The climate emergency affects us all deeply, in so many ways. However, for farmers, it has implications that are more drastic. It undermines all aspects of the food systems that they depend on. Extreme weather devastates their crops and livestock, and destabilises the very water cycle that they are intimately a part of.

Today, the majority of the solutions put forth and funded by governments and donors to address these problems are, in the long term, making things worse. Industrial agricultural methods, posing as “Climate Smart Agriculture”, encourage excessive use of chemical inputs on plants and in the soil, another example of the disadvantageous solutions brought by the dominant and empowered elites. 

​However, there is a different narrative at work in Africa. The stories in this Barefoot Guide by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) show that African farmers, long seen as victims, are beginning to implement lasting, sustainable solutions  to the climate crisis in Africa. Indeed, they are examples that could well be followed by all farmers. Through agroecology practices, not only are farmers naturally adapting to the inevitable and growing harm of the climate crisis, but they can also make significant contributions to its mitigation.