By David Martin – SANF 04 no 10
“While the developed countries are forging ahead harnessing the application of modern technology to increase productivity in their agricultural sectors, in [southern Africa] … agriculture remains under-funded, underdeveloped and its farmers remain poor.”
This admission, in a concept note well ahead of the regional summit on food security set for May in Tanzania, represents a giant leap forward by the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Throughout the SADC region almost 70 percent of the combined population depends on local agriculture for their food, income and employment. For this reason agricultural output strongly influences the region’s rate of economic growth.
Some 76 million people or 40 percent of the region’s population survive below the international poverty datum line of US$1 per day, while a further 30 percent are surviving on less than US$2 per day. Of these, the vast majority are “peasant farmers”.
Agriculture is not only the main employer in southern Africa, it contributes 35 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and roughly 13 percent of total export earnings.
The region is the real breadbasket, not individual countries, due to fluctuating rainfall patterns, and it most certainly should not be the dumping ground for surplus external products. But unequal access to land and water, desertification, limited mechanisation, little or no credit and poor communications have all contributed to the continuing poverty of rural farmers, making them the basket cases instead of breadwinners.
Under the theme, Enhancing Agriculture and Food Security for Poverty Reduction in the SADC Region, the SADC leaders will assemble on 14 May in Dar es Salaam to adopt a plan that will bring about the accelerated development of agriculture so as to reduce poverty and ensure future food security in the region.
At the summit to be chaired by Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, SADC leaders will look at the lessons of the past as well as the grave state of poverty in their individual countries and the collective region. A serious analysis of why agriculture is under-funded, underdeveloped and why the rural farmers are the poorest in their nations will be central.
One of the lessons of the past involves international trade relations and subsidized commodities, issues over which there was sharp disagreement between developed and developing countries at the last meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
For example, residents of Dar es Salaam have for many years purchased imported cloves fancily wrapped and packaged by industries in Europe while only 20 km away Zanzibar is a major producer of raw cloves. To this day much of the region imports Zanzibar cloves from Europe.
In Mozambique, at the height of the civil war, imported maize was being distributed in the south of the country while the north of Mozambique had a surplus. The imported maize was heavily subsidized by the United States government through support to its own farmers, and therefore cheaper, not to mention more accessible, than that from northern Mozambique.
The Mozambican example illustrates the need for adequate infrastructure in the region over which agricultural produce can be transferred, and it raises the fundamental issue of northern subsidies.
There is another challenge confronting SADC leaders: when they met in Maputo in July 2003, they committed themselves to allocating 10 percent of their national budgets to the agriculture sector. But how many countries now do so?
Sustained agricultural financing and investment, efficient use of water with its emphasis on irrigation, access to land and other key inputs, the proper utilization of natural resources, strengthening research and extension services, agro-industrial development, the impact of HIV and AIDS, market access and integration, and the creation of regional food reserves are among the issues the leaders will address.
That is a long agenda for a one-day summit, and officials and ministers of agriculture and natural resources began to consider the above items at a preparatory meeting during the week of 11-14 February in Dar es Salaam.
The extra-ordinary summit on 14 May will be expected to show the commitment of regional leaders to agriculture and to finding sufficient financial resources and investment (including by the private sector) to assure food self-sufficiency, food security and poverty reduction by 2015.
Perhaps the leaders can point the way forward by loading their planes with agricultural produce from their own countries and returning with Zanzibar cloves, Africafe instant coffee from Bukoba, Iringa chilli sauce and some of Tanzania’s fish. That way we would know that the region’s agrarian revolution is finally on track.
These factors might also help future leaders to address the question of urban drift: instead of coming to town, and probable unemployment, people could go to the rural areas more often than at weekends and holidays. (SARDC)
