Research synergy key for climate-nutrition action

Roda Ogake a paw paw farmer checks some of her fruits at her Riosiri home in Kisii County. [Sammy Omingo, Standard]

As a child in the mid-90s, while adjusting to life in semi-arid lands back home, the reality of food insecurity hit hard. We had been forced out of a place of plenty, with milk and fruits, vegetables and variety of starch, to a land of abundant love but scarce food.

The idea of unpredictable meal patterns was unfathomable, until we lived it. Yet this was the norm for many a family, for whom a meal a day would just be fine. We would only meet milk in tea, at an unfair ratio of roughly one to 10 cups of water. Fruits were largely wishes, sometimes appearing in lullabies, especially bananas, as reward for good manners. I remember queuing for relief food, once. It had been raining, and there was plenty of grain in farms, but not dry enough to be harvested. All this was nothing compared to the suffering of families in other arid and semi-arid lands that lose livestock to famine every time drought prolongs. As if a curse, drought always precedes deadly floods, and any surviving livestock swept, driving communities deeper into poverty. Others in flood-prone areas are displaced, sometimes by landslides, and their farming around lakes, hills and rivers rendered useless.