Africa’s favourite crop, maize, is struggling to cope with the vagaries of a changing climate. It might even have to have to be dropped in favour of more traditional crops such as sorghum and cassava.
So says the first continent-wide study of how crop yields change with major oscillations in global climate such as El Niño and the North Atlantic Oscillation. It concludes that 20 million Africans go hungry in the years when the climate is not in their favour (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 103, p 3049).
In the worst case, a strong El…
