By Lacie Armstrong
Harnessing and cultivating nature is important around the world. The success of farming is strictly based on factors that tend to be out of control for farmers and ranchers, the main factor being weather conditions.
Famers are no stranger to battling harsh weather conditions such as: hard frosts, flooding, and severe droughts, all to which are very damaging and wreak havoc. One country that’s been hit the hardest by drought is Zimbabwe, located in South Africa. The most recent Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC), released in April, described the country as having experienced “its worst drought in decades” in 2019.Â
The drought, combined with other extreme weather conditions and outside factors such as serious economic difficulties, widespread poverty, high levels of HIV/AIDS and low crop productivity have also added to the devastating impact of food insecurity.
When referencing the Famine Early Warning Systems Network and United Nations, the report went on to describe Zimbabwe as “experiencing one of its worst acute food insecurity crises in a decade, with atypically high humanitarian food assistance needs.” Zimbabwe’s problems are serious and systemic, this is driving farmers to explore different an efficient techniques to continue to produce agriculture.
One technique is uses “dead level contours” to harvest rainwater. A dead level contour is a flat channel dug into the earth which can be used to store water. Â
For other farmers the energy produced by solar panels has proved to be a useful tool.
Lastly, farmers are relying on the importance of countryside and how it could have an impact on people’s lives and the environment. The impaction would be healthy and pleasant benefits by keeping the countryside alive with a renewed farming system means that resources that were once forgotten, will be brought back.  Even minor developments can play an important role when it comes to maintaining biodiversity like “small wetlands”, a.k.a ponds.
These three changes in techniques help elements such as water to not only provide water but to host insects and frogs. This immediately results in a more productive farming system without any need of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. This alone, will help farmers combat food insecurity by harnessing solar and smart techniques to work the land.
