From VOA Learning English.docVIP

From VOA Learning English, this is the?Agriculture Report. A new study says the speed and severity(严重性) of climate change could cause major damage to small African farms. These farmers are already struggling to deal with the effects of climate change. The study was released at the African Green Revolution Forum in Addis Ababa last month. It is called the 2014 African Agriculture Status Report. David Sarfo Ameyaw was a lead producer of the report. He is a director at AGRA, the Alliance（联盟） for a Green Revolution in Africa. Small-scale farmers are the backbone of African agriculture. About 70-percent of the rural population in sub-Saharan Africa are small-scale farmers. They produce about 80-percent of the food need in Africa, said Ameyaw. Climate change may be impacting(影响) some farmers more than others. Scientists have found that small-scale family farmers across Africa are being overwhelmed with（被压垮） the pact and severity of climate change. Small-scale farmers grow most of the staple(主要的) crops in Africa on fields that are usually from 2 to 10 hectares. Small-scale farmers in Africa are much less productive than those in other continents. In African countries, farmers produce about one-point-five tons of cereal（谷物） from each hectare. Farmers in many other countries produce more than five tons per hectare. Mr Ameyaw says there are several reasons for this difference. About 90-precent of these farms are rain-fed, which means that they depend on the weather. Weather is rainfall. Weather is drought. Weather is [an] increase in temperature. They are [more] exposed to these climate effects than any other part of the world. On top of that most of them use their own labor or family labor. They are not mechanized（？）, he said. The AGRA report says farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are also dealing with rising temperatures. Its been projected （计划）that within the next 35 years the increase in temperature will be between one-point-five to two-point-five degrees . This major rise