Burkina Faso : Coping with less rain

The heat wave that started in March has not yet, two months later, given way to the first rainfall of the new farming season, except in a few isolated parts of Burkina Faso.

"The good, generous years - when farming could begin in April thanks to early, plentiful and lasting rains - are long behind us," remarks 60-year-old farmer Abel Raogo, sitting in his field in the shade of a shea tree. "Forty years ago, we weren't tormented by constant anxiety and uncertainty, worried about poor harvests, like we are today."

Hamadou Tamboura farms and raises livestock near Sapouy. He moved there five years ago from the arid Sahel region in Burkina's north. But now his land in Sapouy has become exhausted and no longer produces enough.

Raogo and Tamboura toil in different areas but the two farmers have seen the reality of the changing weather, although they are not sure of the reasons. They do not ask for explanations of "climate change." They do understand the immediate dangers represented by degrading soils, drying rivers and other changes in their environment - and they want urgent, concrete solutions to those problems.

Burkina's economy is based mainly on agriculture, which provides livelihoods for 80 per cent of the population. Natural constraints, such as degraded soils, recurrent droughts, deforestation and spreading deserts, have a major impact. They combine to make people's lives more vulnerable.

Over the past four decades, Burkina has experienced frequent extremes of climate. Drought in the 1970s caused a serious famine, which cost numerous lives and major livestock losses. Although famine has been less severe since then, it remains a frequent spectre in parts of the country.

Over the decades, Burkina's desert areas have been spreading. Lower rainfall and higher temperatures have contributed to the silting and evaporation of lakes and rivers and a long-term decline in the capacity of water reservoirs. In the Central Plateau region, according to government figures, three-quarters of the 84 dams and reservoirs are silted and require rehabilitation. Farmers report that some dams and reservoirs no longer hold enough water during the dry season to enable them to produce crops.

Ironically, the north, which usually has Burkina's lowest average rainfall levels, has in recent years sometimes experienced unexpectedly heavy rains.

The government has initiated action on a variety of fronts.They include developing small-scale irrigation projects on 26,000 hectares of land and training thousands of farmers in irrigation techniques and water management, as part of a decade-long plan to promote irrigated farming.

Other measures include starting or completing construction of more than two dozen medium-sized dams and water reservoirs,producing more than 8 million tree seedlings to replant 13,000 hectares of land, planting more than 1,660 kilometres of "living hedges" as wind breaks,rehabilitating nearly 4,000 hectares of degraded land and fixing sand dunes over nearly 350 hectares in the Sahel.

Farmers are also being encouraged to adopt improved and hardy new seed varieties that require less water, such as high-yielding cassava and the New Rice for Africa (Nerica).

AllAfrica.com