Farmers on the Nile are going back to school to combat climate change

Sitting on the floor with tens of colleagues at a makeshift outdoor classroom in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Assiut, Ragab Ibrahim looks impressed with how the group’s lecturer has offered solutions to most of his farming woes.

Realizing that most of what he thought he knew about agriculture was wrong and that he now can deal scientifically with farming challenges, the 37-year-old farmer is remarkably cheerful.

“Before attending this classroom, I had a laundry list of concerns. These include changing weather conditions, the heat, the cold and the rising costs of fuel and fertilizers,” says Ibrahim while holding tight his traditional gallabiya robe. “However, now I can face all of that,” he tells Quartz as the lecturer—a distinguished agronomist from Cairo – proceeds with the day’s lesson.

With a change in precipitation and temperature increase caused by climate change in the Nile Valley, Egypt’s farmers are panicking as the changes are badly affecting their crop yields as well as their health—threatening a way of life and farming that goes back to the time of the pharaohs.

That is why some of them have decided to go back to school through a new UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) program where they meet in small groups once a week for four months to learn new techniques and exchange expertise.

(Courtesy/FAO)

Zahra Ahmed, the FAO’s lead project manager in Egypt, says that the program shows farmers how to save water, improve germination and pick better seeds in order to preserve the health of their crops and increase their yield. “It also gives them an idea about what climate change is and how to cope with it,” she adds.

Egypt produces less than 1% of the world’s total emissions of greenhouse gases. However, the North African country is believed to be one of the most vulnerable to the impacts and risks of climate change due to its unique combination of geography, population distribution, land-use and economic activity.

According to a 2010 report by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a rise in sea levels, perhaps the most direct effect of global warming, can have potentially devastating effects on Egypt’s agriculture crop production in the densely-populated Nile Delta area.

With these farming troubles, increasing numbers of farmers have been toying with the idea of abandoning the practice altogether—an idea that would have been regarded blasphemous for their ancestors.

“Many farmers have moved in to the cities to work as taxi or tuk-tuk (an auto rickshaw) drivers,” says Osama Fawzi, a farmer who owns a two-feddan (1.038 acres) plot in Minya, about 265 kilometers south of the capital. “No-one can farm in such conditions,” he adds referring to the unpredictable weather patterns and the rising cost of fuel and fertilizers.

To help manage their farms during this difficult period, the FAO opened 15 schools across five governorates, namely Assuit, Aswan, Beni Sueif, Fayoum and Sohag. In these regions, groups of 15 to 25 farmers meet once per week to discuss their farming woes and learn about more scientific agricultural techniques.

“After adopting the program’s efficient agricultural practices in one of the regions: Beni Sueif, crop yields have increased by 50%,” the FAO’s official Ahmed says.

Mohamed Ahmed, a farmer in Beni Sueif, says that usually in the summer season he and his fellow farmers used to water down the crop most of the time due to the heat in order not to make it thirsty. “However, after taking this training program with the FAO, we have learned that we can make the crop a little ‘thirsty’ during the summer and that has helped us a lot increase our crop yields,” he adds.

FAO official Ahmed says the farmers have also developed new techniques on picking better seeds and have started to plant pulses, fruits and vegetables which are not usually grown in the five governorates in order to encourage the consumption of nutrient-dense crops and to diversify the daily diet.

Now, after the FAO students have seen improvement in their crop yields and health, their peers are asking them to tell what they have learnt. “My friend who declined to come and learn with me at the farmers’ school is now asking me to teach him about the new techniques … he has changed his mind after he saw the results,” Ibrahim says.

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