The world's poorest continent could offer clues to how America's
farmers might cope with a hotter, drier climate, leading agriculture
experts say.
In the African Sahel -- the belt of semiarid savanna running from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea -- farmers have successfully fought back an expanding Sahara and turned once dry, uncultivated scrub into highly productive farmland.
The key to their success has been allowing trees to grow, where they once cut them down, and adopting agricultural techniques that took full advantage of scarce water resources (ClimateWire, March 12). Now experts say it is time for American farmers to recognize the benefits that trees can bring to even the most arid plots of land.
"Given the situation in the U.S. Corn Belt," said Chris Reij, a sustainable land management specialist at Free University Amsterdam who has worked in Africa since 1978, "these practices might help farmers in Kansas and Iowa to adapt to more extreme weather, help make their crops more resistant to drought."
The scale and mechanization of U.S. agricultural production could not be more different than in Africa. Yet the current year's drought highlights the American sector's vulnerability to extreme heat and lack of rain -- a situation not unlike the one that plagued the African Sahel for decades.
Read more: http://www.eenews.net/public/climatewire/2012/07/26/1
In the African Sahel -- the belt of semiarid savanna running from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea -- farmers have successfully fought back an expanding Sahara and turned once dry, uncultivated scrub into highly productive farmland.
The key to their success has been allowing trees to grow, where they once cut them down, and adopting agricultural techniques that took full advantage of scarce water resources (ClimateWire, March 12). Now experts say it is time for American farmers to recognize the benefits that trees can bring to even the most arid plots of land.
"Given the situation in the U.S. Corn Belt," said Chris Reij, a sustainable land management specialist at Free University Amsterdam who has worked in Africa since 1978, "these practices might help farmers in Kansas and Iowa to adapt to more extreme weather, help make their crops more resistant to drought."
The scale and mechanization of U.S. agricultural production could not be more different than in Africa. Yet the current year's drought highlights the American sector's vulnerability to extreme heat and lack of rain -- a situation not unlike the one that plagued the African Sahel for decades.
Read more: http://www.eenews.net/public/climatewire/2012/07/26/1
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