Senegal peanut harvest falls after poor 2011 rains

Senegal’s rain season, never as heavy as that of its more southerly neighbors, was poorer and more erratic than usual in 2011. The rains, which normally begin in July for most of the country, started several weeks later than expected and were generally characterized by light downfalls and long dry spells.

A similar trend has sparked fears of a food crisis in several of West Africa’s Sahel countries, although Senegal is considered one of the relatively food secure countries.

Peanuts are Senegal’s main agricultural commodity, cultivated by mostly small scale farmers for use by the country’s food oil processing industry, and for export. The country is one of the world’s top producers of peanuts, the sector first commercially established during the French colonial era.

Oil tracker Oil World reports the 2011 peanut harvest was 450,000 tons, almost half of the previous year’s 840,000 tons. The fall in farmer income comes at a time of complaints about the rising cost of living

African Agriculture

Senegal: Groundnuts producer price subsidy removed

The government of Senegal has removed price support subsidy paid to farmers of groundnut. As the new rain season begins, the budget set aside to support groundnut farming has been decreased from 38 to 25 billion CFA francs.

The Minister of Agriculture announced at a recent inter-ministerial meeting on the outcome of the last crop year that the government decided to remove the subsidy in the producer price of groundnuts for the 2011-2012 campaign because, "the price of groundnut is already very high. Today you can not have a kilo of peanuts for less than 250 CFA francs, while the official price is 165 CFA francs.''

He said the money saved would be used for farm equipment and fertilizers.

Senegal forecasts biggest peanut crop since 1975, good rice, millet harvests

by Drew Hinshaw

Senegal is expecting the 2010-2011 peanut harvest to be its most productive in 35 years and is forecasting good yields for millet and rice, the Agricultural Ministry said.

The harvest will exceed the 1.08 million metric tons of peanuts picked in the 2009-10 season, Malick Ba, head coordinator at the ministry, said yesterday in a phone interview from the capital, Dakar, without giving an estimate for the harvest. The previous season gave the highest output since 1975 when 1.2 million tons was harvested, according to agricultural ministry data.

State researchers are currently calculating the expected October-November harvest, Ba said. “It’s no longer a question of whether it will be a bigger harvest than last year’s, but a question of how much bigger it will be,” he said. The crop is picked again in April.

Peanuts account for 60 percent of Senegal’s agricultural exports, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Shipments by Suneor, the country’s biggest peanut-oil processing company, account for as much as 50 percent of the world market, according to a 2007 USDA country report.

Millet production is expected to exceed the 797,107 tons grown in 2009-2010, and rice output should be more than the 391,271 tons harvested last season, Balde Solme, bureau head for Direction for Agricultural Analysis and Forecasts, said.

The West African country’s rice output doubled between 2007 and 2009. Power outages that stop irrigation pumps in the northern rice-growing region may reduce this season’s crop, Mamour Gaye, technical adviser to the Agricultural Ministry, said on Aug. 5.

Good rains compensated for those electricity outages, Solme said.

“The main factor in determining Senegal’s agricultural output is rainfall patterns, and right now we are in a period of especially good rains that we expect will continue for several years to come,” he said.

Senegalese farms employ as much as 75 percent of the country’s workforce.


Bloomberg

Senegal to end subsidy to peanut-oil producers amid record crop

by Drew Hinshaw

Senegal will end subsidies to peanut- oil producers as scheduled on May 7, even after purchasers sought an extension because of a record crop this year, the Agriculture Ministry said.

The West African nation is expected to produce 1.08 million metric tons of peanuts this year, Yoro Sarr, a spokesman for the ministry, said in an interview from the capital, Dakar. It’s the country’s biggest crop since 1975, when 1.2 million tons was harvested, Sarr said.

Peanut-oil producers have so far bought 300,000 tons of this year’s harvest and have indicated they won’t buy “significant” amounts more if the subsidy ends, he said.

“They say they’ve attained their desired tonnage, but that they could continue to purchase the crop if the government extended its subsidy,” Sarr said. “We’re going to say no.”

Peanuts account for 60 percent of Senegal’s agricultural exports, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Shipments by Suneor, the country’s biggest peanut-oil processing company, account for as much as 50 percent of the world market, according to the USDA’s website.

The subsidy amounts to 45 CFA francs (9 cents) per kilogram (2.2 pounds), compared with the official price of 165 francs, and costs the Senegalese state 13 billion CFA francs a year, Sarr said.

Abdoulaye Ndiaye, head of communications at Suneor, didn’t answer his phone when called yesterday for comment. Closely held Novasen and Complexe Agro-Industriel de Touba also produce peanut oil in Senegal. A person who answered the phone at Complexe Agro-Industriel said the company had no comment, while calls to Novasen weren’t answered.

Peanuts not bought by processors are expected to be consumed by other countries in the region, Sarr said, without elaborating.

Sarr also said that Senegal will triple its horticultural exports by 2015, revising a previous deadline of 2012 set by the government. The program targets irrigation projects and farm- equipment financing, along the coastal Dakar-St. Louis corridor, which the government intends to use to make Senegal a food self- sufficient country in the coming five years.

In 2010, according to Sarr, the country is expected to export about 55,000 tons of horticultural products, including green beans, mangoes, melons and rice, principally to Europe. Last year, shipments totaled 17,000 tons, he said.

Business Week

Gambian farmers protest low groundnut prices

by James Jammeh

As the 2009/10 Groundnut Season progresses in Gambia,farmers have been  complaining about the price on offer this year. They are appealing to government for an adjustment, failure of which they threatened to sell their hard earned products in neighboring Senegal, where buyers are reported to be making a far better appeal for farmers in the region.

According to some of the farmers who spoke to this paper, the price being offered this year by the Gambian buyers makes the product far less promising than usual, considering the expenditures they incurred in the process of cultivation.

Musa Jallow, a farmer from the North Bank Region, said to this reporter that the D8,500.00  per ton, being offered is not enough as they realized massive spending during the cultivation season. ''If government really want to improve the living conditions of farmers,'' he said, ''they would rather come with a price better than what they have announced.''

For Amadou Bah, the price announced by the government portrays a far less serious government than they are trying to make themselves look like. The farmer from the North Bank Region town of Farafenni said that promoting the welfare of farmers means fighting poverty in the country, as almost all Gambian farmers have the education need of their children to take care of, in addition to the feeding needs of their families. He called on the government in general and the ministry of Agriculture in particular to consider their plights as farmers, saying that all they have had to put up with since the advent of the AFPRC/APRC government has been hardship upon hardship. 

At the extreme end of the country in Basse, Ebrima Manneh of Basse Manneh Kunda challenged President Yahya Jammeh, who doubles as the Agriculture minister, to intervene and address their plight as farmers. Manneh stressed that if there can be any meaningful development, farmers must be at the fore front.

And in Lower-Saloum, Sait Cham charged that farmers are not considered by the government, singling out President Jammeh as especially responsible for the situation. He accused the Gambian leader of only promoting his own farming activities despite openly claiming to being friends to farmers.

Cham said that what the president has achieved in just a short period in farming, the entire farming community in the country haven't been able to do, yet they have been in this for their entire lives without any progress. 

"In fact, the past government did far better in promoting the welfare of farmers than this government,'' Cham said, concluding with a plea to the president, nonetheless, urging him to ''redouble his efforts" and divert a little bit of attention from Kanilai and the rest of his many other politically influenced farms so that ordinary Gambian farmers can make better out of their sweat. 

Biran Saine condemned the Gambian authorities for their selfishness, arguing that in neighboring Senegal the government is paying well for groundnut. Saine described the price being offered in Gambia as an insult, saying that he would rather sell his products in Senegal regardless of the consequences.

Muatapha Lowe, Fallou Njie, Amat Ceesay, Juldeh Jawo, and Kebba Camara, all echoed similar sentiments, calling on the Gambian government to demonstrate more respect for farmers and accelerate their effort in promoting their welfare by avoiding unnecessary spending.

The farmers pointed to the president's endless donations to individuals as largely unnecessary, saying that some of these monies could better be used to help boost the morale of farmers.

A senior officer at the Agriculture department appeared to support claims by the farmers, saying that the government is capable of doing more to ameliorate the plight of farmers. While a number of other countries in the sub-region appear to be doing well for their farmers, the official said, the Gambia government focuses on far less significant issues. He too appeared condemnatory of the president's defiant decision of running the Agriculture ministry, despite there being very many people far more knowledgeable than the president who has absolutely no known certificate in Agriculture that qualifies him to run a ministry, other than the high school certificate he claimed to have.

Freedom Newspaper 

Senegal's groundnut production in freefall

by Koffigan E. Adigbli

Farmers are complaining about a lack of technical assistance and the poor quality of seeds they've planted this year in the Kaolack region, Senegal's groundnut-producing area, 200 kilometres south of the capital Dakar.

The production of groundnuts, Senegal's third-largest export product after fishing and phosphates, is in freefall. The 2008 harvest fell by over 47 percent, according to the most recent report of the groundnut producers' association, the Cadre de concertation des producteurs des arachides.

According to the report, groundnut prices are increasingly tight in Europe, its main market. Drought and soil degradation – too severe to be corrected by applying fertiliser - are the root causes of Senegal's agricultural difficulties.

Samba Ka, regional head of the National Council for Dialogue and Cooperation of Rural People, says if the countryside is plagued by problems, the fault lies with farmers who expect government assistance for everything.

"Farmers in Senegal have failed to instill a love of the land and an appreciation of livestock in their children. The earth is not tilled, it is scratched at. Livestock is no longer looked after, it is merely used," Ka explains.

Ka however acknowledges the urgent need to put in place new agricultural policy addressing the supply of quality seeds, which would be reviewed every four years. He also recommends providing basic varieties of peanuts, millet, sorghum, maize and good quality fertiliser to smallholder farmers at subsidised prices, as well as new farming aids.

Visiting millet, maize and groundnut fields in Thiaré, not far from Kaolack, it was found that some crops have not benefited from technical support, thereby compromising yields.

Malick Seck from the Senegalese Union of Farmers and Vegetable Market Gardeners says farmers do not have good seeds to sow this year. "The state no longer helps us; the seed we received this year is not good and furthermore, there was no support. As small farmers, we go into debt to buy pesticides. After the harvest we pay the money back, but more often than not, problems arise when the harvest is not good," he laments.

Pointing to his field of groundnuts, Seck says that where the shoots are not growing densely, it means seeds were of poor quality.

Thiaré farmer Habib Ndiaye is more concerned with the sale of farm produce after harvest. "We are being forced to sell our harvest at low prices in the weekly markets. We just end up in deeper debt," he says.

"We sold at 100 CFA francs per kilogramme of groundnuts (about $ 0.22) instead of at 130 or 150 CFA ($0.29 or $0.33) per kilogramme, which is the price needed to meet our family needs," says Ndiaye, lamenting the lack of support for the marketing of groundnuts in many areas.

To help small farmers, the World Food Program (WFP) on Oct. 7 launched a "food facility" programme. This programme has a funding of 22.6 million dollars from the European Union and will help keep vulnerable small-scale farmers in Senegal afloat.

According to the WFP's West Africa regional director, Thomas Yanga, the programme will help small-scale farmers boost production and improve food security. He says it is a "mission of food security and social welfare."

According to the Association for the Promotion of Development (ASPRODEB), a programme to rebuild stocks of quality seed has been in place since last year and is running in most areas of the groundnut basin. Based in Dakar, ASPRODEB is an association working in private partnership with the ministry of agriculture.

"The Senegalese government, alongside its development partners supports groundnut producers in the Senegal River valley," says Cheikh Fall, a member of ASPRODEB's board. "It seeks to ensure the availability of 79,000 tonnes of groundnut seeds before December 2010 - and these must be certified N2 seeds (new varieties suited to the local soil and climate),"

According to Macoumba Diouf, director general of the Institute of Agricultural Research based in Dakar, there is a research programme for the diversification of certified seed for cultivation in Senegal. The programme seeks to revive traditional farming practices around food production, which have either been lost or not used in 30 years.

"The programme will permit producers not only to continue using the seed and other resources they are accustomed to, but offers smallholder farmers the possibility of a higher yield - estimated at five to six tonnes per hectare in research station conditions, or between 500 kilos and 1.5 tonnes per hectare in the field."

IPS

Senegal expects dramatic rise in peanut production

by Carli Lourens

Peanut production in Senegal will probably increase 66 percent to 550,000 metric tons in the 2008- 09 season after plantings increased, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Output fell 28 percent to 331,200 tons in the 2007-08 season, from the previous year, because of poor rainfall, the department’s Foreign Agricultural Service said on its Web site.

Peanuts are the primary cash crop and source of income for most Senegalese farmers, according to the FAS.

Bloomberg

FAO distributes groundnuts, maize seeds in Central African Republic

The United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has completed one of its largest-ever seed distribution operations in the Central African Republic, (CAR), a UN news release said August 7.

The seed scheme was designed to tackle three issues: food insecurity, hunger and chronic poverty, which are problems across the CAR, according to the FAO.

The UN food agency distributed seeds to more than 12,500 farmers in Nana-Mambere prefecture in the west of the CAR, next to the border with Cameroon.

Each seed kit given to a farmer consisted of 4 kg of peanut seeds and 10 kg of corn seeds. The non-governmental organization Mercy Corps trained local communities in farming techniques so they can boost their yields and expand beyond subsistence farming.

Xinhua

Gambian farmers cautioned against selling to middlemen

Gambian farmers have been warned to desist from selling their cereals and grains to "traders from the sub-region" instead of the government-controlled company. In a statement, officials of the Agriculture Ministry said sub-regional traders storm the Gambian market upon realising a cash shortage in the farming community, buy agricultural products at cheaper prices and later resell them at exorbitant prices to farmers.

Over the years, Gambian peanut farmers have been crying foul over the government's failure to buy their produce on time. In most cases, farmers became victims of credit buying and as such waited for several months before they get their money. Consequently, most farmers either sell their nuts outside the country or abandoned groundnut cultivation all together.

Agriculture, especially groundnut export, has been the key foreign exchange earner to the Gambian economy, but problems in the marketing of groundnut produce have adverse effects on the economy and famrers.

For a decade, the national groundnut buyer Gambia Groundnut Corporation (GCC) had woefully failed to satisfy Gambian farmers after months of tilling the land. Farmers turned their back to the GCC during the 2007/8 groundnut trade season and crossed borders to Senegal to sell their produce. The national buyer had reportedly managed to buy only 3,000 metric tons of groundnut during the last season.

The Agriculture Ministry has been overseen by the Office of the President since the sacking of Agriculture Minister, Kanja Sanneh.

Gambia News

Gambian groundnut farmers seek higher prices in Senegal

As the groundnut trade season reaches its climax in Gambia, a depot manager said that the tonnage registered so far is very low compared to what is expected.

According to Mr. Baba Camara, his depot purchases nuts from both the north and south banks of the Upper River Region. He said the north registered only 430 tonnes, while the south registered 2113 tonnes, making a total of 2543 tonnes. He said he was expecting up to 15,000 tonnes.

Camara said farmers still have groundnuts but very few are taking them to the depots. They believe they will get a better price when they take their nuts to Senegal or keep them until later. Mr Camara, however, cautioned those farmers that the future can never be predicted, especially with regards to groundnut, which he said can be easily destroyed without proper storage facilities.

Muhamed Nimaga, a farmer, said groundnut production is so painful that they cannot give their nuts to the traders as charity. He said he could not understand why they can get better prices when they take their nuts to Senegal.

According to a trader, the trade season is already a failure, with farmers taking their nuts to Senegal for marketing. He pointed out that he would sit the whole day without seeing a single farmer in his secco.

allafrica.com

Poor rains drop peanut yields in Senegal

Poor rains this year have caused problems across West Africa, especially for crop-deprived farmers. In Senegal, peanuts are the main cash crop. Farmers depend on them for 90 percent of their revenue, but this year the little money they will make will quickly dry up.

Peanut farmer Gallo Ka is complaining. His shed in the village of Thicath Diery, outside Kaolack, is nearly empty. He says where in a good year he would have 30 to 40 100-kilogram bags of peanuts inside his shed to sell, he now only has seven. He says if you do not have livestock, other crops or money to buy new seeds, you have nothing, he says, you really have nothing.

Several women and children, working out in the fields since six in the morning, really do have nothing. They planted their seeds too late on their own land, because they could not afford seeds in the beginning of the planting season. The rains in July and August were too few and far in between for them to have any sizable crop. They have been given permission to look for peanuts on someone else's land, not to sell, but simply to feed themselves.

Marianna Ka, 70, works while babysitting a grandchild. She says her life is difficult, but that she has no choice than to be out here, under a broiling sun, hunched over, clawing at parched land.

In the nearest city, Mbirkilane, it is market day. Peanut sellers, resellers and exporters come from across Senegal, and from other countries as well.

Reseller Mariam N'Diaye is also complaining. She says the few peanuts that have come to this
wholesale market so far this year are of very poor quality.

Senegalese goverment officials say they expect only about 420,000 tons of peanuts being produced in-country this year compared to 460,000 tons in 2006, which was also a bad year with poor, inconsistent rains.

Production used to be around one million tons per year. Senegalese non-governmental organizations are warning that about 70 percent of peanut farming families will have huge difficulties finding money to buy food within three months.

VOA

Senegalese producers oppose signing of EPA

Small-time Senegalese producers are speaking out against the Economic Partership Agreements (EPAs) negotiated on 8 and 9 December at Lisbon. For them, the battle against famine means being opposed to market liberalisation

'We are trying to follow the negotiations under way between our leaders and the European Union. If these agreements are applied in their present state, we are heading straight for catastrophe,' explains Sidy Ba, the spokesperson for a group of groundnut farmers all situated in the Kaolack region, 200 kilometres south of Dakar, the groundnut basin of Senegal.

60% of this country’s population lives in a rural environment, and, according to the World Bank, one in three people live below the poverty line, with less than a dollar a day in their pocket. In other words, no matter how far away the EPAs are being negotiated, they are in the minds of all of Senegal’s small-scale producers.

These agreements will liberalise trading relations between the European Union and the countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP). The negotiations are drawing to a close.

There is however no unanimity among the west African countries with regard to the EPAs. The negotiators from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) made demands during October that the negotiations continue and that the date set for signing the agreements be pushed back. Their main fear was that small-scale farmers will not benefit from the liberalisation of the market for agricultural products. According to them, this liberalisation could even pose a threat to local production. In the villages, they say, it would be even more difficult to feed all the hungry mouths.

The priority in the groundnut basin is not to open commercial borders but first to increase the small farmers’ production capacity. We must fight famine which is eating away at them and give them the means to make a profit from their work,' Sidy Ba continues.

Awa Ndao is a mother of three girls and a disabled son. She is also grandmother to five grandsons and lives in the rural community of Ndiaffate, in the Kaolack region. She complains, 'I am at rock bottom, I am really doing everything I can to keep working and survive. But I have no strength left.' Living on just one or two meals a day, made up mainly of rice, she tells us 'we are hungy. Meat has become more and more scarce.'

Indeed, for the time being the Senegalese agricultural production organisation is not allowing farmers to fight famine. It is based on the presence of powerful middlemen who buy up the harvest directly from the small farmers to sell them on Senegal’s large markets and sometimes to export them.

'We don’t have enough good quality seeds and we have to get into debt to buy grain and fertiliser. When a dry period comes, we have to sell our livestock and our harvests at very low prices, which stops us from meeting our survival needs,' explains Adam Ibrahim Ndao, 50, groundnut producer in the rural community of Ndiaffate.

The food situation is worse still in Velingara region, a cotton basin in the south of the country, 700 kilometres from Dakar on the border with Gambia and Guinea Bissau. This year a famine was declared there following floods which destroyed the best part of the harvest.

'I am beginning to think that we will always be condemned to go hungry. My 80 year-old husband is too old to work our millet, cotton and groundnut fields and now it’s our 11 year-old son who farms our half hectare of land,' recounts Adama Sabally, a 60-year old mother of three, in the village of Pakour in Velingara region. 'We have at best one meal a day and this year the floods have destroyed all our harvests. We go more and more often for a whole day without food,' she continues.

'With the situation in Velingara, the priority for the small farmers is to get together in co-operatives to invest in fertilisers, tractors and seed reserves to be able to stand up to famine,' explains Abdoulaye Mballo, founder of the community radio station Radio Bantaare and correspondent for Senegalese Television Radio (RTS).

'Senegal must urgently put into practice protection and development policies for its national agricultural industries to combat hunger and strengthen national agricultural productivity,' explains Faty Kane, the young national coordinator of the Senegalese campaign to fight hunger, 'Kaa KonKo Kele'. 'This is the case with groundnut, the staple crop which also feeds livestock in Senegal. Developing this sector would allow us to stop importing products like soya oil from Europe or Brazil,' she adds.


Cafebabel

Tropical Legumes Project seeks to increase yields

A newly-launched cross-continental research and development project seeks to increase legume yields in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The Tropical Legumes Project was officially launched in September 2007 in Rustenburg Kloof, South Africa, and in Arusha, Tanzania, according to a statement by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA).

The project involves 14 African and Asian national agricultural research programmes in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Mali, Myanmar, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. 

The project is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

"Legumes hold great promise for fighting hunger, increasing income and improving soil fertility," the statement said, adding however that legumes had not received the scientific or funding attention needed to increase crop yields of small holder farmers' in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, enhance their food security and reduce poverty. 

The first of the two-prong approach focuses on sub-Saharan Africa and four legumes - beans, cowpeas, groundnut and chickpeas. 

It will be led by the Generation Challenge Programme (GCP) of the Consultative Group on Agricultural Research (CGIAR), in collaboration with partners from national research programmes, universities and CGIAR centres. 

The second approach prong focuses on large-scale breeding, seed multiplication and distribution primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, thus paving the way for the research results from the first approach to translate into breeding materials for the ultimate benefit of resource-poor farmers. 

"These projects will partner with the Programme for African Seed Systems, a major initiative within the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, to ensure African farmers have access to seed of improved legume varieties. 

"Legumes are critically important as a source of income and nutrition for low-income farm families. However, there has not been enough investment in this area in the past," the statement quoted Dr. Rajiv Shah, Director of Agricultural Development, Global Development Programme at the Gates Foundation, as saying., "We hope this project – by working across the value chain and linking to other investments like AGRA – will help deliver meaningful benefits to farmers' fields and families. We also hope it will encourage others to increase their investments in this type of critical, farmer-oriented agricultural research," he added.

Afriquenligne

Gambian palm oil refining company set up

A new venture, Gambia Vegetable Oil Company, will soon start to operate a palm oil refinery in the west African country. The company is owned by a small group of Gambians businesspeople.

General manager Mr. Kishor said the company will concentrate on refining palm oil, but will also engage in the refining of soya bean and groundnut oil in the near future. He said the raw materials (crude oil) needed will be imported from Malaysia and Indonesia, with soya crude to be sourced from Argentina or China and groundnuts from Senegal and Nigeria. The key machine operators will come from India, with the training of local personnel to come later.

Kishor said 70% of the refined palm oil will be exported to other African countries because of the oil's low consumption in The Gambia.

Palm Oil Prices

New high-yield groundnut varieties introduced in Uganda

Farmers in the Mbale district of Uganda had given up growing groundnuts because of their low yields and susceptibility to rosette disease and drought. However, the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) began a programme in Mbale three years ago to train farmers in new methods. New seed varieties were introduced and several demonstration gardens were set up.

It emerged recently at a parliamentary hearing on agriculture that if a farmer planted 32kg of groundnuts on an acre, he would be expected to reap twenty 50kg bags of un-shelled groundnuts.

The varieties being given out by NAADS under its technology dissemination programme are believed to have a higher oil content than traditional varieties, ranging from 40% to 60%, almost similar to the oil content of simsim (sesame) and sunflower.

A NAADS official said they intend to sell most of the groundnuts in the stores as seed to farmers for multiplication before opening up more land for cultivation.

New Vision