Madagascar is particularly vulnerable to climate change, as more numerous cyclones, rising seas and additional rain erode coastal areas, while prolonged drought and desertification plagues the southern part of the island nation. In addition to those climate challenges, Madagascar is a developing country that at times has struggled to feed itself even while boasting the most biodiverse ecology in the world.
To help Madagascan farmers adapt, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has awarded the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut at the University of Georgia an additional $2.5 million to work in partnership with the Global Collaboration on Sorghum and Millet at Kansas State University on a resilient rotation of peanut, sorghum and millet that will improve soil conditions, make farms more productive, feed people and protect the natural environment.
The UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences is already home to the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut, a 10-year, $29 million program to improve food security and nutrition across Africa through peanut. The additional $2.5 million, two-year project was approved by the USAID mission in Madagascar in September.
“Feed the Future Innovation Labs are driving novel solutions to the increasingly complex challenges we face today,” said Dina Esposito, Feed the Future Deputy Coordinator and USAID’s assistant to the administrator for resilience, environment and food security. “USAID is pleased to advance the Peanut Innovation Lab's critical contribution to support small-scale farmers and their communities.”
Over the years, the Peanut Innovation Lab has built collaborative partnerships between scientists in the U.S. and Africa who work together to solve problems that threaten food security.
“Madagascar is a unique place but faces many of the same challenges that we see in the other African countries where the Peanut Innovation Lab works,” said Innovation Lab Director Dave Hoisington. “USAID has seen an opportunity to use the expertise and systems that we have built to improve the food system in Madagascar.
“A stronger food system not only benefits farmers and consumers, it also can help to preserve the forests that are home to plants and animals that are unique to the island.”
There are more unique species of plants and animals living in Madagascar than on the rest of the African continent and more than 80% of its species can be found nowhere else on Earth.
But many farmers in Madagascar, similar to farmers across much of sub-Saharan Africa, can’t afford machinery, fertilizer, irrigation or pesticides that are available to growers in the U.S. Instead, farmers with poor soils resort to slash-and-burn agriculture, which destroys habitat and compounds the negative effects of climate change.
Source: uga.edu
Photo Credit: pexels-karolina-grabowska
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