Africa: So Much Land...not Enough Crops

It's early in the evening and I'm watching some silly television variety show complete with dancing girls and amateur singers. Every so often the program is interrupted by appeals for money to buy food for the beleaguered country of Africa. I've made donations in various forms and for various organizations, but I have to wonder just how much donations of this kind actually help. You would think that Africa -- a country that for example has half the population of India (itself a country that only has 1/12 of the land area Africa yet is food self-sufficient) -- would be able to feed itself but can't, despite the country's seemingly abundant resources. A simple question with a complex answer.

Consider the facts:

According to an 18 April article posted on www.truthabouttrade.org African agriculture is far behind when compared to other developing regions: only 7% of the arable land is irrigated compared to 40% in Asia. In Africa, only 22 kilograms of fertilizer is applied per hectare of arable land compared to 144 kilograms in Asia. What's more, the number of tractors per 1,000 hectares of arable land is 3 times greater in Asia and 8 times greater in Latin America than in Africa. The road density is more than 2.5 times higher in Latin America and 6 times higher in Asia than in Africa.

Not to mention that institutions of agricultural higher education, research and extension are poorly staffed, under equipped and funded.

I don't mean to kick a country when it's down. It's probably a good thing that Truth about Trade didn't use the United States as its base otherwise we'd really see a difference in production and output.

Now, we've all heard about the sorry state of African agriculture: to much land, that's too dry and too difficult to coax a crop out of. But www.grain.org points out that perhaps the biggest culprit isn't the difficulty in farming, but in the farmers being motivated to produce surplus crops: by looking down the road and not just at immediate needs. "...West African agriculture is essentially rooted in small family farms. The families work on the land first to feed themselves and then to sell their produce. This kind of farming is considered archaic by some, but this is what we have..."

So what is the solution?

It's taken a long time, but according to www.sciencemag.org, the so-called linear approach to agricultural research and development is being abandoned in favor of holistic innovation that looks at the whole agricultural system and involves all the factors. This is in contrast to the approach where researchers would look at different aspects of agricultural systems separately. That meant that the value of success in one part (say in developing a high yielding variety) could be lost by failure in another part of the system (say by lack of market for the increased production).

For example, during last year's African Fertilizer Summit (www.africafertilizersummit.org), researchers discussed not why farmers don't enough access to fertilizer; but instead addressed the problems that prevent rural traders from stocking it. Those problems may arise from lack of credit, bad roads and government fertilizer import policies among others.

The discussion of feeding is really a two-pronged argument: one track follows the actual method of farming. The other deals with commerce. And to an extent one is inextricably tied to the other. A recent BBC Online debate pointed out that "...think this is only part of the story. The truth remains that Africans have failed to benefit from the opportunities for "fair trade" that do exist. For example, Africa farm produce can enter the EU without punitive tariffs, but African farmers are too small and too disorganized to exploit this opportunity. Africa is falling behind because of bad governance, lack of access to capital, solid work-ethic and rampant corruption. Of course the blatantly unfair trade arrangements do not help. But countries like Kenya and Nigeria which were richer than South Korea and Singapore 30 years ago, have no one to blame but themselves..."

According to an online article in The Independent (www.news.independent.co.uk) to ensure that participatory approaches focused on empowering the farmers are internalized in African agricultural research, FARA led the development of the Framework for African Agricultural Productivity (FAAP) which sets out guiding principles and indicates best practice to improve the performance of agricultural productivity in Africa. 'Best practice' refers to the methods and approaches that work best. They include empowering the farmers, being participatory and working in concert with other actors. FAAP also carries out advocacy for increased less fragmented funding, harmonization of Africa's own and donor resources and a framework for improved institutional arrangements, especially in respect of capacity building, empowering farmers and strengthening farmers' support services.

Is all this going to result in more crops and less hungry mouths to feed? Not this year that's for sure, but in 5 or 10 years - who knows? Maybe by then all this theory will have been turned into actual practice and with astounding results to boot.