Farming in Africa

IT IS 7am at Kabiyet Dairies in the emerald hills of western Kenya. The dairy is five miles down an almost impassable track, and you would think milk would turn to butter long before it arrives. Yet the place is heaving with farmers waiting for their produce to be tested, carrying it in pails on trucks, on the backs of motorbikes or on their heads. The dairy opened only 18 months ago and may seem basic, yet it has just struck a deal to sell milk to an international processing plant in Nairobi. Farmers get 26 shillings a litre, more than twice what they were paid before the dairy opened its doors.

Kabiyet Dairies is only one agricultural success story among many. Brazil, by investing heavily in research, has turned itself into the first tropical farm giant, joining the ranks of the temperate-food superpowers such as America, Europe and Canada. It did so in a single generation, thanks mainly to big commercial farms. Vietnam, through policy changes (especially freeing up small-scale private agriculture), turned itself from one of the world’s largest importers of rice into the world’s second-largest exporter.

 
So it is possible to grow more food, more efficiently, on both a regional and a national scale. But can it be done on a global scale, which is what is needed to feed 9 billion people? If so, how?
 

Because of the constraints described in the previous section, there will not be big gains in food production from taking in new land, using more irrigation or putting more fertiliser on existing fields. Cutting waste could make a difference (see article), but there are limits. The main gains will have to come in three ways: from narrowing the gap between the worst and best producers; from spreading the so-called “livestock revolution”; and—above all—from taking advantage of new plant technologies.
 

The huge gap between the best and worst producers in roughly comparable farming areas shows the scope for improvements. Both eastern and western Europe are good for growing wheat. Yet west European farmers achieve yields of up to 9 tonnes per hectare, whereas east European ones get just 2-4 tonnes. The discrepancy is much wider than differences in incomes or soil quality might suggest.
 

Or take the example of maize seed. According to Pioneer, a big seed company, central Ghana has some of the best maize land in the world, yet only 3% of the country’s seed is the hybrid kind that can take full advantage of it. In contrast, Brazilian land is less good, but 90% of its seeds are hybrid ones. The country is now the world’s third-largest exporter. If Ghana bought more hybrid seeds, it could presumably achieve something closer to Brazilian yields.
 

Why don’t the laggards catch up? A good place to look for an answer is Africa, the part of the world that has most conspicuously failed to feed itself over the past 50 years. Five years ago, says Joe deVries, head of crop research at the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), the big problems in Africa were prices and investment. Farmers were getting too little for their produce and no one was doing any research into “African crops” such as sorghum and cassava. Now prices are higher—a benefit to producers, at least—and the “African crop” problem is being solved. New semi-dwarf sorghum has three times the previous yield, and genetic research has shown how to control cassava’s great scourge, viral disease.
 

The problem now is to get those improved seeds to the farmers. Around Kabiyet, Western Seed Company, a small outfit that develops its own varieties of maize for smallholders, doubled production in 2010 and still sold out two months early. It is one of 45 seed companies set up with AGRA’s backing, and Mr deVries reckons they will need 100 to meet prospective demand. At present only 10% of Kenya’s farmers are using new seeds, but Mr deVries hopes that by 2015 the figure will have risen to half.

 
When India began its Green Revolution in the 1960s, it had 388km of paved roads per 1,000 sq km of land, and only about a quarter of its farmland was irrigated. Ethiopia now has just 39km of roads per 1,000 sq km, and less than 4% of its land is irrigated. So the remaining problems in Africa are vast. Moreover, says Don Larson of the World Bank, farming in that continent is intrinsically harder to change than in east Asia because it is more varied. In east Asia, if you invent an improved rice variety, every farmer for hundreds of miles around can use it because the land and climate are much the same. In Africa, soil and climatic conditions are much more diverse and farmers a few hundred yards apart may need different seeds.
 

But better technology is removing some of the barriers. Since 2008 African food production per person has been rising for the first time in decades. Rwanda and Malawi have begun to export food (admittedly in Malawi’s case thanks to massive and unaffordable fertiliser subsidies). For now Africa is still a net food importer, but a recent Harvard study for the presidents of East African countries argued that it could feed itself in a generation. Even if that proves optimistic, Africa could surely increase food production by more than 1.5% a year. “We didn’t know how the Green Revolution would come to Africa,” says Mr deVries. “Now we do.”
 

The second main source of growth will consist of spreading a tried and tested success: the “livestock revolution”. This consists of switching from traditional, open-air methods of animal husbandry, in which chickens and pigs scratch and root around the farm, eating insects, scraps and all sorts of organic waste, to closed “battery” systems, in which animals are confined to cages and have their diet, health and movement rigorously controlled. This entails huge losses in animal welfare, and European consumers are reacting against the system. But there are also gains in productivity and sometimes even in welfare, by reducing losses from diseases and predators that in traditional systems can be distressingly high.

 
Animal spirits
 

Improving livestock farming is important because of meat’s growing share in the world’s diet. Meat consumption in China more than doubled in 1980-2005, to 50kg a year per person. Between now and 2050, meat’s share of calories will rise from 7% to 9%, says the FAO; the share of dairy produce and eggs will rise more.
 

Livestock matters for many reasons. It provides financial security in poor countries, where herds are often a family’s savings. It can affect people’s health: new infectious diseases are appearing at the rate of three or four a year, and three-quarters of them can be traced to animals, domestic and wild. Avian flu is just one example. Livestock also plays a part in global warming. Much of the methane in the atmosphere—one of the worst greenhouse gases—comes from cattle belching.
 

Since the 1980s livestock production has far outstripped that of cereals. World meat output more than doubled between 1980 and 2007. Production of eggs rose from 27m tonnes to 68m over the same period. Some countries have done better still. India has the world’s largest dairy herd. Its milk production trebled, to 103m tonnes, over a period when global milk output increased by half. Brazil increased its production of chickens fivefold in 1987-2007 to become the world’s largest exporter. Most spectacularly, China raised it output of both eggs and milk tenfold.
 

For sheer efficiency, there is little question that battery systems do a better job than traditional methods. A free-range hen scratching around might lay one or two eggs a week. Feeding her costs nothing, giving a net gain of 50-100 eggs a year. A battery chicken will lay six eggs a week. She might cost the equivalent of 150 eggs to feed, producing an annual net gain of 150 eggs. And selective breeding has made her more economic to keep. Battery chickens used to need 4kg of feed for 1kg of eggs; now they need only 2kg.

 
Moreover, it is almost impossible to scale up a farmyard operation: there are only so many insects to eat, and so many hens one family can look after. And to breed the most productive hens which convert their feed most efficiently into eggs and are most resistant to disease, you need large flocks.
 

So there are two reasons for thinking that the livestock revolution will continue. One is that some countries still lag behind. An example, surprisingly, is Brazil...
 

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http://www.economist.com/node/18200606?story_id=18200606&fsrc=rss
 
 

Source: newsroom - farmingnewsdaily.co.uk