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31\/08\/2011<\/em><\/p>\n \n \n E-mail: esaff@esaff.org<\/span><\/a>, Website: www.esaff.org<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 31\/08\/2011 We the small scale farmers (crop growers, livestock keepers and fisher folk) of the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) region met recently in Morogoro, Tanzania, \u00a0including delegations from Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho South Africa, Madagascar and Seychelles. \u00a0 RECALLING African governments\u2019 initiatives to invest in agriculture as per the… <\/p>\nWe the small scale farmers (crop growers, livestock keepers and fisher folk) of the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) region met recently in Morogoro, Tanzania, \u00a0including delegations from Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho South Africa, Madagascar and Seychelles.<\/b><\/div>\n\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\nRECALLING <\/b>African governments\u2019 initiatives to invest in agriculture as per the Maputo Declaration of 2003, the Dar es Salaam Declaration on agriculture and food security of 2004 and Sirte Declaration of 2009 on investing in agriculture for economic growth and food security:<\/div>\n\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\nCOMMENDING <\/b>efforts to support agriculture through the AU\/NEPAD- Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) in various countries:<\/div>\n\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\nAWARE <\/b>thatthe CAADP Compact agreements signed by our countries are leading to increased resources in the agriculture sector and have the potential to increase the involvement of smallholder farmers in agriculture policy processes;<\/div>\n\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\nNOTING <\/b>that despite the commitment to increase national agriculture budgets to 10% by 2009 and to ensure annual growth of the sector by 6%, few countries in the ESA region have reached these goals. \u00a0Moreover in most countries where there is a significant increase of the budget, the growth of the sector is still less than 6%;<\/div>\n\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\nCONCERNED <\/b>that national agriculture development programmes mostly depend on external funding, hence the local agendas become heavily influenced by funders from China, USA, EU with emphasis on exports cash crops and dependence upon fossil-fuel based inputs;<\/div>\n\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\nFURTHER CONCERNED <\/b>that the neo-colonial global agrochemical companies are capturing African agriculture, from seeds through to markets, by introducing genetically modified seeds (GMOs), pesticides and chemical fertilizers. This further threatens farmer independence on seed production that has already been eroded by hybrid seed and jeopardizes African agricultural biodiversity and food sovereignty;<\/div>\n\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\nOBSERVING<\/b> the negative trend in which many foreign multinational companies and foreign states influence our leaders to cede our land for production of export cash crops, biofuels and carbon credits which are not beneficial to the local populations;<\/div>\nARE THEREFORE CALLING FOR<\/b><\/div>\n1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 East and Southern African governments to <\/b>focus their<\/b> support on small scale farmers <\/b>because we are the major producers of food as well as industrial raw materials for our local industries and for export. \u00a0The promoted model of monoculture agriculture will not benefit smallholder producers; instead \u201cagriculture investors\u201d will mine the fertile soils which are still available in Africa and leave our environment degraded and polluted.\u00a0Governments must regulate agribusiness instead of offering tax breaks for ecological plunder masquerading as economic development.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We demand all governments to increase agriculture budgets to the committed 10%<\/b> of their national budgets as per their Maputo Declaration of 2003. We feel that this it is a mockery that this level was supposed to be reached by 2009 but has been extended to 2015 following the Sirte Declaration.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We call for Regional Economic Groupings (RECs) in our region: COMESA, SADC, and EAC to sign and domesticate CAADP COMPACT<\/b> as the ECOWAS has done. The RECs should set goals and have clear monitoring tools towards achieving the 10% budget allocation and 6% growth. EAC and SADC have never signed CAADP and some regional action plans.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n4.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 CAADP programme implementation should involve small scale farmers<\/b>, our opinion and observations should be taken into account to realize sustainable agro-ecological agriculture development which is meaningful to Africa. All these initiatives must widely inform and include opinions of the real practitioners of small scale crop, livestock and fish production.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n5.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We call on CAADP processes and finance to give special attention to gender<\/b> and especially women who are the majority (70%) of food producers in our region. We need access to usage and ownership of land, together with appropriate technology<\/div>\n<\/div>\n6.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>African governments must to increase public investment from within our national budgets <\/b>to support small scale farmers who are the majority of food producers in our eastern and southern Africa region. Resources from foreign donor should support the implementation of the national programmes.<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n7.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>African governments and civil society should monitor the multinational agro-chemical corporations with their various strategies for penetrating their technologies into our production systems, for example by funding our research institutions various agriculture projects with the long term objective of imposing <\/b>Bt cotton, cassava and genetically modified maize in our region.<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n8.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Agriculture research funding should prioritise research into indigenous seed <\/b>and breed varieties that can withstand climate variability and are prized for their taste and nutritional value.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n9.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Authorities must ensure that the agriculture <\/b>budget is reaching and benefiting small<\/b> scale farmers <\/b>in the villages and not consumed in recurrent expenditure which benefits only government officials.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n10.\u00a0We are convinced that agro-ecological agriculture is the answer to future\u00a0\u00a0 food security<\/b> as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter has demonstrated in a series of reports since 2009.\u00a0These reports show that agro-ecological farming model can double agricultural production in 10 years and reduce hunger in Africa whilst protecting and even enhancing the natural environment.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nProduced at the General Summit of Small Scale farmers in Eastern and Southern Africa, \u00a0in Morogoro, Tanzania<\/i><\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\nMoses Shaha, ESAFF Chairperson<\/i><\/b>,<\/i><\/div>\nTel. +254724281610<\/i><\/div>\n