Africa - Running Upwards on a Downward Escalator.

Africa -  Running upwards on a downward Escalator

Stes de Necker

There is little space left in Africa for mediocre economic activities and peace meal handouts to satisfy the needs of the masses. 

Away from the resources and energy of the main agricultural producing areas, polite political expressions of loyalty, poor service delivery and sheer incompetence seems to be the order of the day. Creative and effective participation in the global economy by all farmers in the agricultural sector, requires an entirely different mindset – a mindset that dares to be less governmental, that challenges conventional development policies and foster competitive regional and global linkages.

With the best intentions in the world, present policies of Africa’s Governments, mentorships, NGO’s and numerous commodity organizations, have at best only succeeded in the establishment of a few subsistence farming operations. These efforts are doomed to failure unless a long term remedy can be found to stop the continuous decline in economically viable agricultural production.

Nowhere in modern history has governments been able to conduct farming operations economically and sustainably within the confines of rigid governmental policies and statutory regulations. Communist Russia, Cuba and most recently Zimbabwe, are prime examples of this incapacity. Numerous regimes in the rest of Africa have failed to effectively produce food for their citizens.

Inadequate agricultural development policies coupled with constant rising input costs and the accompanying inability of many farmers to maximize revenue in the market place, have forced many farmers off their land. Furthermore, the majority of Africa’s farmers, especially emerging and small scale farmers, are unable to stay abreast of modern scientific methodology and technology due mainly to financial constrains and inadequate support structures.

Countries like Brazil, the Ukraine and China have largely converted to new generation fuel efficient tractors and farming equipment. Combined with modern production methods ie. scientific minimum tillage, water harvesting techniques and precision farming techniques, this change-over not only made it possible for many established farmers to survive the international economic pressures on agriculture, but also to increase their production and profitability. In South Africa the only successful farmers are those who are applying modern scientific methodologies and technologies in order to ensure their eventual success.

As a result of stable government and disciplined macro-economic policies, South Africa has managed to remain part of the international mainstream economy since 1994. This is however proving to be increasingly more difficult. Greater efficiency in terms of government service delivery, increased productivity and economically productive investment is critically necessary.

Already in 2004 it was evident in South Africa that poorly developed agricultural development policies will not achieve their socio- economic objectives. Uncoordinated and sometimes haphazard funding of agricultural related projects sadly failed to achieve the economic growth needed in this sector of the economy.

These unsuccessful policies, coupled with the increased economic demands on the agricultural sector, resulted in failed land reform and agriculture related development projects throughout South Africa. Numerous once productive and vibrant farming enterprises are currently little more than unproductive wasteland. The biggest threat to future food security in South Africa and the rest of Africa, is the current exodus of farmers from the agricultural sector due to economic pressures. During the period 2000 to 2009, 175,000 farm workers in South Africa lost their jobs as a result of farming enterprises closing down.

By the year 2025, South Africa will have a total population of approximately 83.4 million people. This means that South African commercial agriculture will have to produce 57.05% more food to feed this additional population.

At the same time the South African Government will require an additional 1 771 468 ha of land  within the next fourteen years to provide housing for natural population growth. At an urbanization rate of 7.5% per year on average, 1, 650, 000 people per annum migrate to South Africa's cities. This means that a further 462, 000 hectares of land will be required for urbanisation-migration purposes. To wipe out the current housing backlog in South Africa, an additional 603, 750 hectares are required. These requirements amount to a staggering 2, 837, 218 hectares of current agricultural land, which will no longer be available for agricultural production.

By 2025, South African farmers will accordingly have to produce 57.05% more food, on almost 3 mill. hectares less arable soil.

Making the situation even worse, is the fact that since 1993, more than 18, 000 farmers left the agricultural industry due to economic pressures in this industry.

Wikipedia, the international electronic encyclopaedia, claims that the Agricultural Sector of South Africa’s contribution to the country’s GDP is:

"As mining and manufacturing industries expanded at a faster rate, agriculture's share of GDP declined from about 20 percent in the 1930s to about 12 percent in the 1960s and to less than 7 percent in the 1990s."

In the rest of Africa, the situation is even worse.

Zimbabwe has suffered badly with 1.6 million rural people in Zimbabwe now in urgent need of food assistance. Poor rains, structural challenges and consecutive years of drought, have caused the country’s farmers to struggle for more than a decade. Last year the drought was catastrophic. Maize production was down 33 per cent and almost half of all that was planted had to be written off.

The outlook worsened early this year as incessant and unprecedented rain triggered devastating floods, and a plague of crop-eating caterpillars descended on the main farming provinces. Matabeleland North – for which the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies launched a 1.2 million Swiss franc appeal to support Zimbabwe Red Cross Society operations – was one of the worst hit.

If one look at vegetable production in Tanzania, there is not a single business that is producing high-quality, reliable vegetables for the domestic economy. You have a growing hospitality industry and a growing middle class that has no access to vegetables other than the low grade vegetables provided by smallholder farmers.

Looking at basic agriculture, most of Africa is still dominated by smallholder farmers. So while there are many laudable initiatives to support smallholder farmers, these have not generated significant capital inflow into the agricultural sector I Africa because there simply aren’t enough economically viable farming operations to support real economic growth.

In Africa some 900 million people, that’s 90 percent of the total population, work in the agricultural sector, while every year one in eight people of the world’s population doesn’t have enough to eat. Most of those going hungry live in South Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa.

Conditions are lacking for farmers which would make it possible for them not only to fulfil their own needs but also to produce a surplus for exporting. In Ethiopia for example, nearly 85 percent of the country’s 90 million people live from the land, but Ethiopia’s authoritarian government still bans private land ownership.

Industrialization in Africa, is not possible without agriculture. It is not about playing industrialization off against agriculture, but rather that the one cannot exist without the other. Industrialization in Africa must be promoted to ensure that Ivorian cocoa beans are processed in Abidjan rather than Hamburg; South African wool is processed in South Africa rather than Germany; in Cameroon, tonnes of vegetables are exported and then canned in France. Why can’t the vegetables be processed and canned in Africa?

Poverty and hunger has become a political tool for the masses. Politician’s have seen what desperation in Lampedusa and Malta’s refugee camps can trigger.

The time has come for serious reforms in African agriculture.

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