Stephen Carr makes many valid points. The time may be right to do it different.
For the last twenty years, support to African agriculture has been more sticking plaster than strategic (despite some honourable exceptions). Public agricultural extension services have been run down and ‘subsidy’ has become a dirty word – despite continued subsidy in the rich world. The proportion of aid money going to agriculture plummeted in the 1980s. This started to change at the end of the last decade, with fears of food shortage and food price hikes sparking, often urban based, challenges to governments across the poor world. The World Bank has admitted that it and the IMF made mistakes in the implementation of the structural adjustment programmes that led to the running down of services like agricultural extension.
At the same time, the realisation that agriculture is a major emitter of carbon di-oxide, and particularly the massive carbon emissions (and reduced biodiversity) on conversion of forest and grassland to poorly managed cropland, also concentrated a few people’s minds. Some money has started to flow for both biodiversity conservation and to reduce carbon emissions, but often still within a sticking plaster mind-set.
To change our mind-set, it is worth thinking about the potential multiple benefits of creating and maintaining a vibrant rural farming economy in poor countries, benefits which are potentially stronger than those for the rich world.
The numbers of beneficiaries from a vibrant rural economy are higher in poorer countries, as a high proportion of the population live in rural areas. They are often disproportionately the poorest and are mostly small farmers or agricultural labourers. Even as the percentage of the population engaged in agriculture declines with development and urbanisation, it is almost certainly better for a vibrant farming sector to offer a future for young people as well as to be a positive springboard from which young people move into the urban and service economy. This is preferable to a negative flight from rural areas forced by hunger and desperation, leaving behind the old and even more desperate.
A diverse, productive and resilient local farming sector contributes to national and international food security. In tomorrow’s world more food will be needed. Both urban and rural households benefit from affordable and stable food prices, indeed many farming families are actually net-purchasers of food. Preventing famine is certainly much better in human terms and probably also cheaper in pure cash terms than paying for recurring emergency relief and rehabilitation.
Sustainably farmed and managed rural areas are essential for the preservation of urban water supplies, prevention of flooding and maintaining the ability of soils to produce in the future. Maintaining a balance between farmed and biodiverse wilderness areas is also important in many countries to attract tourists and benefit the national economy.
A relatively newly recognised benefit is the avoided carbon cost of reducing soil degradation and continued expansion of ploughing into forest and grassland. Fertile, organic matter rich soil locks away carbon. Producing more, sustainably, on a smaller area creates the possibility of setting aside more land as forest and grassland.
Many of these benefits go to the wider society, including urban areas and rich countries (especially in relation to climate change mitigation). Therefore we shouldn’t talk about ‘subsidising’ African agriculture, but rather about paying African farmers for the benefits that good farming and rural management can bring to the wider world community.
How does this help change our mind-set?
How would we design support to African agriculture if we knew we had significant, consistent funds to be able to pay African farmers for their contribution to a healthy planet and a healthy wider economy over the next 20, 30 or 40 years? What would be possible? Would the likely benefits outweigh the costs of continuing with our sticking plaster?
A modal shift is possible, perhaps for the first time, because of the availability of significant climate change funds that are due to flow from rich industrialised carbon polluting countries to those with historically low carbon pollution under legally binding international agreements that are already signed. Will the money be used to buy ever increasing amounts of sticking plaster or have we got the vision to do something very different?
The potential amounts of money are very significant. The Copenhagen Accord commits developed countries to the goal of sending $100 billion per year to developing countries in assistance for climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation through 2020 . If ten per cent of this went to African farmers this would be around $800 per farming household per year, which could provide a powerful incentive to change.
We know there are ways of farming that drastically reduce erosion, keep more carbon in the soil and are more resilient to unpredictable weather. ‘Climate-Smart’ agricultural techniques include reduced tillage, better management of soil fertility, combining trees with crops, more rotation, more use of nitrogen fixing crops, biochar, anti-erosion measures, reducing burning and managing grazing better . The details vary from place to place, but increasingly farmers and scientists know what needs to be done, but lack the incentive or the means to do it.
Farmers need stable, predictable stable incentives to be able to invest in changed practices. Carbon finance could help to provide the incentive and the means to do this. Farmer associations can play a role in organising farmers to practice climate-smart farming. Remote sensing with satellites can audit farmer level compliance. Recent advances in cash payment systems through mobile telephony (e.g. Mpesa in Kenya) and aid agency experience in cash transfer programmes, mean that we now know how to transfer money to reach poor farmers, and especially rural women, efficiently and at reasonable cost. This means we can invest in farmers to do the things that are good for their family, good for their country and good for the world. In other words we can create a win-win-win outcome.
The time might just be right.
Martin Whiteside is a freelance agricultural and environmental consultant with many years experience in Africa and Asia
It is not size - it is quality that matters
Stephen Carr makes many valid points. The time may be right to do it different.
For the last twenty years, support to African agriculture has been more sticking plaster than strategic (despite some honourable exceptions). Public agricultural extension services have been run down and ‘subsidy’ has become a dirty word – despite continued subsidy in the rich world. The proportion of aid money going to agriculture plummeted in the 1980s. This started to change at the end of the last decade, with fears of food shortage and food price hikes sparking, often urban based, challenges to governments across the poor world. The World Bank has admitted that it and the IMF made mistakes in the implementation of the structural adjustment programmes that led to the running down of services like agricultural extension.
At the same time, the realisation that agriculture is a major emitter of carbon di-oxide, and particularly the massive carbon emissions (and reduced biodiversity) on conversion of forest and grassland to poorly managed cropland, also concentrated a few people’s minds. Some money has started to flow for both biodiversity conservation and to reduce carbon emissions, but often still within a sticking plaster mind-set.
To change our mind-set, it is worth thinking about the potential multiple benefits of creating and maintaining a vibrant rural farming economy in poor countries, benefits which are potentially stronger than those for the rich world.
The numbers of beneficiaries from a vibrant rural economy are higher in poorer countries, as a high proportion of the population live in rural areas. They are often disproportionately the poorest and are mostly small farmers or agricultural labourers. Even as the percentage of the population engaged in agriculture declines with development and urbanisation, it is almost certainly better for a vibrant farming sector to offer a future for young people as well as to be a positive springboard from which young people move into the urban and service economy. This is preferable to a negative flight from rural areas forced by hunger and desperation, leaving behind the old and even more desperate.
A diverse, productive and resilient local farming sector contributes to national and international food security. In tomorrow’s world more food will be needed. Both urban and rural households benefit from affordable and stable food prices, indeed many farming families are actually net-purchasers of food. Preventing famine is certainly much better in human terms and probably also cheaper in pure cash terms than paying for recurring emergency relief and rehabilitation.
Sustainably farmed and managed rural areas are essential for the preservation of urban water supplies, prevention of flooding and maintaining the ability of soils to produce in the future. Maintaining a balance between farmed and biodiverse wilderness areas is also important in many countries to attract tourists and benefit the national economy.
A relatively newly recognised benefit is the avoided carbon cost of reducing soil degradation and continued expansion of ploughing into forest and grassland. Fertile, organic matter rich soil locks away carbon. Producing more, sustainably, on a smaller area creates the possibility of setting aside more land as forest and grassland.
Many of these benefits go to the wider society, including urban areas and rich countries (especially in relation to climate change mitigation). Therefore we shouldn’t talk about ‘subsidising’ African agriculture, but rather about paying African farmers for the benefits that good farming and rural management can bring to the wider world community.
How does this help change our mind-set?
How would we design support to African agriculture if we knew we had significant, consistent funds to be able to pay African farmers for their contribution to a healthy planet and a healthy wider economy over the next 20, 30 or 40 years? What would be possible? Would the likely benefits outweigh the costs of continuing with our sticking plaster?
A modal shift is possible, perhaps for the first time, because of the availability of significant climate change funds that are due to flow from rich industrialised carbon polluting countries to those with historically low carbon pollution under legally binding international agreements that are already signed. Will the money be used to buy ever increasing amounts of sticking plaster or have we got the vision to do something very different?
The potential amounts of money are very significant. The Copenhagen Accord commits developed countries to the goal of sending $100 billion per year to developing countries in assistance for climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation through 2020 . If ten per cent of this went to African farmers this would be around $800 per farming household per year, which could provide a powerful incentive to change.
We know there are ways of farming that drastically reduce erosion, keep more carbon in the soil and are more resilient to unpredictable weather. ‘Climate-Smart’ agricultural techniques include reduced tillage, better management of soil fertility, combining trees with crops, more rotation, more use of nitrogen fixing crops, biochar, anti-erosion measures, reducing burning and managing grazing better . The details vary from place to place, but increasingly farmers and scientists know what needs to be done, but lack the incentive or the means to do it.
Farmers need stable, predictable stable incentives to be able to invest in changed practices. Carbon finance could help to provide the incentive and the means to do this. Farmer associations can play a role in organising farmers to practice climate-smart farming. Remote sensing with satellites can audit farmer level compliance. Recent advances in cash payment systems through mobile telephony (e.g. Mpesa in Kenya) and aid agency experience in cash transfer programmes, mean that we now know how to transfer money to reach poor farmers, and especially rural women, efficiently and at reasonable cost. This means we can invest in farmers to do the things that are good for their family, good for their country and good for the world. In other words we can create a win-win-win outcome.
The time might just be right.
Martin Whiteside is a freelance agricultural and environmental consultant with many years experience in Africa and Asia