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Taking A Bite Out Of African Food Insecurity

Taking A Bite Out Of African Food Insecurity

The year 2014 has been declared by the U.N. as the International year of Family Farming, and Africa will see a number of high-profile projects to fight African food insecurity and promote sustainable farming.

On Nov. 22, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched the 2014 International Year of Family Farming at its New York headquarters to stress the potential family farmers globally have to eradicate hunger from food insecurity while preserving natural resources through sustainable agriculture practices.

There is much attention on Africa because small-scale farms there are critical to providing the basics. A separate launch took place the same day at Hotel Africana in Kampala by Uganda’s Minister of Agriculture.

“The U.N. International year of Family Farming is not a new program per se, but more of an advocacy campaign that aims to raise the profile of family farming and smallholder farming by focusing world attention on its significant role in eradicating hunger and poverty, providing food security and nutrition, improving livelihoods, managing natural resources, protecting the environment, and achieving sustainable development, in particular in rural areas,” Edward Ogolla, FAO Subregional Office for Southern Africa told AFKinsider.

For Africa, the food insecurity issues range from ineffective farming practices and crop losses all along the supply chain, to farmers being driven from their lands in areas of conflict. And while 2014 International Year of Family Farming is meant to draw attention to these issues globally, there were some specific projects announced in December in a handful for African nations to deal with these issues now.

Zimbabwe’s Food Insecurity

One of the many projects announced this month includes a four-year, $48-million initiative from U.K.’s Department for International Development (DFID ) and the U.N. to address Zimbabwe’s root causes of food insecurity and poverty, while combating climate change. The “Livelihoods and Food Security” program will target nearly 300,000 people in selected districts.

“While the Zimbabwe Livelihood program does put some emphasis on family farming, its scope is much wider. It focuses on poverty reduction, while addressing specific constraints that smallholder farmers, particularly women, face in boosting agricultural productivity and gaining full access to market systems,” Ogolla told AFKinsider.

According to the U.N., about 70 percent of Zimbabweans depend chiefly on agriculture for their livelihoods. According to Ogolla, “The average land size of the farmers to be supported ranges between one to two hectares.” But small-scale farms in  Zimbabwe face challenges, such as low productivity, limited market access, low soil fertility, outdated irrigation systems, and weak agricultural training, services and credit systems.

U.K.’s Department for International Development is providing $48 million for a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization-managed program in Zimbabwe to promote sustainable agriculture to contribute to rural employment and improve nutrition, as well as improve poor farmers’ access to markets. The program plans to accomplish these goals by promoting appropriate climate-smart technologies and farming systems, such as greater crop diversity; improved storage, processing and preservation; crop rotations; and smart irrigation.

“The 300,000 (people targeted) will benefit from both on-farm and off-farm activities – boosting short-term employment opportunities, improved irrigation infrastructure, linking smallholder farmers with markets, policy support, increasing agricultural production and productivity of nutritious foods,” says Ogolla.

Central African Republic Crisis

The U.N. warned in December that Central African Republic farmers need immediate assistance to prevent further food insecurity in the conflict-stricken country. The civil war that broke out in the Northeast part of the country in December 2012 spread throughout the rest of the country and has caused a drastic decrease in crop production. Because of the conflict, an estimated 500,000 people have fled their homes and many farmers no longer have access to their fields in a region where nearly three quarters of the population live and work in rural areas.

The market disruptions have caused food prices in the country to skyrocket and “a further decrease in agricultural output will severely undermine them,” according to FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS). That’s because agriculture accounts for 53 percent of national gross domestic product, as well as a large slice of employment. FAO says “about 1.29 million people, or more than 40 percent of the country’s rural population, are in need of urgent assistance – nearly double the estimated level in February 2013.” These numbers will increase dramatically next year

If farmers are not able to prepare for the upcoming planting season, those numbers will increase significantly. The urgency comes from the fact that the 2014 planting season for maize crop starts in early March in the central and southern part of the country, while sorghum and millet planting starts in the north in May.

But preparing for planting will be difficult.

“Seeds have been in short supply due to looting and because people have had to eat them instead of saving them for planting,” said Dominique Burgeon, Director of U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s Emergency and Rehabilitation Division, in a statement. “Desperate farmers have been selling tools and livestock so that they can feed their families, which leaves them without means of making an income, and raids on livestock and agricultural equipment have been widespread.”

Currently, the U.N. is coordinating a humanitarian appeal requesting $241 million to help roughly 1.8 million people, while U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program are seeking $61 million to help 500,000 people. FAO is mobilizing funds and personnel in time for the March planting season, including an allocation of $1.2 million from its own emergency funds.

Food Loss in Uganda, DRC and Burkina Faso

Another pilot project announced in December is a joint effort between the U.N., the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Program (WFP) to promote the most effective ways to reduce unneeded food losses in post-harvest and grain-supply chains in Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The joint three-year, $2.7 million project is funded by the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation.

“The plan is to scale up proven storage solutions among tens of thousands of farmers and also to replicate the program in other sub-Saharan countries with similar problems,” WFP Spokesperson Peter Smerdon told AFKinsider.

Food loss in developing countries can occur during harvesting, processing, transportation, and storage as a result of inadequate infrastructure or lack of technology. Such food loss occurs mostly during production stages, such as harvesting, transportation and storage. This differs from food waste, which occurs at the retail and consumer end of the supply chain.

“On the issues of post-harvest losses at small-holder farmer level, WFP started in mid-2013 large trials in Burkina Faso and Uganda with hundreds of farmers with the goal of coming up with sustainable handling and storage solutions that will lead to substantial reductions in post-harvest losses at farm level,” Smerdon told AFKinsider.

According to a 2011 report by the World Bank, FAO and the U.K.’s Natural Resources Institute, sub-Saharan Africa loses about  $4-billion worth of grain a year – the minimum annual food requirements of at least 48 million people.

The joint project targeting Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda will identify critical points for losses in pulse and grain supply chains, and test potential resolutions to ineffective harvesting, handling, storage, as well as attacks by pests and insects.

“Once we have determined relevant and cost-efficient handling and storage solutions in Uganda and Burkina Faso and started a scale-up phase, we will start to focus on other countries,” said Smerdon. “Especially sub-Saharan countries and to name a few; Ethiopia, DRC, Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Mali, and Ghana.”

West Africa Study

According to a new study released in December by FAO and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), “boosting productivity, fostering competitiveness and ensuring that small-scale farmers have greater access to markets are key to West Africa realizing its full agricultural potential.”

That study, Rebuilding West Africa’s Food Potential, notes that while some West African countries are doing well, the entire region should direct more effort to develop its staple food crops, many of which have been abandoned in favor of a short list of export crops.

Corn and cassava — mainstays of West Africa’s food security — could form the basis for reviving a thriving local agribusiness. According to the FAO, only 3 percent of the corn grown in West Africa was traded within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region between 2005 and 2009. FAO also found that improved seed varieties and fertilizer could double or triple yields of sorghum and millet – important to some 100 million people in the Sahel.

The study offers a number of successful case studies and argues that countries could benefit from new policies that support wider agricultural development and coordination among farmers, and the private, public and financial sectors. This includes addressing the issues of poor transportation networks and conflicting trade policies among different countries, which result in costly delays in trade. According to the study, the key goal should be to accelerate implementation of the region’s national agricultural investment programs under the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program (CAADP).