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27\/01\/2015<\/em><\/p>\n \n \n BY SAMANTHA SPOONER<\/p>\n ALL smallholder farmers do is hold up development, it\u2019s not sustainable\u201d, said the development engineer, referring\u00a0to Kofi Annan\u2019s\u00a0talking points<\/a>\u00a0to leaders\u00a0at the World Economic Forum, urging Africa\u2019s governments to \u201cput smallholder farmers at its heart\u201d.<\/p>\n It was an\u00a0unsettling statement considering\u00a0the countless\u00a0groups and governments that\u00a0have created strategies and interventions, from technology to market development, in order to stimulate growth in smallholder agriculture – a key driver of \u00a0\u201cAfrica Rising\u201d.<\/p>\n There\u2019s been a general consensus by development practitioners\u00a0that\u00a0growth in agriculture provides a\u00a0foundation for overall growth of the\u00a0economy, and that this in turn will be driven by the\u00a0smallholder farmer, as opposed to large scale production.<\/p>\n \u00a0The case<\/a>\u00a0for the smallholder farmer is\u00a0based on the argument that the\u00a0yields per hectare are higher on their\u00a0farms, that land productivity is declining on larger farms, and labour supervision costs make hired labour expensive relative to family labour.<\/p>\n In Africa\u2019s case, since there are over 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa that depend on smallholder agriculture (SMA), it remains an essential basis for economic development. These smallholder farmers are expected to help ensure food and nutrition security, to grow jobs and boost economies – all while helping themselves. After all, it is believed that when the sector becomes more mature, helped along by the application of technology into production, SMA can provide savings that will then be used in other sectors and introduce a base to grow out of, lifting smallholder farmers out of varying degrees of poverty.<\/p>\n These ideas, however, have translated into little on the ground.\u00a0At a conference hosted by\u00a0Trust Africa<\/a>\u00a0(an African philanthropic foundation)\u00a0in 2014,\u00a0on \u201cstrengthening smallholder agriculture in Africa\u201d,\u00a0Professor Sam Moyo of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies said that \u201cin spite of many years of independence, liberation\u2026I still doubt that most of our policy makers, scholars, and civil society actors\u00a0really\u00a0believe SMA is in fact feasible and a real or concrete route for transforming our society.\u201d<\/p>\n This is\u00a0despite the global agreements such as the creation of\u00a0the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) at the 2003 African Union Summit which also culminated in the\u00a0Maputo\u00a0Declaration, under which Africa\u2019s governments committed to spending at least 10% of\u00a0their national budgets on agriculture. In 2014 the subsequent Malabo Declaration was announced and\u00a0African leaders re-affirmed their intention to devote 10% of their national budgets to agricultural development – almost as if they didn\u2019t fully commit or believe in it the first time round considering after 10 years\u00a0only<\/a>\u00a013 countries\u00a0had met or surpassed the 10% target.<\/p>\n Lack of information<\/p>\n One of the reasons for the lack of faith that SMA can drive development\u00a0lies in the paucity of information on the contribution of small-holder farmers to Africa\u2019s economies.\u00a0At times, key data\u00a0on areas cultivated and yields are too\u00a0often based on the\u00a0estimates<\/a>\u00a0of field staff, rather than actual measurements of its contributions to society. This would bring into question the viability of the argument that\u00a0the\u00a0yields per hectare are higher on smaller farms.<\/p>\n There is also the question of growing productivity. Looking at growth in productivity, which would involve\u00a0the adoption of certain techniques such as fertiliser or improved seeds,\u00a0there is the argument that\u00a0larger scale farms may be better at it.<\/p>\n The ability to attain finance, for example\u00a0to acquire\u00a0new technologies, could also favour larger farms. Small farmers may not have enough land to offer the necessary collateral for loans which\u00a0larger enterprises are better placed to secure; larger farms will be more prepared\u00a0to offer more evidence such as audits and\u00a0valuations. They will also be better positioned to take advantage of storage, trading and marketing opportunities.<\/p>\n However, what cannot be ignored is that whilst\u00a0agriculture makes up the bulk of African economies, it is\u00a0smallholder\u00a0farming, including crops\u00a0and livestock, that makes up\u00a0from<\/a>\u00a060% to\u00a080%\u00a0of rural income. By sidelining smallholder farmers and focusing on large-scale production, governments would have to deal with hundreds of millions of landless rural workers, huge levels of poverty, income inequality and unemployment which are all counter-productive to growth.<\/p>\n \n Full-scale commercialisation would\u00a0not even\u00a0be\u00a0a\u00a0viable\u00a0\u201creplacement\u201d\u00a0today because of restrictions\u00a0on access to land, not\u00a0to mention the huge hurdles\u00a0associated with\u00a0doing business in the majority of African countries – there are currently\u00a0seven African countries in the bottom 10 of the\u00a0\u201cEase of Doing Business\u201d\u00a0index<\/a>.<\/p>\n The problem is that\u00a0much of SMA is today\u00a0characterised by low yields, limited commercialisation, few signs of rapid productivity growth and population-land ratios that are not declining.\u00a0Therefore, supporting SMA in Africa is currently perceived as just\u00a0supporting rural development; it will only contribute to overall growth when\u00a0individual governments are able to critically identify and implement agricultural policies that sustainably increase agricultural productivity, reduce harmful tariffs,\u00a0improve access to capital and infrastructure, and provide an adequate market structure.<\/p>\n There are examples of this taking root.\u00a0Rwanda, for instance,\u00a0is considered to be\u00a0the front-runner of African countries in embracing CAADP and last year\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that it had managed to lift one million people out of poverty as a result. According to the government, it did this by\u00a0pumping resources to support specific value chains, increasing access to cultivable land, promoting land consolidation, and mainstreaming youth and women in targeted value chains.<\/p>\n Other African countries that have also sought to\u00a0change their agricultural landscape\u00a0include<\/a>\u00a0Malawi where\u00a0the\u00a0Ministry of Agriculture and local\u00a0NGOs trained over 120,000 farmers to implement agro-forestry systems, increasing yields by one to four tonnes per hectare.\u00a0Sierra Leone meanwhile\u00a0increased access to credit for farmers, by supporting the creation of farmer-owned banks in villages. Mauritania implemented land tenure systems to improve access to land and insurance interest rates dropped from 13% to 6%.<\/p>\n Big threat<\/p>\n A big\u00a0threat to Africa\u2019s smallholder farmers\u00a0comes from the\u00a0\u201csuper farm\u201d deals that some African governments have embraced.\u00a0In these deals a foreign government, or a company often acting for a government, takes a long lease on a huge area of land.\u00a0Controversial deals<\/a>\u00a0include ones between\u00a0Daewoo Logistics of South Korea who sought to\u00a0lease about half the land of Madagascar and the\u00a0controversial investment\u00a0deal by Heilberg to acquire 400,000 hectares in Southern Sudan. There is little justification for these agreements, which would threaten the future of Africa\u2019s smallholder farmers, especially\u00a0when they\u00a0preserve the right of a super\u00a0farm to export food to its lease\u00a0holding country when it\u2019s own citizens go hungry.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, there is a potentially\u00a0bright future alongside\u00a0commercial activities.\u00a0Even with optimistic scenarios for SMA in Africa, it will take time to modernise and\u00a0complete economic transformation of Africa\u2019s agricultural sector. This validates the argument that perhaps\u00a0the discourse should not\u00a0just\u00a0focus on\u00a0large scale, that commercial enterprises could also be promoted alongside SMA and that they should not be viewed as mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n With strong cooperatives and protection of smallholder farmers rights, commercial enterprises have the potential to\u00a0open doors for small farmers,\u00a0creating an enabling environment for the\u00a0standardisation of processes, marketing and allowing for gains in knowledge and innovation which will become more\u00a0accessible to SMA.<\/p>\n 27\/01\/2015 BY SAMANTHA SPOONER ALL smallholder farmers do is hold up development, it\u2019s not sustainable\u201d, said the development engineer, referring\u00a0to Kofi Annan\u2019s\u00a0talking points\u00a0to leaders\u00a0at the World Economic Forum, urging Africa\u2019s governments to \u201cput smallholder farmers at its heart\u201d. It was an\u00a0unsettling statement considering\u00a0the countless\u00a0groups and governments that\u00a0have created strategies and interventions, from technology to market… <\/p>\nREPRODUCED FROM AN ARTICLE IN THE MAIL AND GUARDIAN<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"