Policies that spur subsistence farmers to start growing crops for profit rather than survival and that expand market opportunities for private traders enhance agricultural productivity and reduce hunger in the developing world, according to U.S. government officials seeking to enhance food security.
"Underlying our agriculture strategy is the assumption that there has to be a market," says George Gardner, senior agricultural economist at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). "We're trying to get producers linked to markets. We don't work with command economies."
William Hammink, who directs the USAID's Food for Peace program, says that getting a subsistence farmer to think in terms of profits requires a cultural shift. "Small holders, who have been subsistence growers for thousands of years, must start thinking about growing things besides basic staples, such as maize, sorghum or millet," he said.
Hammink said that the farmers need to diversify, think about market demands, fertilize their land and increase yield. He added that the experience in Uganda, Senegal and Mali-- three African countries that have increased food production and diminished hunger - has shown that boosting competition for private traders has brought about the most change in that direction.
Gardner said that issuing farmers titles to land creates land markets, where none existed previously, and provides the tillers with collateral to get agricultural credits and loans to buy fertilizer, seeds and other inputs.
A major impediment to good agricultural policy in Africa is that governments tend to favor urban areas over rural areas. "African governments learned long ago that hungry consumers in urban areas bring down governments long before rural scattered producers do," Gardner said. "Urban consumers are more vocal. They can block the road to the airport."
Although the vast majority of Africans live in rural areas, their governments do not spend enough on agricultural sectors, according to Gardner. "We have been trying to get African governments to invest proportionately in the agricultural sector, which typically employs 60 to 80 percent of the labor force and produces 50 to 60 percent of the gross domestic product," he said. "If a national budget allocates only 5 percent of resources to the agricultural sector, you'll never catch up with investments needed for irrigation, roads, information services and so forth."
John Thomas, the director of the Office of Agriculture in USAID, said policy commitments by African governments to develop their agricultural sectors are necessary if the continent is to create a "green revolution" similar to the one that took place in South Asia. Thomas said the tremendous increase in agricultural productivity in South Asia was a result of commitments made by Pakistan and India back in the 1970s to invest in roads, fertilizer and improved seed varieties. "It takes first a country that is committed to invest in agriculture and supporting the enabling environment for it," he said.
Thomas praised the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP), which the countries of sub-Saharan Africa wrote and adopted, as an initiative "being built from the bottom up by African countries" to develop their agricultural sectors. CAADP calls for each African government to devote 10 percent of its budgetary resources to agriculture in a manner tailored to each country's needs.
Policies unrelated to agriculture also can have decisive effects on reducing food and alleviating hunger. Sometimes getting the national budget under control and refraining from pursuing inflationary policies are sufficient, but often governments must do more.
For example, Ron Croushorn, the director of the food assistance division at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said that Ghana, a leader in West Africa, has done a lot to improve its investment climate, both foreign and domestic. Kenya and Tanzania have had dramatic increases in stock markets, he added, and noted that all three governments have educated their citizens about the opportunities for investment. He said infrastructure improvements and electrification allow farmers to increase production dramatically.
A key element of introducing beneficial policy reforms is finding a "policy champion," an influential lawmaker who can convince the government of the need for reforms. "It's really important to find a champion, somebody who is aggressive and can understand the impact of bad policy and can help influence people within the government that changes are necessary and present some options," Thomas said.
Gardner said such a champion in Kenya was instrumental in removing the restrictions against the internal transportation of maize, which had been in place since colonial days as a measure intended to prevent the spread of plant disease. Gardner said the champion was able to show that there was no scientific basis for the restriction and get it rescinded. As a result, maize production and trade increased.
