Climate change came into global focus again as the world, without the United States of America, affirm their readiness to combat it's effect on planet earth. The effect of climate change will be felt in different dimensions across different countries. It is going to affect tourism, communication, agriculture, health and economy. World leaders considered the effect of climate change far greater than any singular economy or cross border politics. Differences were put aside as all signed the agreement. I am glad Nigeria signed that agreement.
The effect of climate change has been discussed on this blog under the topic "Climate change and maize shortages in Africa by 2050". There is the need to revisit this issue as a new research by Challinor and his team has again brought to fore the dangers climate change poses to our agricultural production. In their research, Challinor et al (2016) examined the implication of global warming on the breeding, delivery and adoption of new maize varieties using five different climate forecast over Africa. The authors investigated the point at which the time from germination to maturity become significantly different from what we have currently now. From their results, the impact of heat stress was significant. From Figure 1, the RCP 8.5 data predicts that the effect is upon us faster than we think.
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| Time at which the climate change signal for crop duration is detected. The specified year refers to the midpoint of the 20-year period in which the median crop duration falls below the 25th quantile of the baseline period (1995–2014). Grey cells indicate that the crop duration remains within the 25th–75th quantile until at least 2038—the latest possible delivery date for a BDA cycle beginning in 2004 (see Table 1). |
Our focus as an agrarian nation has to move from the challenges of bad roads, access to markets, fertilizers, irrigation that has been plaguing us for ages into developing seeds and methods that will beat the effect of climate change. Any strategic plan for sustainable agriculture in Nigeria that does not consider climate adaptation strategies such as novel seeds cannot stand the test of time. The best time to start the process is now!
References
[1] A. J. Challinor, A.-K. Koehler, J. Ramirez-Villegas, S. Whitfield, and B. Das, “Current warming will reduce yields unless maize breeding and seed systems adapt immediately,” Nat. Clim. Chang., vol. 6, no. 10, pp. 954–958, 2016.
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Good job. The climate change effects are everywhere but it is also worthy of note that some individuals and states in Nigeria are working and gaining foresight and hindsight to do something about it's negative effects on our agricultural advancement.
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