While the global drive to banish hunger from Africa is welcomed, a new report has warned that the farming techniques being advocated by many aid agencies and governments will actually harm the land in the long run.
In the report, Christian Aid, a development agency, cited the example of a similar drive in Asia in the the '60s, '70s and '80s that allowed large areas to drastically increase farming yields and reduce hunger. However, in the ‘90s the damage caused by some of the farming practices became apparent resulting in widespread soil degradation, a loss of biodiversity, and an increase in greenhouse gas emissions from industrial agriculture.
Christian Aid’s “Healthy Harvests” report urges that African governments and other important decision makers should first study and understand the problems in Asia and not rely upon the same farming techniques as “quick-fix solution.”
“Governments and donors need to significantly re-balance their current focus on quick-fix, external-input-intensive ‘solutions’ towards a much greater support for sustainable agro-ecological approaches,” the report says.
The report argues the use of successful techniques in sustainable agriculture including diversification, nutrient recycling – where waste from one sub-system is used as an input in another - the adoption of natural solutions to pests, and the greatest possible use of renewable and locally available resources like seeds and manure.
The reports adds that measures minimising the use of chemical inputs, and incorporating resource-conserving technologies are already being successfully practised by farming communities in Asia and Africa and are helping to produce larger crop yields.
“In recognition of the challenges facing agriculture, donors and governments have in recent years made welcome new political and financial commitments to smallholder farming, especially in Africa," the report said.
“However, as this report outlines, the solutions for Africa advocated by donors, governments and the initiatives of private foundations have tended to centre around the promotion of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, which are costly for farmers and very often resource depleting.
“This drive for a new ‘Green Revolution’ for Africa has tended to sideline more sustainable, farmer-led approaches.
"For example, recent input-subsidy programmes in Africa have brought significant short-term benefits in certain cases, but they are looking increasingly unsustainable and risk sidelining investment in greener alternatives.
“The experience of Asia’s Green Revolution holds some very important lessons for policy-makers globally.”