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kickout

Is growing maize the best use of Subsaharan Africa land if their productivity is ~33% of 'optimized' regions?

Or is it better to sequester carbon that land? The world is not short of maize supply

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It's only the best use for them if they want to continue to eat and live.

Why does a human in Africa have a greater right to landmass and habitat than an elephant, gorilla, or giraffe?

If these humans are thriving thanks to Western technology and aid, I think we have the right to dictate their population levels and environmental impacts.

If you are asking: Is it better to somehow repurpose the areas of cropland in Sub Saharan Africa that are currently growing maize to optimize for emission reduction?

Then the answer is no, not any time soon at least. Plenty of other land is available.

- SSA has ~ 1.25B hectares of agricultural land.[0]

- The total harvested area under maize in Africa was around 38.7 million hectares in 2018.[1]

- Less than %10 of the Guinea Savannah region (a region where crops much more lucrative than maize can be grown, ~600M hectares) was farmed as of 2009.[2]

[0]https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.K2?end=2016...

[1]https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/african-...

[2]https://image.slidesharecdn.com/60366271-evolution-economic-...

Or indeed grow other crops that might be better suited to the environment in that location.

Maize ends up being one of the most economically efficient and calorically dense crops to grow. If you have very little money to invest in your land, it's definitely one of your best choices. We're trying to get farmers a bit more capital access to be able to move to more productive systems, but if you don't have an extra 50$ for fertilizer, you definitely are going to struggle to switch to potatoes.

Yes, but it's often less resilient to variations in weather than other crops that are native in the region. So it's great until you get a drought and then you end up with a famine.

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