Medias

Africa’s agriculture revolution should focus on feeding domestic populations first.

CGIAR Climate's insight:

Within Africa, government policy should focus as much as possible on boosting yields on existing cropland.Where some cropland expansion is necessary, the task should be to find land that will produce relatively high yields at relatively low environmental cost, and should focus on serving Africa’s regional food needs first.

There is a great need for scientists to map these lands carefully at a much finer level of detail than our project could undertake. Governments could then guide conversion only of those lands with the most appropriate trade-offs.