For Smallholder Farmers, Climate Change Is Life or Death
By Liza Kane-Hartnett, Acumen
In 30 minutes, a promising harvest can turn to crop failure. The ability to make a living or feed your family can disappear. For farmers, this isn’t an abstract risk, it is the reality of climate change, a daily threat that can strike any time with devastating consequences.
“A Very Hard Year”
Regardless of where a farmer lives, they are faced with the urgency of the climate crisis. In Sierra Leone, this has meant severe floods.
“Thousands of hectares of crops were completely lost,” says Emiliano Mroue, CEO of Warc Africa, a company that designs, sells, and trains farmers on regenerative agriculture inputs, about unprecedented flooding in 2019. “For farmers, a failed crop means hunger and hunger means death.”
While flooding has proven deadly in Sierra Leone, the following year, it was extreme drought in Ghana that produced devastating impacts on smallholder farmers.
“There is zero water, and the crops are failing,” shares Emiliano. With more drought, come more pests, compounding the toll taken on farmers and the food system: “Fall Army Worm spreads a lot faster in drought and impacts maize the most. This is the backbone of Ghana’s food system, so it’s a big problem.”
Halfway across the world, on May 6, an unprecedented hailstorm struck the Colombian countryside outside Medellin. In just a few minutes, hail the size of golf balls destroyed Siembra Viva’s fields of vegetables. At that moment, the business was set back four months and farmers’ incomes were lost.
Orlay, a smallholder farmer that works with Siembra Viva, lost everything. Because he now needs to replant, Orlay will be without income for at least a month, limiting his ability to purchase food and other necessities.
“Smallholder farmers are really in trouble,” explains Diego Benitez, CEO of Siembra Viva, while detailing farmers’ financial insecurity and the importance of climate adaptation.
Though focused on the farmers, Diego is clear about the storm’s impact on his own business:
“We have an urgency to show the validity of our model…that we can create a lot of good food using regenerative soil and agriculture practices. Before the storm we needed just one more month to show the potential of our approach, but we had to start over.”
Unfortunately, these unprecedented events are becoming increasingly common.
A Fragile Existence
As leaders in the Global North debate how to avoid a climate crisis, farmers in the Global South are already living it. All over the world, smallholder farmers are taking steps to increase their resilience — that is, their ability to anticipate, weather, and bounce-back from climate events — but they need help. Without new investment, support, and tools, climate change will continue to destroy livelihoods and uproot lives.
At Siembra Viva, climate change has drastically altered farmer behaviors, forcing transitions from well established practices. Recently, they shifted up to 50% of crops indoors to contend with increasing hailstorms:
“We had more than 12 storms before the big one. It’s been a big change. Every two weeks we have hail that sets us back,” says Diego.
But even the move into greenhouses doesn’t offer complete protection — Siembra Viva lost an older greenhouse in the big storm because they didn’t have the capital to invest in repairs and/or to build a new one. To be climate resilient, you need money.
“Emotionally it’s very frustrating,” says Emiliano. “You can be doing everything right and… the results are zero.”
In Ghana and Sierra Leone, Warc is encouraging farmers to undertake affordable protection measures like diversifying crops, harvesting on shorter cycles, and ending the practice of tilling soil. But these measures only go so far as unpredictable weather patterns have displaced long-held best practices:
“Rains started a month and half late this year. For those who planted on time, who did the “right” thing, they’ve suffered the most. This year, the right thing was wrong, but we can’t start moving because it’s still very unpredictable.”
For entrepreneurs like Diego and Emiliano, the writing is on the wall: climate change is here and for farmers, climate adaptation and resilience are urgent needs. Without the tools and training that build resilience and enable farmers to adapt, smallholders’ livelihoods will continue to suffer.
“We need to de-risk the whole system, but very few are willing,” says Emiliano. “We, as a company or investors, need to take risk away from smallholder farmers. They’re the least capable of absorbing the risk and yet it all sits with them…We need a lot more investment in agriculture.”
It’s a vicious cycle. While building climate resilience and employing agriculture practices that regenerate the soil, actively restore habitats, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions — known as regenerative agriculture — are some of the best tools smallholder farmers have at their disposal, the agribusinesses supporting these efforts, like Siembra Viva and Warc, are struggling under the pressure of climate change.
“The only way to reverse this cycle is using the force of the market to catalyze resources,” explains Diego. “Regenerative agriculture is the best bet to heal the planet and enable farmers and agribusinesses to succeed.”
As Diego and Emiliano share, regenerative and resilient agriculture provide a strong defense against climate change, but more investment is needed to protect farmers’ jobs and lives. If we are to overcome the climate crisis, we must nurture a new ecosystem of agribusinesses that enable resilience and prioritize the needs of smallholder farmers.
“There is no time to waste,” agrees Diego. “No one can be a spectator.”
Dig Deeper:
- Learn more about Acumen’s investments in agriculture and efforts to enable climate resilience among smallholder farmers.
- Watch our TEDxAcumen series on the intersection of poverty and climate change.
- Visit our agriculture page to learn more about our agricultural portfolio and how social enterprises are addressing the climate crisis.
