by Clever Mafuta
New measures that could boost food security in southern Africa were proposed at a SADC Food Agriculture and Natural Resources (FANR) Community Building Omnibus Workshop held in Harare late last year.
With about 80 percent of the 136 million people in southern Africa dependent on agriculture and the region’s food security worsening, SADC member states are now facing a serious challenge to achieve food self-sufficiency.
The workshop, which noted that the region has little room to expand the area under agriculture, urged member-states to exploit regional comparative advantages in order to increase output. This calls for specialisation in areas most suited to produce food and the enhancement of food security through regional trade.
In his address at the workshop, Prof Johan van Rooyen of South Africa warned that emphasis on local food self-sufficiency in resource-poor zones may be a very costly way of promoting food security. “This argues for greater emphasis on investment in high potential areas and improving markets to ensure low cost of transfer of food between surplus and deficit areas in the region,” he said.
Regional research efforts should be directed at development of suitable agricultural technologies to facilitate specialisation which in turn will ensure production of a surplus. As trade will play a big role in ensuring food security for the region the workshop noted that regional logistical capacity needs to be expanded.
Although calls by the workshop for increased investment in agriculture and the overall transformation of the sector could be a milestone towards regional food self-sufficiency, poverty could pose a serious challenge to this effort.
Prof van Rooyen noted that easing poverty should be directed at synergistic efforts such as employment through infrastructure development which promotes agricultural productivity. Such efforts can be delivered through food-for-work schemes and targeted public-works programmes.
As one of the initiatives to invest in agriculture, plans by SADC member-states are at an advanced stage to establish a regional financial food reserve to ease drought effects. SADC Food Security Sector Coordinator, Reginald Mugwara said the reserve would have about US$30 million as capital.
Drought-stricken countries can borrow money from the fund and buy food from the region. The reserve is mainly focused on maize because of its status as a staple food.
As a result of droughts, food production in southern Africa has not kept pace with population growth as reflected by the fall in per capita food production index in recent years.
While droughts are greatly to blame for the low agricultural productivity, some smallholder farmers are also partly to blame as they are not making enough effort towards producing a surplus to meet food needs of those not in the food production sector.
The development of human resources as a way of providing people with capabilities and skills to produce a surplus was thus identified as a strategy to improve on the low-level and unreliable productivity in the rural areas. This development would ensure that smallholder farmers view agriculture not as a mode of life but business.
The disadvantaged people in rural areas, who include the jobless, female-headed households, the elderly and disabled, are the most vulnerable to food insecurity due to landlessness, poor access to credit facilities and poor storage facilities.
In light of the inaccessibility to credit facilities, the workshop proposed to resolve the handicap by urging member states to improve on access to support services and information network. The workshop also noted that promotion of rural agribusiness will reduce agricultural losses due to poor storage facilities.
While the workshop came up with brilliant ideas that can potentially ease the region’s food security problems, it is now up to all the concerned stakeholders to implement the workshop’s proposals. (SARDC)
