Unpredictable weather patterns are making it increasingly difficult for African farmers to plan. In Ghana, where maize is the main food crop, erratic rains are causing drought and floods in quick succession, and a very short growing season in between.
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00:00 Daniel Musa and his uncle are salvaging what they can.
00:04 The yams and soybeans they grew this season
00:07 are completely gone.
00:08 Most of the Amaze crop is rotten in the flood water.
00:14 - A lot of them has spoiled as you can see.
00:16 And water has carried everything away.
00:18 The one that is left is what we are picking now.
00:22 - The flooding means the corn has started germinating
00:26 right out of the husk.
00:28 There is very little that is good to eat.
00:32 - Now that the water has carried it away,
00:34 I'm sorry, we don't have any alternative
00:37 of paying our school fees, feeding the family,
00:41 and also leaving something for emergencies
00:44 like diseases and other things.
00:47 - Earlier this year,
00:48 the farmers had counted themselves lucky.
00:51 Moderate rains after April gave them reason
00:54 to hope for a good harvest.
00:56 But the downpour in August washed away those hopes
01:00 and much more besides.
01:03 - Roads, bridges, homes are gone.
01:07 People here were dependent on this year's harvest.
01:10 Now the crops they live from,
01:12 everything has been washed away.
01:15 - Mud walls were no match for the water.
01:18 Hundreds of people like Dabru Kupna
01:20 in Jimbali lost their homes.
01:22 He says that if help does not come,
01:25 he may have to leave.
01:27 - This kind of disaster has never happened to us here.
01:33 It's so strange to see this in the village
01:35 where I was born.
01:36 Water came into the rooms and people had up to here.
01:42 I've never seen this kind of thing before.
01:44 - But climate change is also shortening the growing season
01:50 and bringing drought.
01:53 This creates challenges for crop breeders.
01:56 Here they have been working to produce new varieties
02:00 that mature quickly and that tolerate the dryness.
02:03 - In areas where the season has become shorter
02:07 in what we term as terminal drought,
02:09 some of these early maturing varieties help farmers
02:13 to be resilient and to be able to cope with these problems.
02:18 We have also developed and released varieties
02:21 that are drought tolerant and intermediate.
02:24 - Intermediate crops grow rapidly
02:26 during the shorter rainy season before the drought sets in.
02:31 The reality is confronting farmers here.
02:33 Yahya Alhassan trialed the new varieties five years ago
02:38 after the seasons became unpredictable.
02:41 - If you continue to follow the old sowing plan,
02:46 you'll miss the season.
02:47 We follow the scientists' innovations
02:49 and we don't get losses.
02:51 - Yahya sows both drought tolerant
02:54 and early maturing varieties.
02:57 He says he is getting better yields now than he did
03:01 with the ones he used to plant.
03:03 He would like to see other farmers
03:06 using the new varieties too.