African Green Revolution and the poor smallholder farmer | Public ...

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By Tsitsi Matope

ARUSHA, TANZANIA ? Poverty in Africa is usually associated with the rural smallholder farmers who every year toil on their farms but still fail to realise significant harvests.

Despite this depressing scenario, leaders in Africa still hinge their hope on agriculture as the main gateway to economic development, poverty, hunger and malnutrition eradication.

It is for this reason that hundreds of high level delegates from various countries in Africa and beyond descended on Arusha ? Tanzania?s second largest city ? last week to discuss the future of agriculture in the largely poverty-stricken continent.

The African Revolution Forum (AGRF), which took place between 26 and 28 September at Ngurdoto Mountain Lodge and attended by more than 1000 delegates, set the tone on the need to scale up agricultural development interventions and steer investments to strengthen a sustainable, food secure future.

This was at the backdrop of failure by most African countries to allocate 10 percent of their national budgets to agriculture development? and strive for an annual six percent annual agricultural growth in line with the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) adopted by the African Union in 2003.

Only Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Malawi, Niger and Senegal have exceeded the target to allocate 10 percent of their national budgets to agriculture.

Because of this failure, hunger, malnutrition, poverty, disease and conflicts have continued to affect many African countries, making any hopes of them ever meeting the Millennium Development Goal to eradicate poverty and hunger by 2015 an impossible achievement.

It emerged during the forum that hunger and inadequate sharing of resources were to blame for conflicts in some African countries.

The proverbial say that ?A hungry man is an angry man? is a reality in countries where poverty and hunger are at the centre of political turbulence and endless woes.

Various stakeholders attending the forum agreed that a food secure Africa, which also has the capacity to process, market, sustain supply and dictate profitable prices of produce, would help promote good health, peace, stability and prosperity.

These achievements are also at the heart of the Alliance for a Green Revolution (AGRA), a giant alliance of innovators, think-tanks and advocates for profitable, meaningful and commercial smallholder agriculture and founded by the former United Nations Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, in 2004.

The core business of AGRA together with other partners, who include Yara International, The African Union and the New Partnership for Africa?s Development (NEPAD)?s Planning and Coordinating Agency, is promoting investments in good agricultural practices, women farmers, seed and fertiliser varieties resilient to climate change? and policy support to drive agricultural productivity and income growth for African farmers.

However, the objective of last week?s forum was to identify concrete actions for the transformation of Africa?s agriculture sector.

It brought together farmer organisations, civil society, the private sector and both African and global leaders to discuss ways to provide resources, overcome challenges and improve smallholder farmers? yields in Africa.

In an interview with Public Eye, Annan said in view of a global system under increasing pressure, Africa was the most affected by sharp food price increases.

?Yet it is also a continent with abundant land and water resources where long-term solutions to global and food nutrition security can be found,? he said.

It was pertinent for developed countries and private sector organisations to keep their promises and increase support for Africa?s agriculture.

?However, African governments must also in turn, uphold their end of the bargain. Investment must rise to at least a 10 percent level of their national budgets. Right policies are also needed to increase public and private investment and partnership,? Annan said.

He added that across the board, there must be an unwavering focus on improving the productivity and profitability of smallholder farmers, most whom are women.

?We must create opportunities to enable smallholder farmers to move from subsistence farming to running their farms as businesses and also encourage community cooperation to empower individual farmers.?

Ensuring that farmers are well organised and have access to seeds, fertilisers, knowledge and rewarding markets could help transform agriculture significantly.

?Embracing new technologies and giving younger generations the greater opportunity to play a larger role in the agricultural revolution is also key,? Annan said.

He added that larger farms had a critical role to play, particularly when it comes to testing and disseminating new technologies.

?These also help to provide opportunities for aggregating smallholder production for markets.?

Annan said ability to achieve food and nutrition security both in Africa and globally depended on catalysing a sustainable Green Revolution that is cognisant of the need to increase resilience of production to climate change.

?A ?climate smart? transformation of African agriculture also works hard at increasing the productivity of land, labour and capital investment. This also includes addressing large-scale land acquisitions that risk giving away fertile arable land for other uses that have nothing to do with food production.?

Former AGRA president, Dr Namanga Ngongi also emphasised the need to increase funding, develop markets for smallholder farmers and introduce climate resilient technologies in order to maximise agricultural production.

?Yes, significant progress has been made towards an African green revolution,? he said.

?AGRA is now working in 17 Sub-Saharan countries and this has seen us reaching out to more than one million smallholder farmers through training on improved storage systems and better post- harvest handling. Farmers have also received over 330 new crop varieties developed by AGRA.?

However, in an interview with representatives of various Africa-based organisations, participants highlighted why the bulk of African smallholder farmers have remained poor despite current interventions.

The chief executive officer of Pan African Agribusiness and Agro Industry Consortium based in Kenya, Ms Lucy Muchoki, said failure by most farmers to access capital and production of high quality produce preferred by real markets was a result of poor organisational structure.

?Smallholder farmers are scattered all over and this is their weakest point. By coming together and formulating associations and cooperatives, they would be able to ask for support and produce quantities and quality required by the market,? she said.

The chief executive of National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi, Dr Dyborn Chibonga, said stakeholders should stop treating smallholder farmers as victims but partners in need of support in order to unleash their potential.

?Some of the reasons why smallholder farmers are failing to develop are policies that allow only a few to monopolise the foreign markets at the expense of the smallholder farmers,? he said.

Dr Richard Sezibera, the secretary general of the East African Community, said governments must harmonise policies and work towards establishing regional free trade markets.

?The advantages of establishing continental and regional markets include shared infrastructure, easy access by Africa?s farmers and providing the right warehousing,? he said.

Dr Sezibera argued that markets were not a problem in Africa.

?The challenge is actually less and unreliable production, low quality produce and lack of access on information of where and how farmers can take their produce to the real rewarding markets.?

He added that it was critical for Africa to start working towards making agriculture appealing to the younger generation.

?Young people are our only hope for agricultural sustainability and continued improvement in agricultural approaches.?

Mr Douglas Brew, Unilever Director for External Affairs in Africa, said as long as there is proof that there is money in agriculture, the youths would embrace the sector.

?If we do it the right way, agriculture will act as a catalytic driver that would lead to a proliferation of other businesses growing around it. What we need is to tap into the entrepreneurial energy and help diversify the thinking of young people for them to see that agriculture businesses make sense because Africa?s population is growing and the demand for food skyrocketing.?

Source: http://www.publiceye.co.ls/2012/10/05/african-green-revolution-and-the-poor-smallholder-farmer/

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