Farmers in Tanzania have
abandoned the production of coffee and cotton due mainly to changes in local climate and
resorted to the planting of more lucrative vegetables and flowers as
temperatures rise and rainfall becomes less predictable, reports NaijaAgroNet
Ludovick Meela, a farmer from Tanzania’s northern Kilimanjaro region told reporters that “Coffee beans are no longer as profitable, as my harvests keep on falling, I need fast-growing crops I can sell for a quick income,” he stated.
"When my children were growing up, coffee was everything to me," he told journalists "I got a lot of income from it, which enabled me to gain economically, but all that is history."
Information reaching NaijaAgroNet showed that in Tanzania, scientists have attributed the drop in arabica coffee yields to a rise in nighttime temperatures in recent decades.
In Honduras, banana farmers are seeing yields decline amid fierce cold snaps and erratic rain patterns. India’s wheat and rice crops are suffering from hotter weather, and in the U.S. West, enduring drought has caused the beef-cattle herd to shrink to its lowest level in more than 60 years, NaijaAgroNet learnt.
Cyriacus Nnaj/GEE
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