FEATURE - Climate Change Adds to Africa Cotton Farmers' Woes
Date: 16-Aug-07
Country: TOGO
Author: John Zodzi
Known as "white gold" to peasant farmers whose living depends on it, cotton has long been one of the few cash crops they can cultivate without irrigation across West Africa's arid Sahel, bringing much-needed funds into poor villages.
But these days farmers complain the rains don't last long enough to grow a full crop.
"We will have to adapt to these climatic conditions if they stay like this with time," Messan Ewovor, director general of Togo's cotton company Sotoco, told Reuters during an industry workshop convened in Togo last week to address the problem.
It isn't so much the volume of rain -- torrential downpours have caused flash flooding across much of West Africa in recent weeks, sweeping away villages and transforming hitherto dry river beds into raging torrents.
The real problem is the rainy season, during which crops are traditionally grown, is getting shorter.
Fears among some industry players at last week's conference that the growing season is shrinking from six months to as little as three may well prove alarmist, but experts are increasingly accepting climate change in the region as a fact.
"In the Sahelian region of Africa, warmer and drier conditions have led to a reduced length of growing season with detrimental effects on crops," experts said in an April report to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
"The area suitable for agriculture, the length of growing seasons and yield potential, particularly along the margins of semi-arid and arid areas, are expected to decrease," they said.
"This would further adversely affect food security and exacerbate malnutrition in the continent. In some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent by 2020."
NO EASY ANSWERS
That could spell disaster for millions of farmers across West Africa who already blame Washington's subsidies to US farmers for depressing world market prices.
Many farmers in places like Mali, West Africa's second biggest producer, already run at a technical loss, and things could get worse if they find they have less cotton to sell.
"It's in the interests of researchers and cotton farmers to select seeds that would withstand a shorter growing season," said Yves Mado Nagou, Togo's farms minister.
Such solutions may help, but could take time and more investment in research capacity and technical back-up than the industry has on the ground in Africa.
Another option may be to turn to organic production, said Celestin Tiendrebeogo, president of the Association Cotton Association (ACA) which convened last week's workshop.
Appealing to such premium market segments could even help turn some competitive disadvantages -- African farmers tend to do everything by hand, unlike their highly mechanised counterparts in the southern United States -- into advantages.
However, given the industry's heavy reliance on chemical nitrate-based fertiliser and pest control, organic production could be a tall order for many farmers in the region.
"We have been thinking about organic cotton for some time, but the technology is expensive and requires training for researchers and farmers," Sotoco's Ewovor said.
In any case, upgrading to premium quality can only work if there are customers prepared to pay a premium price.
Senegal's national cotton company SODEFITEX, which is operated by French company Dagris, registered as a Fair Trade producer several years ago, but as Commercial Director Moustapha Diop said earlier this year, "We've got to find someone to buy it".
He said a tiny fraction of the company's projected 2006/07 output would be sold as Fair Trade cotton.
"You see the whole thing is problematic," Ewover said.
(Additional reporting by Alistair Thomson in Dakar)