In sub-Saharan Africa, 95 percent of crop land depends on rain, and as the impacts of climate change become more evident, scientists predict that rainfall will decline in the coming decades. But rain-fed areas also hold the biggest potential for boosting efficiency of water resources on the farm.
Increasing demand for water is threatening the livelihood of millions of small-scale farmers. But support from governments, development agencies, and NGOs can help make technologies, such as human-powered pumps and affordable micro-irrigation, more accessible to smallholder farmers.
Danielle Nierenberg, an expert on livestock and sustainability, currently serves as Project Director of State of World 2011 for the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental think tank. Her knowledge of factory farming and its global spread and sustainable agriculture has been cited widely in the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, and
other publications.
Danielle worked for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. She is currently traveling across Africa looking at innovations that are working to alleviate hunger and poverty and blogging everyday at Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet. She has a regular column with the Mail & Guardian, the Kansas City Star, and the Huffington Post and her writing was been featured in newspapers across Africa including the Cape Town Argus, the Zambia Daily Mail, Coast Week (Kenya), and other African publications. She holds an M.S. in agriculture, food, and environment from Tufts University and a B.A. in environmental policy from Monmouth College.
