Cereal yields in the Sudano-Sahel region of sub-Saharan Africa are among the lowest in the world, and are expected to worsen under climate change over the next three decades, irrespective of scenario. Because the populations of the Sudano-Sahel are also among the world’s poorest, identification of effective adaptation strategies for regional farmers is not only necessary, but pressing.

Farmers will need to adapt to both longer-run temperature and precipitation shifts as well as to changes in climate variability and frequency of extreme events. The suite of potential adaptations ranges, on the low-tech end, from autonomous farm-level adjustments (altering planting dates, switching crops, etc.) to high-tech solutions including development of new engineered varietals, irrigation infrastructure, precision input techniques etc. Adoption of both autonomous and technology-based adaptations will be further mediated by access to information, inputs, and markets.

I study the higher-tech end of this spectrum, frequently focusing on the connections between energy services and food security and the role that energy technologies can play in agricultural adaptation in the Sudano-Sahel and the greater developing world. My work is currently grouped under three themes:

Design and evaluation of distributed “clean” irrigation technologies

1. These projects study the impacts -- environmental, economic, nutritional, and social -- of distributed water delivery and irrigation technologies in the rural Sudano-Sahel. The technologies under study are all variations of the “African Market Garden” (AMG), a low-pressure drip irrigation system and management package developed by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT-Niamey), and this work is conducted in collaboration with ICRISAT scientists. [more...]
   

Agricultural greenhouse gas emissions

1. Reversal of the current global warming trend requires a short-term leveling off and longer-term reduction and elimination of GHG emissions. Current mitigation efforts understandably focus on the energy and transportation sectors as the main climate offenders; still, global agriculture (not including land-use change) accounts for 10-15% percent of GHG emissions and must eventually be addressed. Since the primary sources of agricultural emissions are nitrogenous fertilizer production and use, enteric fermentation, N2O and CH4 production in rice, and manure management, mitigation of agricultural emissions remains a daunting task. These projects seek to quantify future agricultural emissions and investigate mitigation opportunities for emissions from agricultural intensification and nitrogenous fertilizer production, use, and loss. [more...]