No easy farming answers in the Sahel

by Chido Makunike

Mid-September is getting towards the end of the rain season in the Sahel. This year the rains have been unusually heavy, causing widespread floods across much of the region, as well as further south to parts of central and eastern Africa. It seems a particularly cruel irony that a region that so looks forward to rain should have many crops washed away by those rains, setting many people back by years.

The Sahel is even more severely dependent on rain-fed agriculture than other parts of Africa. Unlike more temperate, wetter and more fertile parts of the continent, the Sahel's harsh conditions mean there is very little cultivation that takes place outside the rain season. What little dry season farming there is will be by river banks or small gardens around wells, but for all intents and purposes, all the meaningful smallscale farming takes place during the two to three months of the rain season.

For most of the year the Sahel is hot, dry, dusty and largely barren of vegetation. The brief, sudden explosion of green on the onset of the rains can be quite startling. But even then, it is rare to see the lush carpets of grass and weeds that are normal during rain seasons in savannah and tropical Africa. The brief displays of widely visible greenery are very much a matter of survival of the toughest, best adapted plants.

The thin, sandy soils need more help to yield anything than those elsewhere. Flood and wind storms over the years have carried away the top soil to the sea. Pests thrive in the heat and humidity. But fertilisers and pesticides, when available, are out of reach of most farmers, who battle with even more pressing cash needs. Then there are the issues of the decreasing effectiveness of fertilisers on soils that every year lose more of their already low yield potential. The increasing resistance of pests to what pesticides are available is a real concern.

Yet soil supplementation measures that should be used in addition to any fertiliser use, or instead of it, face many obstacles. There is relatively little biomass to make enough compost for field crops like sorghum, maize and millet, let alone issues of how one would apply it over many hectares of land. There is plenty of animal waste available, but the costs of transport and labour to collect and apply it are major obstacles.

Apart from all the agronomic and other technical issues that get the most attention, there are many others that one can only really appreciate by long, quiet, non-judgmental observation. One begins to realize that the problems are so daunting, and have defied solutions for so long, partly because their causes and impacts go far beyond agriculture, even if food shortages are the most dramatic and immediate ways they are manifested.

The heat and humidity are punishing, with severe but uncalculable effects on productivity, particularly in an area where almost all tasks are performed manually. The distances between settlements or to water sources are long. Fetching, transporting and storing water for the most mundane tasks take hours out of each day and require careful planning.

Ramadan begins in the second half of the rain season. The requirement to fast during the hot, sweltering day must be somehow combined with tasks such as fetching water, weeding the fields, feeding the animals, cooking to break the fast at night, and so on. This is one of many examples of important non-agricultural issues, but that have a significant bearing on farming activities. They are often ignored in the design and implementation of interventions, usually at great cost.

The farmers who for generations have eked out a living in the harsh conditions of the Sahel are tough. They have had to be to survive. But there is nothing remotely romantic about traditional farming, as is sometimes dishonestly depicted by those who can afford to "love the soil" from a comfortable distance. Farmers have learned to survive the difficult environment with philosophical stoicism, but much of their lives are hard, low-yielding drudgery. As a result, smallscale farming is increasingly being relegated to the old, as they encourage their children to flock to the cities to look for elusive opportunities; and to migrate to other places that are perceived to offer better prospects.

As resilient as the farmers are, events, and their already difficult farming environment, are changing faster than their ability to adapt to them. They need multiple kinds of help. They need long-term measures to deal with poor and declining soil fertility; increasing erosion and desertification, pesticide resistance, and many other serious problems. They are best addressed by complicated, inter-linked long term strategies, but the farmers also need quick fixes for the immediate and livelihood-threatening issues they face. An interplay must be found between those short term and long term interventions, otherwise neither will achieve their aims, regardless of how good they may look on paper in isolation from each other.

Any assistance needs to be built on a foundation of an appreciation of the totality of the lives of actual farmers and various support players alike, not just disjointed segments. Particular attention needs to be paid to the many non-agricultural, but agro-impacting factors. Many of the agronomic, social and other factors that need adjustment to fit new times and needs will for one reason or another change very slowly, and this just needs to be factored in to planned interventions.

The photo on the left is of a typical field in the Sahel, planted with beans that are just sprouting. Sandy, thin soil that is okay for adapted weeds, but tough for most crops. Fertiliser would definitely improve yields, but does not address the underlying issue of very poor soil that is getting poorer by the season. Water retention is poor, evaporation rates are high. The field is entirely rain-fed. Frequent moisture stress has an impact on yields because even during the rains, up to a week or more of hot, dry spells are not unusual.

The photo on the right is of a small household plot in the same area as the one on the left. The lush growth of cassava, maize, paw paw and vegetables shows what is possible with intensive, careful management and some basic infrastructure. As in the other photo, no fertiliser is used; but unlike on the field, the soil is generously fed with animal manure. A well with an electric pump and connected hosepipe makes watering during dry spells possible. The small size of the plot makes maintenance relatively easy.

But while the second photo gives a glimpse of the potential, the situation is far from as simple as "well, why doesn't everybody follow this example?" The resources available in the two situations are different, the different sizes of the land make a big difference in what is possible, etc.

From a distance, many people are quite convinced they know what needs to be done to dramatically increase agro-productivity in areas like the Sahel. Sometimes, even when their proposed solutions are noble, they have at best a very limited understanding of the obstacles to implementing them. Other times, their proposed solutions are only part of the complicated puzzle, even when they insist that anyone who thinks differently from them must be a heathen who will burn in agricultural hell for eternity.

The immensity of the issues hits you in the face every second you stare at the vast stretches of Sahelian sand that farmers heroically try to coax a harvest from. But the various, sometimes conflicting answers that seem so inspiringly convincing from distant workshop rooms, conference halls and authoritative-sounding project reports seem hopelessly narrow in their grasp of all the factors to be considered to bring about changes. That there is need for change, and soon, seems to be about the only thing there is general agreement on by the varied experts, as they out-shout each other to insist that theirs is the only true agricultural faith.

On ground zero, when they are looked at in isolation of each and the need for both emergency and long term solutions, none of the opposing answers seem so easily workable or clear cut.

African Agriculture