Innovations in Sustainable Agriculture: Supporting Climate-Friendly Food Production

Fifteen or twenty years ago, it was easy for pastoralists in Samburu, Kenya, to find water for their Zebu cattle, a livestock breed that has adapted over centuries to the region’s hot temperatures and arid landscape. But today things have changed. Water is increasingly scarce, and in 2010 and 2011 severe drought across eastern Africa killed thousands of animals, including 60 percent of herds in parts of Kenya and Ethiopia. The drought also fueled or intensified conflicts over grazing and water rights between many of the region’s communities.

In Russia, meanwhile, wheat farmers experienced the worst drought in over a century in 2010: one-quarter of the country’s wheat crop was lost, and forest fires raged across more than a million hectares. At the height of the drought, Russia’s then-President Dmitri Medvedev, who previously had voiced skepticism about climate change, urged, “What’s happening with the planet’s climate right now needs to be a wake-up call to all of us.”