Farmers in Ghana’s Upper East region traditionally decided when to plant and harvest their crops in rhythm with regular rainfall cycles. But the rains now come at increasingly odd times, farmland is turning into desert, and farmers have been forced to endure temperatures high enough to melt tarmac. Amid these impacts, agroforestry is offering a glimmer of hope: by integrating trees, crops and livestock on their fields, farmers are finding ways to restore their land and secure livelihoods. Climate change is increasingly visible in the Upper East, a savanna landscape in northern Ghana that usually experiences five months of rain between July and August, tapering off by October. Isaac Papanko grows millet near the small town of Bongo. “When I was a child, the rains came when they were supposed to, and the land could hold water. Now, the soil cracks under the sun, and crops wither before they can even grow,” he told Mongabay by phone. His story is reiterated by many others, highlighting the uncertainty that’s replacing once reliable cycles. In the fields that spread beyond the mud-walled compounds of Bolgatanga, the regional capital, Ibrahim Tuzee acknowledged the ways that residents have exacerbated the impacts of changing weather. Like many others, his family supplements its harvest of millet, sorghum and maize with income from selling firewood. “We cut trees down to make space for farming, but we didn’t know it would bring this kind of hardship. The winds are harsher without the trees, and the soil gets blown…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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