Climate Change

Perhaps an even more disturbing cause for concern is climate change.  A recent study states, “Expansion of cropped land can also be used to maintain production. However, climate change may heavily modify land suitability in relatively large areas of SSA that are currently classified as mixed rain-fed arid–semiarid systems” (Thornton et al). Climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa will strongly affect food sustainability.  Because “cropping may become increasingly risky and marginal, perhaps leading to increased dependence on livestock keeping or increasing diversification into non-agricultural activities and migration to urban areas. Such areas may, to all intents and purposes, ‘flip’ from a mixed system to a predominantly rangeland-based system” (Thornton et al).  Environmental changes, bringing higher temperatures and less rain, will make cereal crops farming more risky and tempt farmers to pasture livestock.   As a result, the greater risks associated with cereal crop disasters could lead to cataclysmic declines in cereal and grain production, trigger widespread famine, and lead to unrecorded levels of starvation.