1) Beating famine in Southern Africa will require massive efforts to improve the productivity, prosperity, and resilience of smallholder farmers, who make up the majority of the region's economically active population. 2) Climate change is exacerbating the challenges, with projections of increased temperatures and decreased rainfall leading to more frequent droughts and floods that damage crops. 3) Sustainable land management techniques can help boost agricultural systems' resilience to extreme weather and maintain productivity, though overcoming barriers to adoption like initial costs and lack of support is difficult. 4) Efforts to promote sustainable land management must be integrated with other responses like social safety nets, diversification programs, and rural employment to fully improve smallholder liv

1. Beating Famine in Southern Africa
Accelerating impact through landscape and livelihoods regeneration
Statement by Florence Rolle, FAO Representative in Malawi
Tuesday 14 April, 2015
His Excellencies
Distinguished
All Protocols Observed,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am very pleased to be here at the opening of this conference which addresses themes so
closely tied with the mission of the United Nations in general and the Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) in particular – to end hunger in the world and to ensure our agricultural
systems are sustainable.
Let me start by noting that improving the productivity, prosperity and resilience of
smallholder farmers in southern Africa is absolutely essential to beating famine and ending
hunger in the region. At present there are an estimated 52.41 million people economically
active in agriculture in the southern African region, most of which are smallholder farmers
and estimates are that this population will continue to grow over the next 30 years. These
people are dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods and all too often these livelihoods are
vulnerable to failures that lead to hunger – failures in production, food and agricultural
product markets, failures in social safety nets and relief programs. And this explains why we
1
State of FoodandAgriculture Report 2012 – Statistical Annex – Economically active populationin agriculture and agricultural share of
total economicallyactivepopulation,2010(includingAngola, Botswana, Comoros,Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Malawi, Mozambique,
Swaziland, South Africa, UnitedRepublic of Tanzania,Zambia andZimbabwe)

2. find high rates of extreme poverty and food insecurity amongst the rural populations of
Southern Africa.
Beating famine in this region will take a concerted and massive effort to eliminate the failures
that prevent rural smallholders from realizing improvements in their livelihood and to provide
the enabling conditions for smallholders to enhance the productivity, resilience and prosperity
of their agricultural systems.
This challenge is now made more severe by the effects of climate change. The fifth
assessment report of the IPCC released just last year provides stark projections of just how
much climate change could affect southern African agriculture. The report finds that
temperature increases of 2.5 – 3 degrees Celsius by 2050 are likely under some scenarios,
together with a decrease in overall rainfall. More frequent & intense droughts/floods are
already being experienced resulting in almost complete crop failure in some areas during bad
years. These changes are already having a profound effect on agricultural systems and
livelihoods in Southern Africa, and these effects can be expected to continue and deepen.
That, in turn, has profound effects on how we should be supporting smallholder agriculture in
the region. It means that boosting the resilience of agro-ecosystems to withstand extreme
events and yet maintain productive capacity is now an essential aspect we must integrate into
our planning, prioritization and programming. It also means that farmers are facing more
variability in their production conditions and more uncertainty – and thus building capacity to
respond to this fundamental shift is key for enabling improvements in smallholder livelihoods.
Now let me turn to the issue of sustainable land management (SLM) and its role in beating
famine in this region. SLM is the name given to a broad range of techniques and practices
that farmers, herders and foresters can adopt to improve the productivity and resilience of
production systems. SLM techniques build ecosystem services such as water retention

3. capacity of soils, pest and disease resistance, or erosion control – and these services augment
the resilience of the agro-ecosystem and production. SLM can also include the use of capital
inputs like inorganic fertilizer, improved seeds and so on, within an integrated system where
ecosystem services are an essential component and are complementary to the benefits of
capital inputs. We have a lot of experience and examples of SLM techniques for the Southern
African region and conservation agriculture is one prominent example. Our experience has
shown that there is a wide variation in the types and combinations of SLM practices farmers
adopt in the region and that the productivity and resilience impacts of any of these depends on
the type of agro-ecologies, weather patterns and production system – that is, the changes in
agricultural systems that can improve production vary, within and between countries and
agro-ecosystems. This knowledge and experience gives us, as a community, a strong base for
scaling up SLM in the region.
We also have knowledge and experience with the considerable barriers farmers face in
adopting SLM techniques, and the difficulties of achieving a wide scale and long term
transformation of agricultural systems in the region. We know that the benefits to farmers of
SLM systems are often not seen for a few years, and this creates major problems for poor
people dependent on the immediate returns from their production. We know that often the
site specific recommendations that are needed on the most suitable SLM intervention are not
available, nor are the needed extension services, seed, equipment and other inputs available.
We know that policies such as land tenure policies or food and agricultural policies can create
disincentives for farmers in adopting certain practices. So just having knowledge about the
improved productivity or resilience of an SLM technique is not enough – we need to have
knowledge, willingness and capacity to overcome the barriers to their implementation.
We have to be careful to avoid thinking that SLM is the only solution to improving rural
livelihoods, and put it in the broader context of responses to improving smallholder

4. livelihoods in Southern Africa. SLM certainly plays a major role in supporting the adaptation
of the agriculture sector in Southern Africa to future uncertainty but there are other pieces
which have to be systematically integrated into policy support for smallholders. A first step is
to ensure that climate effects are adequately integrated into the planning and programming of
SLM interventions. It is also essential to consider the role of SLM within the full set of
policy and program interventions that can enhance rural livelihoods, such as social safety nets,
agriculture and income diversification programs, irrigation systems, value chain development
and rural employment programs. We need to identify not just when and how SLM does
provide the best response to beating famine– but also where linkages to other policy responses
are key to realizing its effectiveness.
UN agencies are providing technical and policy support to realize the potential of SLM to
improve smallholder livelihoods in Southern Africa through programs like Climate-Smart
Agriculture, Conservation Agriculture (CA), Climate Change. Malawi and Zambia partnered
with FAO to implement the first CSA project, and through this project an evidence base that
integrates the effects of climate change on agricultural planning and prioritization has been
developed, as well as investment proposals to support their implementation.
UN agencies such as FAO, UNDP, WFP have been working on Conservation Agriculture in
Southern Africa for quite a long time. Recently the Conservation Agriculture Regional
Working Group was established with National CA Task Forces in a number of countries
across southern Africa. These groups bring together stakeholders in the field to overcome the
various practical and policy obstacles to farmers adopting the techniques. The group is
currently chaired by the African Conservation Tillage Network with FAO performing the
secretariat function.

5. In addition FAO together with other UN agencies is working in several other areas that
enhance the resilience of rural livelihoods, such as social safety net programs and their
relationship to improving production systems.
Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I wish you a very fruitful conference and assure you of the strong support of the UN agencies
in general and FAO in particular to this important effort.