East Africa urged to embrace modern farming to fight food insecurity

Early this year, Uganda and Kenya were among 24 countries, listed by FAO, where sections of the population — mainly in arid and semi-arid lands — were experiencing severe food shortages.

Uganda is already among the 10 countries in Africa with the fastest growing populations, with a fertility rate of 6.2 children per woman.

The total population of the East African Community is 143.5 million, but by 2025, the region will be hosting an extra 40.8 million people, meaning the five countries will be required to produce more food. SEE INFOGRAPHIC

“The region will not only be required to produce enough food for its growing population but also ensure that is nutritious and accessible to all at any given time. This is what self-sufficiency in food production means,” said agricultural economist George Mwangi.

According to FAO, food security only exists “when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”

Food insecurity ranges from famine to periodic hunger to uncertain food supply. Hunger has been a major constraint on the region’s immediate and long-term economic, social and political development. East Africa spends millions of dollars every year importing food to fill the production gap.

There are several reasons why self-sufficiency in food production has remained elusive in the region. According to FAO, East Africa is facing a high level of land degradation.

The latest study, conducted by the Montpellier Panel, comprising agricultural, trade and ecology experts from Europe and Africa, supported this assertion, warning that the continent’s crop yields could decline further due to reduced soil fertility as a result of land degradation.

“In Africa, 65 per cent of arable land, 30 per cent of grazing land and 20 per cent of forests are already damaged,” the panel says.

As a result, the study adds, the average yield of cereals like rice and wheat in sub-Saharan Africa has remained low compared with other regions at about one tonne per hectare, while in India, it is about two-and-a-half tonnes, and in China it is more than three tonnes per hectare.

Availability of fertilisers

Recent findings by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) show that East African soils are losing large amounts of nutrients, which it identifies as one of the main reasons for the low crop yields.

Agra says between 2002 and 2004, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi lost more than 60 kilogrammes of crucial nutrients per hectare, a problem that affected the three countries’ crop yields.

It is only Tanzania that lost less nutrients (less than 30kg per hectare), which the organisation says is still high.
Agra adds that the loss of nutrients is high in the region because farmers do not have enough of the critical elements, either organic or mineral, to replenish their lands.

Africa’s fertiliser use is still the lowest in the world at about 10 kilogrammes per hectare some 20 times less than that of Germany (211kg) and 17 times lower than that of India (179kg).

“East African governments need to strengthen their extension services and use them to educate farmers on how to replenish soils. Use of fertilisers is part of modern farming. They also need to ensure the inputs are available and affordable,” said Mr Mwangi.

Farmers in Kenya have complained for many years about the cost and availability of fertilisers and have accused the government of not doing enough to address the problem.

In fact, FAO singles out the delay in making fertilisers available during the planting season last year, as one of the reasons for the low maize yields in the country’s the Rift Valley bread basket.

Another problem identified by experts is the continued sub-division of agricultural land into smaller units, resulting in diminishing returns. The pressure on land, especially in rich agricultural areas, is increasing by the day as more space is cleared for settlement and other activities.

“The sharp population increase has exerted too much pressure on arable land. The production units are becoming smaller and unproductive,” said Boddupalli Prasanna, the director of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), a research organisation helping African countries boost food security by coming up with new varieties of cereal crops.

A recent study conducted by the Catholic Church’s Jesuit Hakimani Centre (JHC) cites land subdivision as one of the reasons for the decline in yields of major food crops in Kenya. It is also cites the same problem for Rwanda and Uganda.

The organisation recommends that Kenya and its neighbours gradually free up arable land through utilisation of multi-storied buildings or having clustered settlements to catch the increasing population.

“Currently, the challenge is the culture of inheriting and subdividing the land among siblings. This has made land holdings almost too small for significant production. In addition, huge amounts of rich agricultural land are being turned into real estate. This must be reversed,” said JHC director and lead researcher, Elias Mokua.

The Kenya Ministry of Agriculture has asked the 47 counties to formulate policies for clustered settlements to free up more land for agriculture, if the country is to become self-sufficient in food production. There are reasons why agriculture economists are pushing for land consolidation as one of the options for increasing food production.

Kenya needs to produce about 52 million bags of maize per year to be self-sufficient, or about 14 million more than it is currently producing.

Post harvest handling

To be self-sufficient in rice, the country needs to produce an extra 370,000 metric tonnes per year, on top of the current 130,000 metric tonnes harvested, to meet the annual requirement of 650,000 metric tonnes.

With population increase showing no signs of slowing, the production of the two staples will have to be even higher and large scale farming can help reduce the gap.

International organisations like FAO and CIMMYT are encouraging governments to exploit their irrigation potential, which has enabled the world’s most populous nations like China and India to produce more cereals per hectare than East Africa.

Less than 10 per cent of each EAC member country’s arable land is irrigated, which means the countries must invest more on irrigation schemes to diversify agricultural production.

According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, although irrigation in Africa has the potential to boost agricultural productivity by at least 50 per cent, food production on the continent is almost entirely rain-fed. The area equipped for irrigation, currently slightly more than 13 million hectares, makes up just 6 per cent of the total cultivated area.

Rainfall is becoming more unrealiable in terms of onset, amount and cessation due to climate change, and irrigation can help the region mitigate some of the challenges the sector faces.

The World Bank in its second report in the “Turn down the Heat” series warns that sub-Saharan Africa faces risks to food production such as, increased heat extremes and droughts and species extinction if global warming continues unabated.

It says global mean temperatures are already 0.8 degrees centigrade higher than in pre-industrial times and that the figure could increase by two degrees centigrade in 20 to 30 years and by four degrees centigrade by the end of the century if action is not taken. This would be disastrous for poor economies like those of East Africa.

Meanwhile studies conducted by CIMMYT show that the five East African countries lose between 14 and 36 per cent of their total harvests, at any given time, to pests.
CIMMYT is piloting a silo made out of a special metal alloy in parts of Kenya where pests contribute heavily to post harvest losses. The storage facility will also be made available in other East African countries.

Despite the challenges the region faces, Charles Nderito, Horticulture Research Institute director at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation, believes the region can become food secure if it adopts modern methods of farming.

“If we insist on traditional methods then we may as well forget the whole issue of food security,” said Dr Nderito.

The researcher said that East Africa must embrace biotechnology, saying its benefits are enormous.

“Genetically modified foods will produce more yields without lots of stress. We can grow drought tolerant maize in non-traditional areas. This is a big positive given the thousands of hectares available in the arid and semi-arid regions,” said Dr Nderito.

He adds that despite East Africa’s laxity in fully embracing genetically modified foods, the fact remains that biotechnology has enabled the world develop high yielding varieties of crops that are also nutritious.

OP The East African