With just over two months left till a new international climate change agreement is being finalised in Paris, the Montpellier Panel is launching a new report today, “The Farms of Change: African Smallholders Responding to an Uncertain Climate Future”, which addresses some of the key challenges to climate-proof Africa’s smallholder farmers.

As we all know, two of the greatest challenges of the 21^st century are the increasing demands for food, water and energy from a growing population and – climate change. Agriculture and smallholders are central to both, perhaps nowhere more so than in Africa. Africa is already battling against the impacts of climate change and smallholder farmers are amongst the most vulnerable with the least capacity to adapt. Rising temperatures signal more extreme weather events that will put lives and livelihoods at greater risk, increasing smallholders’ vulnerability to drought, famine and disease. And whilst progress has been made during the last two decades to reduce hunger and to improve farmers’ livelihoods, climate change jeopardises these gains.

High levels of poverty and underdevelopment combined with insufficient infrastructure exacerbate the already severe impacts of global warming on resources, development and human security. In order to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change, international organisations and governments must help smallholders to reduce and off-set greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

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A lack of investment will derail efforts to ensure Africa’s farmers can feed future generations in the face of climate change, a report has warned. Food shortages, malnutrition and migration will undo decades of development unless more funding is made available, the authors added. Failure to act could jeopardise UN global development goals, they warn. The findings were compiled by the Montpellier Panel, a group of experts from Europe and Africa.

The report – The Farms of Change: African Smallholders Responding to an Uncertain Climate Future – recommended that international donors and governments took action in a range of priority areas, including:

• bringing climate change’s threat to food and nutrition security to the top of UN and national governments’ agenda,
• investing in sustainable farming systems to help smallholders adapt to and mitigate climate change,
• investing in research and local capacities to understand the responses of different crops and livestock breeds to drought, floods and heat stress,
• scale-up proven community-based adaptation projects.

Montpellier Panel chairman Prof Sir Gordon Conway observed: “Progress made in the last two decades to combat hunger and poverty in Africa will be irrelevant if action is not taken on climate change.

“African smallholders cannot escape poverty unless they are equipped to adapt to a changing climate – and this requires serious, large-scale investments,” he added.

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