AFRICA LAUNCHES GREEN REVOLUTION

Taking the first steps

While the rest of the world has availed itself of scientific advances to triple its food production, Africa's output is stagnating. It imports more food than it grows and three quarters of its farmland is degraded. But, as Anver Versi reports, the first step has been taken in launching the continent's Green Revolution.

It is self-evident, and history supports this without qualification, that no people can develop themselves to their full capacity without a surplus of food.

The earliest civilisations of the world - those centred around the Nile valley, the Euphrates basin and the Gangetic plains - came about because the populations of those regions had learnt how to cultivate on a scale large enough to produce surplus grain that could be stored.

Once a society possesses surplus food, it can afford to release labour for other activities such as the making of useful objects and the development of skills not directly involved in producing food.

From this one phenomenon, that of surplus food production, flowed all the other benefits of civilisation - writing, sciences, social and political organisations, markets, cities, learning, manufacturing, trade and steadily improving standards of living.

In more recent times, Europe's industrial revolution was preceeded by an agrarian revolution; the industrialisation of Europe in turn allowed the application of machinery and other sciences to increase the production of food. The wealth of the US and Canada is still underpinned by those countries' vast output of food.

China and India wallowed in poverty when their production of food was insufficient for their needs; now, with their successful green revolutions behind them, they are rapidly joining the ranks of the most powerful economies on Earth.

Now look at the situation in Africa. It is the only continent on which famine is still a regular occurrence. One third of Africa's population of close to a billion people is malnourished - that means over 300m people do not have enough to eat on a day-to-day basis. Africa as a whole imports more food than it produces. Yet 60% of Africa's population is directly engaged in agriculture. As Michael Foster, director of the Sasakawa-Global (SG 2000) programme in Uganda puts it: "You cannot be on a farm and importing food!"

Africa is the only continent on which food yields have stagnated. Between 1962 and 2004, yield per hectare in sub-Saharan Africa remained virtually the same at one ton per hectare; in contrast, over the same period, yield per hectare in Latin America more than doubled; it has increased over threefold in Asia and almost doubled to over four tons per hectare in developed countries.

But to really put these figures in perspective, in 1962 Africa produced about 0.75t per hectare while the developed world produced around 1.75t per hectare.

So, while Africa's population has burgeoned, its food output has not moved an inch. Is it any wonder that it spends around $4bn annually to import food? This figure does not even take into account the value of food aid that has been flooding the continent. All considered, the 'food market" is worth around $20bn but African farmers cannot access most of it. (See story, page 19)

The scenario does not get any brighter looking into the future. As a continent, Africa's farmland is the most denuded in the world. Some 75% of African farmland, 170m hectares, is degraded. The rate of loss of nutrients in the soil is also grim: this ranges from 30kg per hectare to over 60kg per hectare.

Here is another sobering fact: while production in South Asia has increased three fold, the area under cultivation has increased by only around 10%; in Africa, while production has stagnated, the area under cultivation has more than doubled. This means that as farmlands become degraded and the yields wither, more and more marginal and forest land is cleared to grow crops. This lack of cover further adds to land degradation.

Given this scenario, no continent is in greater need for fertiliser than Africa and yet, Africa's use of fertiliser is only 2% of the world average. The astonishing thing is that Africa has more phosphate deposits (a principal ingredient in the manufacture of fertiliser) than any other region! (See story on fertiliser use, page18).

Severe crisis

To say that Africa's food agriculture is in severe crisis is a laughable understatement. It was clear, right from the 1960s when most of Africa achieved independence, that food self-sufficiency, let alone food surplus, was the number one priority in Africa's quest for economic independence. Kwame Nkrumah, with his usual foresight, urged, implored and begged African leaders to place agriculture, especially the production of food crops, at the top of their agendas. His advice was largely ignored as was the agriculture sector. It was near the bottom of the pile in budgetary allocations.

But not all African countries took the same dismissive attitude to food. South Africa and the then Rhodesia, both facing possibilities of economic sanctions, devoted considerable resources to food. They provided subsidies, built storage capacities and introduced marketing and pricing mechanisms that prevented dramatic price collapses when harvests were good. In this way, they ensured not only sufficiency but surpluses without destabilising prices. On the back of this, they were able to devote human and other resources to develop their industrial and financial sectors.