Farming, family planning, environment and climate

By Michael J. Ssali
Posted 


Wednesday, December 30  

2015 at 

02:00

Climate experts, scientists and other stakeholders from across the world spent nearly two weeks in Paris, France, early this month attending a United Nations conference on climate change. The conference and its outcome ought to have been at the centre stage of every African country’s farming programme given their heavy dependence on rain-fed agriculture.

A World Bank report, Turning the Heat Down, says African farmers risk losing between 40-80 per cent of their croplands which grow maize, millet and sorghum due to an increase in global average temperatures of between 1.5-2 degrees Centigrade by 2040.
It also indicated that yields from rain-fed agriculture could decline by 50 per cent by 2020, reducing food security and increasing malnutrition and poverty.

Uganda has one of the youngest populations in the world; nearly half (48.7 per cent) is below 15 years (The State of Uganda Population Report 2014). The fertility rate is 6.2; when every woman has six children on the average as the situation currently is, it is difficult for the country to observe environment regulations.
We see people clearing forests to create space for agricultural activities. We see gardens in wetlands. Trees are cut for firewood. Yet we need forests, and wetlands for rain formation. They are also important in mitigating climate change.

A mother with six children will spend more time taking physical care of them than working to produce food. Rapid population growth has caused land fragmentation and unproductive, degraded and small gardens whose owners can hardly afford to buy fertilisers, seed, or even simple tools such as hoes. The reason that politicians donate seeds and promise free hoes to farmers!
Apart from rising temperatures, which are making it harder to produce crops, climate change has come with the eruption of disastrous pests and diseases that are reducing agricultural yields.
As our leaders reflect on the Paris UN conference, it is important that we consider family size reduction as a means of climate change mitigation.

E-mail: ssalimichaelj@gmail.com