Support Africa's smallholder agriculture

It is a cool morning, to be precise 9:10 am, here in Nyakitokoli Parish, Kabarole district, western Uganda, where I am interviewing smallholder farmers, on what they think government should do to support them attain food security and improve on their household incomes through agriculture.

Some say, linkage to markets, while others say, agricultural science led training, extension services, establishment of processing and value addition enterprises, interest free agricultural loans, veterinary services, and good quality planting seeds, would significantly and sustainably make them attain food security and improve on their household incomes.

 

 As this interview comes to an end, one farmer stands up and tells me, “Last month, my two hectares of banana plantation, produced a lot of good quality and big size matooke (bananas), and had hoped that, my earnings from their sale, would be good, to make me take my three children to good schools, but unfortunately, there was bumper  harvest during that month, and I was forced to painfully sell my bananas at a very low price, traders who came to buy from our area, took this advantage to exploit us.

 

We appeal to the Government to link us to direct markets, so that we get good prices for our produce” she emphasised!

 

 Had the Government established a banana processing enterprise, to produce value added matooke in the area, producing banana products such as instant flour, raw flour, low amylase starch, extrusion cooking of banana flour, and banana wool, such scenario would have been avoided.

 

Such heart breaking stories are not peculiar to only Uganda; it cuts across all over Africa.

 

Early this year, I was in Tanzania and Malawi, training some grassroots farmers in organic farming best practices, as our training progressed, Peter Kumwenda, a mixed smallholder farmer from Karonga district, Northern Malawi, said, “I am most of the times, forced, to sell my cereals, sorghum, maize, and wheat at a very low price, due to lack of where to store them properly, and so are many cereal farmers.

 

In this area, Malawian government should come and rescue us from this predicament by  establishing and enabling us to get access to post harvest technologies and put in place grain processing enterprises, to make us avoid wastage, get direct market, and good prices for our grain produce.’’

 

   Agriculture is a backbone of African economies and 65% of people engaged in agriculture in Africa are smallholder farmers, who toils day and night, to produce food and raise animals for their families and for sale. However, due to skyrocketing population, coupled with declining soil fertility, emanating from over use of land, the number of smallholder farmers in many parts of Africa, reserving, some produce for sale, have for years been dwindling, many are also finding themselves unable to feed their large families, as a result, they are living in extreme poverty, and this calls for African governments to put in place initiatives, aimed at training and supporting smallholder farmers to increase output per land use

 

 It is projected that by 2030, agricultural market will be worth $1 trillion, which is three times higher than 2010 size. It is also estimated that between 2012- 2050, sub- Saharan African population, which today is estimated to be close to one billion people, will more than double, a figure that will be 11 times higher than 1950 population.

 

What initiatives are African governments putting in place that will place smallholder farmers to benefit from this huge and incredible projected agricultural market? 

 

   An analysis of Africa’s agricultural policies, reveals that there are limited and in most cases absence of smallholder farmers green revolution drive component, a factor that explains, why millions of smallholder farmers are still food insecure and trapped in vicious cycle of poverty. When you visit African desert areas, there is absence of desert greenhouse projects. African countries have done nothing, and are not initiating initiatives, to turn the desert areas into food producing areas.

 

They are still trapped in old thinking mentality, that such areas, are not conducive for food production, yet other countries like China, Malaysia, Mexico, have initiated desert green house projects and ably using their desert areas to produce food.

 

The desert greenhouse initiative is a great innovation, which African countries should urgently adopt to make their small scale farmers living in desert areas, to produce food and raise good quality animals. At the same, they should also redefine their agricultural policies and focus on accelerating a sustainable green revolution on Africa’s smallholder farms.

 

  Ten years ago, African Union launched a Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), which African governments signed and committed themselves to commit 10% of their national budgets to agriculture. Since then, there is no single African country that has implemented it. Agriculture, despite its importance to national economies, continues to be underfunded yet it holds Africa’s comparative advantage, if it can be fundamentally funded.

 

  Agriculture is central to Africa’s development and remains the only sector through which governments can significantly reduce skyrocketing poverty that smallholder farmers find themselves trapped in to achieve rural transformation. Countries such as Ethiopia, Ghana, Rwanda, and Burkina Faso, which invested in their agricultural sectors significantly, have been able to reduce poverty by significant levels, 49%, 44%  38%, and 37% respectively, this should serve as an inspiration to others.

 

  Putting in place agribusiness initiatives by establishing agribusiness enterprises  in rural areas will not only make the smallholder farmers access markets but will also set in sustainable base for the industrialisation to take root in these countries through forward and backward linkages in addition to spurring produce production since farmers will be assured of markets.

 

Value addition industries is an expensive venture, which smallholder farmers cannot afford and, therefore, governments need to come in to set up these industries and then after some years pull out for farmers cooperatives to own and manage with governments only coming in to regulate and supervise them, which is what countries like South Korea did to transform their agricultural sectors.

 

   Small scale farmers in Africa incur heavy losses emanating from wastage, which is due to not having proper storage facilities and post-harvest technologies. This normally occurs during harvesting seasons, especially bumper harvest seasons, in terms of percentage, research from various agricultural institutions, among them, Kenya agricultural research institute, National agricultural research organisation, and others, shows that they are goods and need to be helped with storage and post harvest technologies, to make them avoid loses.

 

Climate change effects are also adversely affecting Africa’s small scale farmers. Their dependent on wood fuel has and is resulting into deforestation as trees are cut for firewood. This trend can be curbed by training and supporting these farmers to establishing village bio gas plants as well as making them to engage in reforestation and agro forestry activities. As you move in rural Africa, all these are largely absent.

 

Attaining sustainable development and rural transformation will only be possible, if smallholder farmers, who are the kingpin of Africa’s agricultural sector, are constantly trained and supported to adopt new evolving methods of profitable farming, every African country should establish an agricultural development bank, advancing interest free loans, to smallholder farmers and their cooperative unions, to acquire good quality planting seeds, machines and other agricultural input. 

 

They should emulate South Korea at her initial stages of development; it invested heavily in its agricultural sector and thereafter words pulled out for farmers to take over the result was food security and increased foreign exchange earnings, which eventually paved way for it to become an industrialised and economic power house that we see and admire today, yet it was poorer than most African nations during 1960s.

 

The writer is a researcher