Southern African Countries Record Reduced Cereal Production in 2019

Namibia, Malawi and South Africa saw a decline in cereal production of about 65,000 metric tonnes compared to 2018, a report has shown.

These are preliminary findings under the crop production and vulnerability assessment report for Southern Africa, which was presented at the joint meeting of Southern African Development Community (SADC) ministers responsible for agriculture, food security and fisheries and aquaculture taking place in Windhoek, Namibia, on June 3rd 2019.

According to the report, the three countries recorded a total of 153,000 metric tonnes of cereal for the 2018 season and only 88,000 metric tonnes for 2019 crop season.

Xinhua

Southern Africa 2018/19 Rainfall Amount Lowest In 38 Years

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) region recorded the lowest rainfall in nearly four decades in the 2018-2019 cropping season, sparking fears of increased food insecurity and water shortages. A SADC Food Security Early Warning System Agromet update for the 2018-2019 cropping season indicates that a strong drought affected central and western parts of the region during the just-ended rainfall season.

Only a few areas in the SADC region received good rainfall for much of the season.These include northern Malawi, northern Mozambique, parts of Tanzania, and north-eastern Zambia. Three SADC countries had to declare a state of drought disaster due to the low rainfall. Namibia, which has been hit by successive droughts since 2013, has declared a state of emergency over the situation which has left more than 500 000 people without access to enough food and water. The country has lost more than 60 000 domestic animals over the past six months.

South Africa too has declared the current drought affecting some parts of its provinces a disaster. Tropical Cyclone Idai brought heavy rainfall and strong winds to Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe between March 5 and 19, 2019, causing severe flooding which led to loss of lives, destruction of infrastructure, disruption of livelihoods and destruction of crops.

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Climate change to shrink agricultural production by half

by Kristin Palitza

Environmental researchers predict Southern Africa will be hit heavily by climate change over the next 70 years. Agricultural production is projected to be halved - a development that will threaten the livelihoods of farmers in a region where 70 percent of the population are smallholder farmers.

"We will be seriously affected by climate change in Southern Africa. Agriculture and biodiversity will experience a particularly negative impact," Dr Constansia Musvoto, researcher at South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), told members of the Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU) at the organisation’s policy conference in Durban on Apr. 15 and 16.

Temperatures will increase by up to six degrees Celsius, while rainfall will drop by as much as 40 percent in some parts of the region, Musvoto said.

As a result, the region will experience more and longer droughts, increased crop failures and have less fields and pastures due to water shortages. In addition, natural disasters will be more intense, while pest outbreaks for both crops and livestock will become more frequent.

Musvoto also predicts that there will be more diseases in Southern Africa. "Due to rising temperatures, malaria will spread more widely, for example, which will negatively affect the availability of farm labour," she explained.

Farmers have already felt the first effects of changing climatic conditions. In 2006, the production of maize, the main staple in the region, fell short by 2.18 million metric tonnes due to droughts in Namibia, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Flooding in the Zambezi basin has been affecting Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, said Musvoto. Both Seychelles and Zambia have been experiencing a mixture of increased droughts and increased flooding.

The World Food Programme (WFP) announced in January that about 6.5 million people will need food aid in Southern Africa by the end of April.

The region has been struggling with low yields for the past few years, especially with rapidly declining cereal production, according to Pius Chilonda, sub-regional coordinator of the Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System for Southern Africa (ReSAKSS-SA).

Chilonda believes low yields are caused by inadequate management of water and land resources. At the same time, African farmers’ earnings are down due to lack of access to agricultural markets and technology. "There is not enough regional agricultural research that could help farmers deal with climate change," he added.

If farmers had better information, they could more easily adapt to changes in weather patterns by changing the crops they plant, planting more crop variety, conserving water or by using organic manure instead of chemical fertilisers.

"The agricultural sector in Southern Africa needs long-term planned adaptation strategies, building climate change resilience and ensuring that initiatives to address climate change reach all farmers, including the most poor and vulnerable," added Musvoto.

Still, such measures might not be sufficient to reverse the impact climate change already has on agricultural productivity. "Farmers have to diversify their income if they want to survive. People need to seek work elsewhere because they can’t completely rely on agriculture anymore," she said.

Although governments around the globe have signed a number of treaties aimed at addressing climate change, such as the Kyoto Protocol that seeks to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, they have shown little benefit for African countries.

"The conditions of [international environmental] protocols are framed for developing countries only and fail to take into consideration conditions in developing countries," lamented Musvoto.

For example, the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) allows industrialised countries to gain greenhouse gas emission reduction credits by investing in projects that reduce emissions in developing countries. The idea behind the project is that developing countries will benefit from foreign investment and technology transfer from countries in the northern hemisphere, which are the biggest environmental polluters.

Although this might sound good in theory, the CDM has not yielded results for Africa. By October 2008, only 1.4 percent - or 17 - of all global CDM projects were registered in Sub-Saharan Africa. Out of the 17, 14 are located in South Africa, the continent's richest economy.

"We don’t see CDM projects in the rest of Africa because countries find it difficult to meet the conditions set out for participation," explained Musvoto. "Project set-up costs are high, required research data is missing, and most developing countries lack the technical training and support needed."

"Africans need to influence treaties [when they are drawn up] to ensure that African conditions are recognised," she suggested, referring not only to African governments but also to farmers' organisations. "Farmers are not yet part of international discussions on climate change, but they have to be."

SACAU, a confederation of 13 national farmers unions and regional commodity associations from nine Southern African countries, is now lobbying governments in the region to put climate change on top of their political agendas.

"We want governments to mainstream climate change into all their policies, from agriculture to rural development, trade and energy," said SACAU president Ajay Vashee. "We also advocate for governments to form national bodies that actively look at climate change adaptation and mitigation and match policy with budget allocation."

SACAU particularly plans to push for policy reforms aimed at boosting agricultural production. "We need to stop relying on food aid for food security. Relying on outside help has slowed down policy reforms that prioritise local agricultural production. Food aid makes receiving countries lazy," Vashee explained.

So far, most Southern African governments have ignored warning signs. Despite increasing food insecurity and plummeting agricultural productivity, they less than five percent of their national budgets go towards agriculture.

According to ReSAKSS data, only Madagascar, Malawi and Mali have bumped up national expenditure to ten percent in an attempt to strengthen agricultural productivity.

IPS

Southern Africa swamped by floods

Vast areas of southern Africa have been hit by the worst flooding in 50 years, says the Red Cross.

With more than 100 people dead, an area 1,500km (930 miles) wide, from Namibia in the west to Mozambique faces rising waters from several rivers.

The Red Cross says it has only managed to reach a small fraction of the more than half a million people who have already been affected. It is appealing for helicopters and boats to reach isolated communities.

Matthew Cochrane, from the International Federation of Red Cross, said if Zimbabwe's Kariba dam reaches capacity, authorities there may be forced to open the floodgates. If this happens, Mozambique would be hit by a wall of water and tens of thousands more people would be displaced, he warned. Nearly 100,000 people have already been made homeless, he added.

He said the organisation expected the flood waters to remain for at least the next four to eight weeks. Mr Cochrane said the waters had reached densely-populated communities - up to 30km (19 miles) from the Zambezi river - that had never been affected by flooding before.

"They've been hit with floods and they've got no natural reflex to evacuate, to protect their possessions, to find higher ground," he said. "So the floods have been particularly difficult for them and there's a huge need for them to receive support."

The Red Cross said it had only reached about 35,000 people across the region with basic humanitarian aid, like mosquito nets, tarpaulins and water purification sachets.

It said heavy rain was continuing to fall in the Democratic Republic of Congo and northern Zambia.

This would wash more water down the Zambezi basin and could flood east to Malawi and Mozambique, it added.

BBC

Poor 2008/9 rain season feared in Southern Africa

At least six countries in Southern Africa could receive poor rainfall during the critical planting season starting next month, says an early forecast for the 2008/09 agricultural season.

Lesotho, Swaziland, most of Namibia, parts of Angola, Madagascar and South Africa are likely to receive "normal to below-normal" rain in the first half of the season from October to December, said the forecast by the Drought Monitoring Centre of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

This could have significant implications for the start of the growing season, meaning that rains could be delayed or erratic. "[If this happens] the situation is likely to be critical in those areas that also had a poor season or poor harvest last year and are trying to recover," said an analysis of the forecast by Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources (FANR) directorate of SADC (SADC-FANR).

Lesotho and Swaziland are still recovering from one of their worst ever droughts in 2007, which left several hundred thousand in need of food aid. Southern Angola recorded poor harvests in 2007 and production in Namibia was down by four percent last season.

SADC-FANR warned that the situation was more critical in areas where poor rainfall in the first half of the season was likely to be followed by a "normal to below normal rainfall" in the second half of the season, from January 2009 to the end of March 2009.

The report predicts that the six countries which could receive poor rains in the next three months could end up in this critical category.

In these areas, the forecast indicated that the second half of the season might be characterised by erratic rains that were insufficient to bring crops to maturity. "In such a scenario, farmers might opt for short-maturing crop varieties that might mature before any early cessation of the rains," SADC-FANR suggested.

"But we must be cautious about the forecast, as this is an early prediction - a clearer picture will emerge closer to the start of the season in October," said Kennedy Masamvu, a senior SADC-FANR agro-meteorologist.

The impact of climate change is clearly felt - it is a fact that it is only going to get drier, and we have to opt for more sustainable agriculture practices and opt for short-cycle, high-yielding varieties Meteorologists say the climate outlook for SADC region seems to be in a neutral phase, emerging from a La Niña cycle, which has had a "wet impact", perhaps towards a drier phase. La Niña is characterised by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, recorded every three to four years, which have a ripple effect across the globe, making wet regions wetter and dry ones drier.

Jennifer Moetie, a meteorologist at the Namibian Meteorological Service, said: "If the temperature of the Pacific Ocean should rise by one degree Celsius by next month [October] then we could be moving towards a drier phase; it is still very neutral at this stage."

High fertiliser and fuel prices have already made most farmers in the region consider planting less. "The cost of fertiliser has shot by more than 150 percent since last year," said John Weatherson, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's former emergency coordinator in Swaziland.

"I have seen 30 maize seasons in Swaziland; the planting season has been pushed back from September to November as the rains have become more unpredictable over the years," he commented. "The impact of climate change is clearly felt - it is a fact that it is only going to get drier, and we have to opt for more sustainable agriculture practices and opt for short-cycle, high-yielding varieties."

The SADC's report said normal to above-normal rains forecast for Zambia could result in flooding in some parts of the Zambezi River Basin.

IRIN

Southern African veterinary experts meet to discuss beef industry

Southern African veterinary experts are among 60 other specialists in that field including representatives from the African Union and South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and United Kingdom governments who began meeting in Pretoria, South Africa recently to exchange notes on the future of the beef industry.

The workshop comes at a time when Zimbabwe is trying to revive its national herd, Botswana is battling to control a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak and a debate is raging in Namibia over the continued existence of the so-called red veterinary line -- a colonial legacy which critics say cuts rural beef producers out of lucrative markets.

Officials from the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), FAO, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), national farming unions, businesses and others were also attending the high-level workshop.

Top on the agenda was the transboundary animal disease and market access with emphasis on future options for the beef industry in southern Africa.

Policymakers in southern Africa -- and beyond -- are dealing with some very difficult questions which include the following:

* How can southern Africa benefit from the global 'livestock revolution'?

* What options exist for trade given changes in market demand, entry requirements and trade preferences?

* What veterinary and food safety standards are required for different trade options?

* What does this imply for disease control and management of transboundary diseases such as foot and mouth?

* Who are the winners and losers of different scenarios for the future?

The beef industry in the region has been a stalwart of economic development, but do the new conditions of trade and market access and disease dynamics, particularly of foot-and-mouth disease, suggest new options must be sought?

Organisers said this workshop will debate these questions, and explore alternative scenarios from four country settings: Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, as well as the wider southern African region.

Julia Day, one of the organisers, said the workshop was the culmination of an 18-month study supported by the United Kingdom-based Welcome Trust and co-ordinated by the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in the UK. "The country studies have produced a series of mapping papers, identifying alternative market access and disease control scenarios, focusing on the beef trade and the challenge of foot-and-mouth disease specifically.

"The aim of the workshop will be to debate these findings and seek the way forward for national, regional and international policy," she said. Southern Africa's beef industry, and with it veterinary control and management systems, evolved in a very different era: large scale commercial production systems dominated, major subsidies were provided at different parts of the value chain and preferential access to key export markets was assured. But contexts are fast changing.

A wider group of producers, including smallholders, are demanding access to markets and the privileged position of large scale ranching is being questioned. Subsidies have been slashed and development efforts have concentrated increasingly on broader-based growth objectives. At the same time, preferential trade agreements -- notably the ACP quota system for trade with the European Union -- have ended; giving way to Economic Partnership Agreements, with uncertain consequences for the beef industry, and global supply and competition continues to increase. But all is not doom and gloom.

New markets are opening up -- in the region, as urban growth accelerates and demand for red meat increases, as well as in Asia and the Middle East. However, changing patterns of transboundary animal diseases make the future of the region's beef industry very uncertain.

With foot-and-mouth disease endemic among buffalo populations across southern Africa, there is always the risk of a new outbreak. Experts say these populations are due to increase significantly in number and distribution with the establishment of transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) aimed at creating a vast network of conservation areas established to promote biodiversity and eco-tourism, encapsulated by the vision of an 'Africa without fences'.

Experts say this complicates disease management systems involving area-based zonation, movement control, fencing, permits and animal traceability which in any case are both difficult and expensive to implement. As import standards ratchet ever upwards, questions are raised about the feasibility of compliance, given other demands on already stretched veterinary systems and the apparently conflicting demands of livestock development and conservation within the over-arching context of rural development and poverty alleviation.

Day said that given these new contexts, and given the critical importance of the livestock industry for economic development, there was an urgent need to challenge past assumptions and evaluate alternatives to the status quo. "The development of the scenario options in the four country papers, as well as the regional overview, offer a map for the way forward. Over the past 18 months -- through a combination of detailed research and numerous stakeholder-led dialogues -- the research teams have explored different scenarios for tackling the challenge of foot-and-mouth disease, relating each to different market access and trade options.

The core question has been: what option (or combination of options) makes the most sense, given the current context? Different criteria are evident, with often clear trade offs.

The studies asked: "which option results in the greatest returns? Which provides benefits to the broadest group of people? And which will be, in the longer term, the most sustainable?" she said. Different scenarios have been explored, and discussed intensely with different stakeholder groups. The results of these engagements will be shared and debated further at the workshop in order to explore ways forward for the future, and identify the key shifts in the policy environment required.

Professor Ian Scoones of the Institute of Development Studies, UK, has drawn attention to the fast changing contexts for southern Africa's livestock production systems.

"A wider group of producers, including smallholders, are demanding access to markets and the privileged position of large scale ranching is being questioned. Subsidies have been slashed and development efforts have concentrated increasingly on broader-based growth objectives. "At the same time, preferential trade agreements -- notably the ACP quota system for trade with the European Union -- have ended, giving way to Economic Partnership Agreements, with uncertain consequences for the beef industry, and global supply and competition continues to increase," he says.

He, however, remains optimistic that the opening up of new markets in urban centres of the region as well as Asia and the Middle East will bring better prospects for the region's beef industry. But Scoones remains concerned at the likelihood of more challenges in managing transfrontier parks, which seek to allow animals free movement.

"The establishment of transfrontier conservation areas . . . complicates disease management systems involving area-based zonation, movement control, fencing, permits and animal traceability which in any case are both difficult and expensive to implement."

allafrica.com

Southern African international food standards programme launched

The British government is funding a R56-million ($770,000) Southern African regional standards programme to help producers meet the strict food standard requirements increasingly being demanded worldwide. The Department for International Development's South Africa office has awarded ComMark Trust a four-year contract to demonstrate how these standards constraints can be overcome and exports increased, thus creating jobs.

ComMark Trust has also been tasked with coming up with ideas to make trade work for the poor in Southern Africa. The Southern African regional standards programme is designed to address constraints experienced by agricultural producers and food processors in gaining market access owing to stringent product standard requirements.

ComMark Trust official Norma Tregurtha explained that addressing infrastructural constraints is one component of the programme. "Setting up laboratories, training government personnel and identifying legislative gaps are the kinds of activities that will be funded over the next four years," she said.

Also part of the standards programme is the supermarkets innovation fund. It is open to producer groups, private firms, industry associations and agencies active in the agriculture and food-processing sectors facing specific certification or agricultural standards issues that prevent them from supplying regional and international markets.

Tregurtha points out that the trade debate around tariffs that restrict access to developed countries is not enough. There are barriers such as grades and standards that are inhibiting trade. There is also strong lobbying from European farmers for the continuation of domestic subsidies and this effectively discriminates against African products.

Engineering News

The emotive issue of land reform in Southern Africa

The IRIN news network has done an interesting in-depth report on why land reform is a particularly contentious and emotive issue in Southern Africa. Forcible land re-distribution and its effects on the Zimbabwean economy have dominated news headlines for several years now, but attention is increasingly shifting to increasing land reform momentum in South Africa. The land reform discussion in Namibia may not get much world attention, but it is as impassioned as elsewhere in southern Africa.

What are the factors that make land reform a particularly explosive issue in Southern Africa?

According to the IRIN report, the three countries "share a similar profile of racially skewed land distribution, dual tenure systems based on received law and customary law, and a dispossessed black rural population confined to degraded and overcrowded communal lands."

Unlike the situation in Southern Africa, land issues in "non-settled" countries tend to be more strongly associated with landlessness, environmental degradation, loss of land to peri-urban settlement, high population growth, unsustainable land use and weak systems of land administration, according to a synthesis of land issues in Southern Africa presented at a World Bank workshop in 2006.

John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group (ICG) told IRIN that the main justification for land reform in post-colonial Southern Africa was the repossession and redistribution of freehold land to achieve a more equitable balance in land ownership, as well as to raise the economic and social well being of the African population, in order to redress past wrongs and to address the consequences of colonial land practices.

"In addition to redistribution, reform of the system of land tenure is a crucial aspect of land reform," Pendergast added. "The aims of tenure reform are to enhance the land rights of the poor, to secure their control over the land they use and occupy, and to devolve power over land administration and management to local democratic institutions."

Ideally land reform should not merely be about redistribution, but should form part of a policy of poverty reduction within a framework of rural development. It should, therefore, be buttressed by the provision of clinics, roads, schools, access to agricultural inputs and markets. The reality has been that governments have failed to allocate the financial and human resources needed to address the land issue, said a think-tank of land experts who met earlier this year in South Africa. "Redressing gross racial imbalances in land ownership and access is one thing; recreating sustainable livelihoods on the land is infinitely more difficult."

A common view is that governments in the region have been complicit in the preservation of land alienated by a powerful elite. Even liberation movements, once in power, are often accused of dropping their radicalism, preferring to join the privileged. An initially strong political commitment to land redistribution has been followed by a switch of emphasis to so-called economic goals, rather than the eradication of landlessness and/or poverty.

"Debates about land reform have seen a confrontation between those who believe that it must be centred on the redistribution of ownership of (or land rights over) productive agricultural land in favour of the rural poor; and those opposed to extensive redistribution, who wish the reform to focus on measures to raise agricultural productivity and/or create a new class of (black) African commercial farmers," the think-tank noted.

Often mentioned as part of the reason for the lack of real progress in redistributive land reform has been the principle of "willing buyer, willing seller", which was insisted upon by the British during Zimbabwe's independence negotiations. The willing-seller side of the equation is an obstacle to "any form of systematic designation of land for redistribution", the think-tank observed. "There are unreconstructed power relationships in South Africa, in Zimbabwe until recently, and in Namibia. These formal and informal power structures [the banks, for example] are rigged against emergent black farmers. When you are supposed to have willing buyer, willing seller, what you often get is an unequal relationship, according to Oxfam's land policy adviser, Robin Palmer.

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The IRIN report also delves into the marginalization of women in land reform efforts, as well as the impact of the region's high HIV infection rate. It provides an analytical but yet readable background on an unfolding issue that is going to determine the direction of agriculture in Southern Africa far into the future.