With the rapidly ever changes in the climate, farmers and agriculturalists are rising against this natural, and sometimes man-made, phenomenon of climate change to provide alternatives on food security for the people around the globe.
Mr. Assan Njie is one of the young Gambian agriculturists who are busy providing these alternatives, as he recently asserted to Mansa Banko Online during an interview, on the importance of conservation farming–which improves agricultural production and fights against climate change and its effects on food production.
The Higher Diploma in Agriculture Student at the Gambia College School of Agriculture, said this farming system helps the soil to maintain its fertility and productivity, and that it also minimizes heavy and deep plowing to prevent soil disturbances so as to protect the soil structure, text, and horizon.
Njie, through this media, enjoins Gambian farmers to always practice crop rotation whereby they would be growing crops, such as cereals like maize and cowpea of the legumes, in sequences.
According to the young Agriculturist, the cultivation of cover crops, mulching and even using crop leaves and stems to cover the soil improve its protection against damaging effects.
To fight against climate change in farming, Njie posited, farmers need to grow trees as windbreakers to protect the soil from the wind, so as to maintain topsoil fertility; grow trees and crops in the same rows; and use the counter farming methods which encourage the growing of crops in slops to prevent erosion and soil fertility movement.
The effects of climate change can be felt globally, but according to climate scientists, Africa bears the brunt of the global phenomenon even though it’s one of the least contributors to the forces that lead to climate change, such as carbon emissions.
For Gambian environmentalists and agriculturists, this calls for national concerted efforts to confront the common threat to agricultural production and food security in the Gambia.
