The Sunday News
Africa needs to reshape its agricultural systems powered by its own robust market and value addition systems that can build a foundation for broad-based, inclusive economic growth and development that can create multiplier effects through the entire economies, agrarian experts say.
Professor Thomas Jayne, a visiting Michigan State University agrarian expert told a public seminar recently at the University of Zimbabwe that Zimbabwe and most other African countries needed a re-think in terms developing new strategies that could raise productivity and profitability of farming.
He said this when he was presenting a paper on: “Megatrends Shaping African Agriculture: Insights and Implications for Enhancing Rural Livelihoods and Food Security in Zimbabwe.”
The Livelihoods and Food Security Programme (LFSP) in collaboration with University of Zimbabwe Faculty of Agriculture hosted the high profile public seminar which drew top agrarian experts from the Sadc region and across the African continent.
Prof Jayne said any efforts to re-fashion the continent’s agricultural systems needed to be sensitive to five inter-related trends that include: rising land scarcity, rise of “investor farmers” (changing farm sizes), rapid growth in food demand, labour force exit from farming and rapid population growth.
“Zimbabwe and most other African countries need to increase their spending on R&D to improve soil fertility, develop new crop varieties and to develop a massive extension system that communicates with farmers,” he said.
The Michigan agrarian expert said Zimbabwe and most African countries needed to move away from archaic and inefficient agricultural systems that were not responsive to the needs of farmers and that were costly and inefficient.
He said strengthening agricultural extension systems, developing mechanisms to minimise post-harvest losses, strengthening local policy institutions, strengthening R&D in universities and research institutions and developing markets and agri-business were key in reshaping the continent’s agricultural systems.
“Farmers need to have access to affordable finance and an enabling policy environment that can attract private sector investment,” Prof Jayne said.
“We also need to empower and capacitate local research institutions. Africa in 2017 is a changed place, there is a lot of capacity, skill and talent. This needs to be harnessed so that we can move away from the donor dependency syndrome.”
Contributing to the debate, renowned agricultural economist, Prof Mandivamba Rukuni said Africa needed to grow its own domestic market for agricultural products apart from relying on the volatile global commodity markets.
For several years Africa has produced so many so-called “green revolutions” which have failed to generate productive jobs in agriculture and provide a leg up out of poverty for the majority of the poor.
Frustrations over the failing agricultural systems are written all over the faces of the continent’s poor farmers.
In some countries, hopeless peasants are streaming into the cities in huge numbers because it is becoming increasingly difficult to survive on their farms.
Experts say farmers are trapped into using inefficient technologies, average cereal yields have barely increased in 40 years and farm sizes are shrinking.
Those leaving farms are not finding productive jobs in the cities.
Agrarian experts further observe that most are getting poorer, the cost of safety-net programmes is escalating and Africa’s dependence on concessionary food imports is growing.
All this, they say, has had catastrophic consequences for the continent’s poor.
Prof Rukuni, who recently was advising the South African government on the emotive land issue, said the only route for Africa’s most industrialised economy and the rest of the continent to develop was through the adoption of concrete strategies for rural transformation.
“I was recently on a three- month consultancy to advise the South African government on the land issue. I tell you, I really struggled to find solutions to SA’s land question. Just how do you advise South Africa — the most industrialised country on the land issue? For the last 25 years, this question hasn’t been addressed.
“There is no easy way to grow the economy . . . I told them the only way that South Africa could grow the economy was to transform its rural economy. To create jobs there has to be a rural economy.”
The agricultural economist said transforming the rural economy was the only way South Africa and the rest of the continent could enhance job creation, improve farmer incomes and the quality of life of smallholder farmers.
“To create jobs there has to be a rural economy,” he said. “Import substitution does not create jobs and growth. Export-led growth won’t work. After spending three months, I told them, the real option they have is rural transformation . . .”
Agrarian experts at the seminar said African governments needed to emulate what Asian countries did in the past, by spending about 10-15 percent of their total budget on agriculture each year, investing heavily in agricultural research, irrigation, rural roads and power to develop the rural agricultural economy which is critical for the continent’s future growth.
They also said there was need to provide direct policy support to their farmers by shoring up farm credit systems, adopting “smart subsidies” for vital inputs like fertiliser, power, and water and creating an enabling marketing environment to ensure that farmers received better prices that could lift them out of poverty.
Many of these interventions taken by Asian countries were targeted to small farms, who enthusiastically adopted the new technologies and typically out-performed larger farms.
These policies, agrarian experts say, helped transform Asia and pulled the region back from hunger and famine to regional food surpluses.
Poor investment in agriculture has led to the appalling state of rural infrastructure on the continent and poor exploitation of the continent’s irrigation potential.
It has also made African farmers to rely almost exclusively on rain-fed farming and to bear the brunt of high transport and marketing costs.
Stiff resistance to new agricultural biotechnologies such as genetically modified crops which are resistance to diseases and pests and have better yields has made the situation worse for farmers.
Agrarian experts say yields can be dramatically increased in Africa when farmers have access to improved technologies and markets.
For a real agricultural revolution to occur in Africa, they argue that there is need to increase public investment in agricultural research and rural infrastructure and that African governments provide more supportive policies for agriculture, including partnering with private firms to strengthen input — supply systems and food grain markets.
“We need to make agriculture to make money for the farmer,” says Katsande. “You make more money near the mouth (value market chains). We need to redefine farming. Farming must help the farmer make money and improve his quality of life. We are very good at analysing what has happened. The past is useful, history is good but we die in the future.”
— Zimpapers Syndication
