Doing More Than Praying for Rain

In the United States, insurance against extreme weather is seen as so important that Washington subsidizes it highly and requires it for farmers who want other government benefits.  If American farmers need weather insurance, African peasant farmers need it even more.  But the vast majority of African peasant farmers have no opportunity to insure their crops.
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Virtually all small farmers in Africa depend on rain for irrigation.  Most have no safety net —  a farmer planting an acre of corn twice a year can find her family nearly destitute if the crop fails because of drought early in the planting season, or too much rain later on.   She will have invested everything she has in seeds and fertilizer.  There will be nothing left for the next planting season.
Farming an acre of grain with nothing more than a strong back and a hoe has always been precarious, but now more so than ever, because of climate change.  A report from the International Food Policy Research Institute estimates that grain crop yields in Africa will shrink substantially by 2050, there will be 10 million more malnourished children than there are today and Africans on average will be eating 21 percent fewer calories than they do today.  Small farmers around the world need many different things to help them survive climate change:  seeds resistant to extreme weather and pests, cheap irrigation systems, and better agricultural infrastructure, such as more feeder roads.  But one thing that can help small farmers now is insurance.