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"You plant your seeds and then the rain doesn't come. So next year you change your approach and you plant later, but the rain comes earlier," said Paul Thiao, a farmer and regional coordinator for the Senegalese Federation of NGOs (FONGS). "Farmers have become gamblers," he said. "The system has been disturbed and now they must take a gamble on when the rain will come. But they are gambling with their livelihoods."
The International Development Research Centre (IDRC), a Canadian organisation supporting scientific research in developing countries, is working with FONGS and other organisations to diffuse scientific and local knowledge to help Senegalese farmers adapt.
Farmers need scientific data on soil fertility levels and adaptive seed varieties in order to assure a good harvest, but traditional cultivation methods and local perspectives on climate change are also vital to maintaining crop yields, said Ndiankou Seye, head of planning and research at the government's regional council of Thiès, 70km from the capital Dakar, told IRIN. "There are things the climatologists cannot tell you and there are scientific facts that are incomprehensible to the farmer," Seye said.
Madeleine Diouf Sarr, who leads Senegal’s climate change committee at the Ministry of Environment, agreed that efforts to adapt to changing weather patterns must combine traditional and scientific knowledge. "Even though the [weather] shifts, the plants do not lie. When plants feel a certain amount of humidity they will bloom. So the indigenous approach is as valuable as the science involved," she told IRIN…..
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