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Sustainable farming is the way forward for Africa

Written by Stephanie Hegarty
Sunday, 23 August 2009 00:00

Forday Komara is a farmer from Sierra Leone who understands the benefits of local markets for his community.  In his area, near the country’s capital of Freetown, rice is the dominant crop but farmers rarely grow enough to feed themselves.  When they run out from July to September they are forced to borrow money to buy food when prices are at their highest - leading many families into a cycle of endless debt.

Mr Komara’s community is an example of the 1.1 billion people living on less than $1 a day.  This time last year they and the rest of the world’s hungry were on the top of the media agenda. The world food crisis had hit and a press, as hungry for sensation as 923 million malnourished people were for food, launched on the agriculture debate.  

But then a new crisis hit, an economic one much closer to home and with it world hunger seems to have fallen off the media radar. While global food prices may have levelled out, in many of the world's poorest countries local prices are still well above average. Most of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa which has become the site of intense debate over the benefits of industrialised agriculture, the so called 'Green Revolution'.

Since 1945, world food output has increased exponentially but world population has rocketed along with it as have growing concerns that our planet won’t be able to feed us all. Technology like irrigation, special crop breeding, fertilizers and pesticides have increased yields and indeed alleviated poverty levels in developing countries. With great successes in Mexico and India where mass famine threatened the Green Revolution brought self-sufficiency in wheat production and saved many from starvation.

But industrialized agriculture never took off in sub-Saharan Africa where 95% of agricultural output comes from small farms.  A mixture of vast distances, poor infrastructure, political turmoil and corruption doomed agricultural development on the continent. Some experts, like Sir David King, president of the British Association for the Advancement of Sciences, prefer to blame a lack of real funding for agricultural technology to bring industrial and large-scale farming to Africa but is this necessarily a bad thing? 

There is definitely a sense among the public that industrialized agriculture has detrimental and irreversible effects. Many of us are still happy to eat under-ripe bananas in the dead of a British winter but the popularity of initiatives like Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s River Cottage acknowledges that ‘buying local is of course better for the environment and for the local economy - it helps communities to thrive.’

Modern agricultural techniques are not sustainable; water is too intensely used, petroleum for fuel and fertilizer is finite and the biodiversity that makes our soil fertile is under attack from systems that farm land too intensely. The carbon output from the shipping and burning of fossil fuels that agriculture depends on is having a drastic effect on climate change but this is something we are wanton to ignore in the developed world. 

Sub-Saharan Africans lack this luxury. Already climate change is affecting weather conditions and crop yields in a region that lacks the infrastructure to deal with problems like flooding and drought. If we are to increase food production on the continent, which indeed we must, then it has to be done in an environmentally sustainable way. But this is not an eco-warrior’s pipe dream. With most of Africa's farming on a low-input and small-scale already, promoting localised production makes good farming sense.

Mr Komara collects palm kernels, a waste project from palm oil production, and converts them into biodiesel to run his tractors and generators.  He knows that 'before we have food security we must have fuel security'. By producing his own fuel Komara operates independently of the global market and is not at risk to fluctuations in the price of oil. Indeed, fuel is an intrinsic part of farming that many people fail to understand. In Sierra Leone most of the population farm by hand, fuel is too expensive and most of the countries working animals were killed in a long-raging civil war.  In this way Sierra Leone, like much of Africa, is a kind of blank slate in terms of agricultural development.  

Rural Development Initiatives, a project lead by Mr. Abdulai Bassie in the southern district of Pujehun is trying to develop Mr Kamara's initiative on a larger scale. With the right funding Mr. Bassie hopes to provide biodiesel to 400 rice farmers in the region. Eighty-four percent of the rice in West Africa is currently imported leaving local people at the mercy of rising food prices. If Mr. Bassie's project is successful it could insulate his community from another food crisis.  

The project will also have countless other benefits for the local community. Not only will it create jobs but also a sense of co-operation and community ownership that can empower local farmers and give them autonomy from the often corrupting power of central government. But success hinges on investment in machinery and more importantly in the education and training to give this community the right skills to exploit the resources that, like palm kernel, are at their disposal.

Sustainable farming projects like these are the answer if Africa is to achieve food security in a sustainable way. As Kanayo Nwanze, president of the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), acknowledged on the 8th of June this year, "unleashing the potential of Africa’s small farms – the mainstay of food production – is more essential than ever as the continent grapples with the impact of the global economic crisis".  

IFAD has increased- from $750 million to $1.2 billion- the amount it will spend on developing small-scale farming. With half of this budget spent on Africa we must ensure that the majority of it reaches small projects like Mr Bassie's that have a real chance of transforming agriculture and reaching Millennium Development Goals of halving world hunger by 2015.