Study: Maximizing grain yields won't meet future African needs

Maximizing cereal crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa would still fail to meet the region’s skyrocketing grain demand by 2050, according to a new study from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Wageningen University and multiple African institutions.

Sub-Saharan Africa produces about 80 percent of the grain it now consumes. But that consumption could triple if its population rises an expected 250 percent by 2050. Presently, cereal crops account for about half of sub-Saharan Africa’s food and farmland.

Even if sub-Saharan yields continue rising at the rate they have over the last quarter-century, the region’s existing farmland would still produce only between a third and half of the grain needed in 2050, researchers reported Dec. 12 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The status quo is simply not acceptable,” said co-author Kenneth Cassman, professor emeritus at Nebraska and fellow of the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute. “Complacency is the enemy. This is a clarion call for action.”

To maintain even 80 percent of its self-sufficiency in 2050, sub-Saharan Africa must reach the realistic yield thresholds of corn, millet, rice, sorghum and wheat, the study found. The region currently grows about a quarter of the cereal crops it could by optimizing its plant and soil management, the authors said. Closing this gap would require what the study called a “large, abrupt acceleration” in yield trajectories similar to the Green Revolution that transformed North American, European and Asian agriculture in the mid-20th century.

“But our analysis shows that even closing the gap between potential yields using modern farming practices and current farm yields, with traditional crop varieties and little fertilizer, still leaves the area at a deficit with regard to cereals,” Cassman said. “That’s quite eye-opening, because my guess is that most people in the agricultural development community might have thought sub-Saharan Africa could be self-sufficient, or even produce excess cereal, if it were able to close existing yield gaps.”

The authors analyzed 10 sub-Saharan countries using the Global Yield Gap Atlas, which estimates the disparity between actual and potential yields while accounting for differences in soil types and climate. After assembling location-specific data and assessments from agronomists in each of the 10 countries, the team used a novel upscaling technique to estimate yield gaps at national and sub-continental levels.

Meeting future cereal demands could depend on expanding responsible irrigation use to raise yield ceilings and stabilize cereal production, said Kindie Tesfaye, agronomist with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Ethiopia. Recent analyses have documented regional aquifers that could become sources of sustainable irrigation, though the authors emphasized the importance of withdrawing only what can be replenished by rainfall and recharge.

Tesfaye said irrigation could ramp up yield thresholds by allowing farmers to annually grow a crop multiple times in the same field or introduce new cereals into yearly planting schedules.

Patricio Grassini, assistant professor of agronomy and horticulture at Nebraska, stressed that these efforts will require “massive and strategic investments in agricultural development on an unprecedented level.” Combining the yield gap findings with socioeconomic and other data, Grassini said, could inform essential upgrades to infrastructure that might include roads and water pipelines; publicly financed research and development; and farmer access to credit, state-of-the-art equipment and pest-management resources.

A failure to upgrade could force sub-Saharan Africa to transform savannahs, rainforests or other natural ecosystems into farmland – a process, the study noted, that would produce massive amounts of greenhouse gases while shrinking the habitats of native plant and animal species.

If yield growth and cropland distribution remained constant across the 10 countries, seven would lack the land area to accommodate such expansion, said Abdullahi Bala, professor at Nigeria’s Federal University of Technology, Minna. And the newly converted land would very likely prove less fertile than the region’s current farmland, Cassman said.

Though the region might also resort to importing cereal crops, the authors cautioned that many of the developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa could struggle to do so. The price spikes that often accompany drought-driven market shortages could further complicate matters.

“If it is true that sub-Saharan Africa will depend more heavily on food imports,” Grassini said, “the next question is: What would be the infrastructure networks needed to alleviate food shortages in the most vulnerable areas?”

The researchers said several sub-Saharan countries may produce surpluses that could be shared among neighbors. Though the projected surpluses would fall short of compensating for neighboring deficits, this represents one of several opportunities the region might seize to contend with the profound challenges ahead.

“To reach those goals is going to take very strategic, careful prioritization and adequate resources to do the job,” Cassman said. “Having a strategic vision of what to invest in – to fund those things that can give greatest payoff – is critical. What this work does is allow for a much more surgical look at how to do that, which just wasn’t possible before.”

Africa should look up all the websites on “wheat belly” and Celiac Disease before they eat that stuff. Cave men didn’t eat grain, ya know!

LOL #firstworldproblems are stupid when you put them in context.

Do not trust any think tank with the word “global” in their name.

20+ years ago, a “respected” analyst/author named Lester Brown predicted China’s development would cause world starvation as they drove up prices for grains to feed a growing middle class diet. To this day, China is still exporting corn, driving prices DOWN, not up - even while 300 million people there grew into the Chinese middle-class. He was spectacularly, 100% ass-wrong.

Yet if you google his name, he’s still getting kudos from all the other globalist, leftist “analysts,” think tanks and media.

The climate change wackos are going to starve millions of Africans by denying them the use of modern farm equipment and petrol energy...

Sunshine and unicorns farts pushing windmills will only produce enough electrical energy to keep the lights on barely and not power modern equipment to increase crop yields...

All in the name of saving a planet that doesn’t need saving...

Has anyone taught the people in the sub-Saharan regions that grain/cereal crops are not a balanced diet? No wonder they are starving. Why don’t they grow some veggies and fruit and raise some more livestock-and stop depending on other countries to feed them-but I suppose that would make too much sense...

Yes, one has to question the obsession with grain and cereal crops. They make sense in highly developed countries with a tiny percent of the population working in agriculture which is land rich and highly mechanized.

They make less sense in backward countries with a large percentage of the population working in agriculture which is land poor. Vegetables and fruits produce around ten times the nutrients per acre compared to cereal crops.

Grazing and animal husbandry, despite the claims of the eco freaks, is the best way to use more marginal lands. The Great Plains supported millions of buffalo at one time and the grasslands, for the most part, were more healthy because of it. It is funny how a denser population (if they have the know-how) can actually improve the land. Vermont is another example. It has more forests now than it did in 1830 and still produces far more in dairy products.

There is no reason Africa could not do the same. No reason except most of the governments are Communist-Socialist-Kleptocracies.

We learned about proper land use as kids on a small family ranch-you are right-you choose the livestock for a pasture carefully-goats and some breeds of sheep are best for poor or marginal pasturage-you can put more of them there than cattle which require way more pasturage per head-grazing accelerates and improves the growth of many pasture plants.

Small orchards do well with simple irrigation systems like trenches-anyone can do that, as well as plant veggie seeds and put up a fence and netting to keep animals out.

All of us out here grow as many of our own veggies as possible-most also keep chickens, guineas, ducks etc for eggs and meat. I’m pretty sure people in the sub Sahara can be shown how to grow “real” food and simple animal husbandry-every time some well-meaning charity or organization tries to help by giving some families in places like that a few goats the people eat the damn goats right away and howl for more-because no one told them they need to let the things breed till you have a few to milk, keep some for breeding stock, then selectively slaughter and eat some-somehow, those people have forgotten the simple good sense of farming plants and animals their ancestors had...

And that is a good illustration of why those who are sent to places in the 3d world by charitable organizations wanting to really help people should have the practical know how-and be required-to re-teach people the simple basics of farming and animal husbandry they have forgotten -because they’ve been treated like children-so they can survive and produce something besides demands for goods and assistance from the rest of the world-and the f’ing UN does not need to be involved at all, period-they are totally useless-we need to be rid of them...

Has anyone taught the people in the sub-Saharan regions that grain/cereal crops are not a balanced diet?

Yes. Yellow corn is for animals. white corn is for humans. What do we send them with our international aid?

They don't eat wheat. They ear rice, millet, and maize.

and with irrigation, proper high yield seeds, and if they destroy the tsetse fly Africa will be the world's bread basket. The Chinese are buying land there like crazy and won't let western animal lovers or antiGMO activists stop them

Exactly. There are useful organizations like World Vision and Heifer International who have people on the ground to direct donations to people who will actually use these donations as a means to grow themselves out of poverty rather than a one time meal or, even worse, an opportunity for the well-connected leadership to skim.

Rather than give a dime to UNICEF, contribute to one of them.

Hilarious story: A former gal pal of mine worked for US AID which was distributing condoms like crazy in east Africa. They thought they were so successful because young girls were taking them like crazy. It turned out that the young ladies had no idea of the intended purpose but discovered how useful they were to haul water. A tied-off condom water balloon or two in the top of their bucket prevented much of the water from slopping out on the trail from the community pump to their home.

Then I wonder even more why there is all this concern about them growing more grain by the environuts-animal husbandry and sensible vegetable farming-is less destructive land use than the clear cutting/slash and burn required for grain fields.

That is funny-but it does make sense-other birth control devices are not multi-purpose. My female cousins and I used to steal condoms from our brothers’ stashes-they do make wonderful water balloons that break when thrown and splatter water all over the intended victim better than regular balloons...

Begin with the rule of law, couple that concept with free markets and capitalism, and they will feed themselves.

Oh, and probably prosper. To include food exports , like Rhodesia used to do.

5.56mm

In much of south and east Africa, the soil is thin and is exhausted after five years, especially if you grow maize

So in tribal areas, they let the fields go fallow and burn off bushes and small trees to plant new fields. Their cattle graze and fertilize the fallow fields. They rarely eat cattle... they use them as a bank account, to buy things.e.g. wives.and to plow fields. Other tribes have goats.

with the increase in population this overgrazing often results on exhausted dusty deserts.

In India, the vegetarians supplement their diet with milk and yogurt. Africans are lactose intolerant and can’t do this.

the answer is modern farming techniques. The green NGO want them to remain in their pristine ways, so oppose this.

as for veggies...not a lot of calories or protein there, even with legumes.
Salads and steaks are fine, but if you take away rice and porridge and bread, the world would starve because they take a lot of energy to grow.

I’m sure you are right about that-increasing their yield with modern techniques can be compatible with the natural world, so that pristine nonsense makes no sense-better hybridized seeds, proper crop rotation terracing, etc are simple enough and won’t destroy the world. I think the green lobby wants to keep people from using modern farming methods for their own reasons-one of which is the control of that population...

Slash and burn or clear cutting for fields is not allowed anywhere around here-but this isn’t exactly the 3d world, either...

I’m a veggie, meat and dairy person-not a carb eater-brown rice or a baked potato now and then, but that is about all. I don’t like sweets, other than fresh fruit and don’t eat processed foods-that stuff was not available on the remote ranch I grew up on without a trip to town, so I just never developed a taste for it-I don’t even buy any feedlot or factory farmed meat-it doesn’t taste good to me.

Here in the Philippines our family grows organic rice, and we often eat organic veggies when available.chicken and fish, and sometimes pork. Beef is rarely eaten, and unless you buy it in the upscale supermarket it is waterbuffalo beef.

But eating that way is too expensive for the poor.They eat rice and fish...and some veggies, like onions beans or okra. But no one starves here.

When I worked in rural Africa, it was worse.Without irrigation there are droughts every couple of years...

the good news is the Chinese are getting into buying up farmland in Africa and they know how to grow food... chemicals, handplows, tractors, GMO food, new crops....

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