Conserving Water for Food and Nutrition Security in Changing Climate

Climate change and poverty have been described as the two defining challenges of the 21st century. Climate change impacts water, energy, food/nutrition, feeds and livelihoods leading to increased hunger, malnutrition and starvation. And as these effects become more apparent, this must invoke the need and urgency to seek for alternatives to conventional sources of food/nutrition, energy and livelihoods before the adaptive capacity and resilience of hundreds of millions of the poor in Sub-Saharan Africa become overwhelmed by events.

In tropical regions, crop yields and grazing quality are already at their limits of temperature sensitivity. Higher temperatures will shorten the growing seasons of staple crops. Indeed, the only way out of the threatening food/nutrition, water and energy crisis is to apply appropriate approaches that produce more from the available land and water resources and making livestock the basis for renewable energy production. Indeed, a complete reassessment of the nature and viability of current staple cereal crops and farming systems may be necessary as grass cereal maize-a major staple for the poor- experience reduced production by 30% in the next three decades due to unfavorable weather. However, diversification of production and consumption habits can contribute significantly to improved health and nutrition, livelihoods, households’ food security and ecological sustainability, to impact on strategies for public health.

Therefore, this paper will demonstrate how Strategic Poverty Alleviation Systems-SPAS integrates grain amaranth-a non grass cereal which is drought resistant (requires a third of the water needed by grass cereals like maize and sorghum) into the interactions between people, plants, livestock and environment (PeoPLE) to contribute in transforming current models, policies and behaviors while supporting and propagating locally practiced alternatives to conventional production systems and methods while promoting people’s participation and empowerment at low cost. Grain amaranth has the earliest maturity period among cereals of between 45-75 days in Kenya.

The PeoPLE model holistically and effectively address food/nutrition security problems relevant to the poor, especially small scale farmers who largely depend on rain-fed agriculture and pastoralism for their livelihoods, making them directly vulnerable to climate change. It also shatters the myth that without our usual staple cereals like maize, we cannot break from the yoke of perennial food/nutrition poverty. Small-scale farmers grow grain amaranth currently identified as ‘underutilized’- a non-grass cereal, that is also, diseases and pest resistant and a nutritional powerhouse for food and income and by-products fed to livestock whose dung produces methane converted into electricity.