Required: A new agriculture for a new Africa

by Chido Makunike

Africa is a continent in rapid flux in many spheres. The systems that served it in the pre-colonization era still have deep roots, but those systems are often found wanting in serving the needs of a new era.Yet many of the new systems imposed since the advent of the colonial era have also not always served the continent well.

One of Africa’s greatest challenges is therefore to find compromises between the old and the new that work for it. There are great debates raging across Africa about how to find such compromises in the political, economic, social and many other arenas, where the Africa of today is a sometimes awkward mix of the old/new and the imported/ indigenous.

It is in Africa’s self-interest to ask the awkward questions and unravel the inconsistencies which the promoters of various ideas about the continent’s agriculture might be quite happy to sweep under the carpet. Not being critically analytical enough is how Africa has been the testing ground for all sorts of schemes which have not significantly improved the continent’s fortunes. They often simply ignore questions that their stances do not adequately address, or for which the answers are awkward.

Being critically analytical is not necessarily the same as automatically rejecting anything. It is merely to try to make the most informed choice of compromises which offer the best prospects of achieving the desired goals.

Some agricultural NGOs oppose fertilizer use on environmental and other philosophical grounds. Struggling African farmers are out of necessity motivated in their decisions by mainly immediately pragmatic considerations. Therefore, if a way is found to make fertilizer relatively cheap and available, such as through a government subsidy like Malawi’s, farmers enthusiastically avail themselves of it. In such cases, the NGOs’ opposition to fertilizer merely makes them appear as if they are churlishly unwilling to give credit to an innovation that works simply because it flies in the face of a central underpinning of their whole reason for existence.

It might be far more effective for them to say, “we concede the role fertilizer can play and we congratulate Malawi for its maize bumper harvest, but we wish to contribute to sustained bumper harvests by pointing out some of the pitfalls of over-reliance on fertilizer.” Acting as if there is something inherently evil about fertilizer, and refusing to admit its benefits along with its problems, simply makes it easier for “mainstream” agriculturalists and government officials to dismiss these NGOs as fringe groups.

Instead of making it easier for them to make their valuable contributions, they in effect contribute to their own further marginalization. It is to choose a sense of self-righteous ideological purity at the expense of effectiveness at contributing valuable perspectives to what African agriculture needs. The issue is not one of compromising their beliefs, but being more nuanced in communicating them in order to be listened to better.

On the other side are those who talk of fertilizer as if it were a panacea for Africa’s soil fertility woes. The obvious issues of its high cost and polluting effects are what are most often discussed. But not discussed often enough is the issue that apart from the problems of costs and environmental effects, fertilizer only addresses the symptom of a problem, not its causes.

No matter how much more widely and affordably it is made available to African farmers, fertilizer cannot be an answer to the basic problem of soils that are losing the structural and chemical properties that make them agriculturally fertile. At best, therefore, fertilizer can only be a partial or stop-gap measure to the issue of soil fertility. There is no option but to also pay attention to more natural means of restoring and maintaining that fertility.

Without that, the soils that are producing bumper harvests with the aid of fertilizer today are being so stripped of their remaining nutritive properties that they require more of that fertilizer every year. This in effect is creating a type of fertilizer-demand pyramid scheme that will inevitably collapse on economic, agronomic and environmental grounds. It is therefore vital for the many countries that position fertilizer centrally in their plans for improved agro-productivity to try to make it a fertility-supplementation measure, instead of as the main or only answer to poor soils. Where it is possible to eliminate its use altogether, that would be even better, but there are many situations where this is not realistic.

In making arguments against green-revolution technologies, the NGO Grain recently lamented what it said was the attempt to “industrialise” Africa’s agriculture. One example of this they gave was the effort to introduce cassava varieties more suited to large-scale than smallholder farming, painting this as part of an elaborate conspiracy by global agri-business to control African farming. The argument went on to cite how the new varieties had generally been rejected by smallholders in favour of traditional varieties they continued to find more suitable on the basis of several criteria.

This example of the rejection of new strains of cassava does not in any way mean there is anything intrinsically wrong with scientific research into new varieties well-suited for commercial farming. African agricultural concerns have longed moved beyond only being concerned about household food security to being an engine of economic growth.

In some countries, for example, “new” varieties of hybrid maize have been enthusiastically embraced over “traditional” varieties by even smallholders. So whether a variety is accepted or rejected by farmers is far more complex than if that variety is new or traditional. When new varieties offer a mix of properties attractive to farmers they will be accepted, just as new varieties that do not will be rejected.

Grain says, “African farmers have created a rich and dynamic agriculture which was gravely wounded by the continent's history over the last few centuries and, now, by the domineering multinationals and their allies to extract the remaining resources and knowledge.” That rich traditional agriculture which was wounded is not going to ever return in its original form.

For better and for worse, Africa has been irreversibly changed by the “grave wounding” alluded to by Grain. It is struggling with how best to adjust to the new realities that have resulted from that wounding, but a return to a romantic past of pre-colonial innocence is clearly not one of the options, nor even a desire. The changes wrought by the wounding are difficult, but we see innumerable examples of how Africans have accepted the idea of incorporating new and old more than some NGOs who would presume to speak on behalf of them!

To say, as Grain does, that “If African farmers are organised, if they rediscover and value their cultures and their knowledge, this is where Africa will have its real strength for change” sounds vaguely pro-African. But this mushiness, and the implication that “rediscovering and valuing their cultures and knowledge” necessarily means being afraid of and automatically rejecting new innovations is simply another of the many negative stereotypes. That this one is being used in an ostensibly pro-African context makes it no less offensive.
It is no longer desirable, nor is it any longer possible, to consign Africa to a romantic traditional past that simply can no longer meet the needs and desires of today. All across Africa, farmers and their children are flocking from the countryside to towns, often to live lives of destitution, because the traditional farming sometimes spoken of so dreamily by some NGOs can no longer sustain them. The economic, environmental and social costs of that present-day crisis may be just as severe as the calamities alarmists claim await Africa if it takes this or that new risk.
In agriculture or in any other sphere, the challenge for Africa is to find successful ways to mix old and new, traditional and modern, imported and indigenous. It is thinking and approaches which help Africa meet these challenges while being realistic about the compromises that are unavoidable that are urgently needed. Many of the good ideas being thrown about are compromised by the rigidity with which their promoters present them. 


African Agriculture