Dynamic interactions between and within the bio-geophysical and human environments lead to the production, processing, distribution, preparation and consumption of food, resulting in food systems that underpin food security. Food systems encompass food availability (production, distribution and exchange), food access (affordability, allocation and preference) and food utilization (nutritional and societal values and safety), so that food security is, therefore, diminished when food systems are stressed. Such stresses may be induced by a range of factors in addition to climate change and may be particularly severe when these factors act in combination.
Kowack Alphonse is a large scale farmer in Johanesbul, an outskirt of the Yaounde city of Cameroon and tells a story of the changes he has experience in his profession during a working visit by the CECOSDA. For the past 18 years of his profession, he has been practicing the mixed farming system and he produces crops like maize, beans, groundnuts, cocoyam, cassava, plantains, and vegetables like spiny pigweed, a specie called Amaranth spinosus (locally known as “Fullong”). As a result of climatic variations, Kowack explains that he has experience a remarkable reduction in yield with an estimated decrease from about 25 bags/harvest (in the early 2000s) to less than 10 bags/harvest (from the last harvest of March 2015) bags of maize, and other products suffer the same problem; his farms have experienced a drastic increase in infections from food and waterborne bacteria, viruses, parasites and bio toxins. Also, direct effect of climatic changes on crops like changes in rainfall patterns leading to drought, warmer temperatures has led to changes in the length of growing season and the loss of certain plant species that can no longer yield well with the present climatic conditions in the Centre region of Cameroon like cucumber.
Despite the decrease in productivity, the demand for food increases constantly. The consequence of this is an increase in the prices of food which influences the availability and affordability of food; a great threat to food security. Food prices are a key indicator of the effects of climate change on agriculture and, even more importantly, on food affordability and security. Food prices increase for all staple crops because climate change acts as an additional stressor on the already tightening price outlook. Under climate change, maize, rice, and wheat prices in 2050 are projected to be 4, 7, and 15 percent higher than under the historic climate scenario (a geometric progression).
Climate change thus will increase the number of malnourished children in both 2030 and 2050. Without climate change, child malnutrition levels in Cameroon and the Central Africa in general are projected to decline from 28 percent in 2000 to 24 percent in 2030 and 19 percent in 2050. Under climate change, child malnutrition which increased by an additional 0.5 million children in 2010, would be higher by 1 million children in 2030, and would still be higher by 0.6 million children by 2050. Changes in agricultural trade flows as a result of climate change are driven by changes in the local biophysical and socio-economic environment, as well as a wide-ranging set of local, regional, national, and international trade policies.
M. Nkwelle Nkede Flabert