent on agriculture.
Almost 25 percent of the world’s malnourished population lives in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where more than 300 million people depend on maize (corn) for much of their diet. The most widely-produced crop by harvested area in SSA, maize is also highly sensitive to drought. Because maize in this region is grown largely on rainfed rather than irrigated land, any future changes in precipitation patterns due to climate change could significantly impact crop yields. Assessing the likely magnitude and locations of such yield changes in the coming decades will be critical for decision makers seeking to help their nations and regions adapt to climate change and minimize threats to food security and to rural economies that are heavily dependent on agriculture.
Toward that end, a team of five researchers at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) has applied a broad range of multi- and individual climate model ensembles and crop models to project climate-related changes to maize yields in Africa throughout most of the 21st century. Accounting for uncertainty in climate model parameters — which is most pronounced in high-producing semiarid zones — the researchers project widespread yield losses in the Sahel region and Southern Africa, insignificant change in Central Africa, and sub-regional increases in East Africa and at the southern tip of the continent. The wide range of results highlights a need for risk management strategies that are robust and adaptive to uncertainty, such as the diversification of rural economies beyond the agricultural sector.
“In the wet regions you’d feel very secure in making large-scale, long-term agricultural decisions, knowing that the probability of error due to climate change is small,” says Joint Program Research Scientist Kenneth Strzepek, one of the study’s principal co-investigators (the other is Susan Solomon, the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies in the EAPS Department). “In the arid regions, where the magnitude of uncertainty is much higher, you’d need to proceed with caution. That means developing strategies that hedge on which crops are cultivated, learning more about how the climate is changing before making any major investments, and considering alternatives to agriculture for economic development.”
Read more at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Image: Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change Research Scientist Kenneth Strzepek meets with Ethiopian Minister of Agriculture Tefera Deribew. (Credit: Brent Boehlert)
