Smallholders cannot compete. Under these conditions, they struggle to recoup the expenses of producing crops that require intensive agriculture. It is, therefore, vital that the rural poor continue to participate in self-sufficient agriculture, at least in part, given the precariousness of their ability to secure buyers at prices that will benefit them, even domestically. Risks can be reduced by continued participation in the domestic food producing sector and limited participation in the export sector. Maximizing the efficiency of domestic food production is the most direct route to ensuring food security in the region. Without demand, export-driven initiatives, such as AGRA’s pigeon pea program, simply result in net losses for smallholders and governments. Entities tied directly to profits from the sale of seed and inputs are the only beneficiaries. Some view the agricultural export model as an obvious path to success due to Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage and recent export-led successes in Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, sometimes referred to as the Asian Tigers. African nations are markedly different from the Asian Tigers in terms of history, politics, infrastructural capacity, and financial standing. The assumption that strategies which have worked in the Asian nations are applicable in African contexts is simplistic.
Brigham demonstrates that some nations are, in fact,hydroponic nft designed in such a manner that export-led initiatives are more likely to increase hunger, especially as it relates to the ways an export focus can impact farmer incomes and food availability. Exports, the author argues, improve food security under certain terms. These terms include that a nation has high food availability and that the agriculture sector is a non-substantial portion of the national economy. Such is the case for the Asian Tigers, which have economies reliant upon exports in integrated circuits for electronics, oil, and gold . Export driven initiatives are explicitly not beneficial in nations where the opposite is true . In Malawi and Tanzania, agriculture represents greater than a fifth of national GDP and populations have not yet achieved food security, so they do not meet the criteria for export-led success. Wealthy nations such as the United States are net food importers, while many poor nations are net food exporters, demonstrating little correlation between export quantity and success, and rather, pointing to a relationship between success and purchasing power. Surveys and focus groups of Tanzanian farmers demonstrated that among the challenges associated with participation in AGRA initiatives- including poor storage for surpluses, quality control, water supply, transportation, competing commercial producers with larger surpluses, and the purchase of inputs and fertilizers- market access was reported as the most difficult by nearly 68% of participants . Poorer smallholders command low prices for their outputs while spending significantly higher percentages of their incomes on inputs and fertilizers than large estate owners.
Such estates more consistently meet market requirements and produce volumes that are friendly to export purchasers, leading to profits that can be reinvested to buy and consolidate more land. This displaces smallholders and funnels them into wage labor on the estates or elsewhere, just as the first Green Revolution, and further diminishes their power. Researchers in Tanzania observe that “here are many beneficiaries of such GR interventions: input suppliers get guaranteed markets; service providers make a comfortable living; banks and financial institutions receive interest on loans…ut we have yet to understand what benefits farmers derive from these billions of dollars being spent” . Hopeful upfront investments made by smallholders have not proved lucrative; the promise of buyers for surpluses undelivered. As before, studies find that the most vulnerable populations have not staved off poverty and hunger through these approaches. Economic setbacks for small landholding farmers is no minor issue, as 80% of the land in Sub-Saharan Africa is cultivated by smallholders . The farming economies of SADC nations are unlike those of the United States and European Union, where agriculture consists of merely 0.9% and 1.6% percent of the GDP, respectively. Soft commodities make up 23.4%, 24.3%, 23.7%, and 28.6% of the total GDP of the SADC nations of Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, and Malawi, for example . Farmers represent 78% of the workforce in Tanzania , where on just 0.5 to 2.0 hectares of land each, they produce 90% of the nation’s rice and maize . Matters which threaten smallholders carry dire implications for the entire structure of the economy, national stability, and the livelihoods of all citizens in these nations. Since new programs necessarily disrupt norms, they carry consequences, both foreseen and unforeseen.
It is therefore the duty of planners to reflect on a range of potential outcomes and discern which courses of action will likely accomplish the stated goals. It is understood that risks are associated with every innovation, but thorough considerations for history and context help minimize risks and avoid catastrophe. The failures in Malawi and Tanzania are the results of trial runs. Should the outcomes of the new Green Revolution in Africa continue to mimic those of its predecessor and become more widely adopted in fragile Southern and East African economies, the interventions could have deleterious effects, as the current agenda exacerbates hunger rather than neutralizes it and increases the financial burden on strained governments that are left to manage the purchase and dissemination of seed and technologies. Governments may also be forced to procure additional debt in the form of disaster relief loans if large percentages of arable land were to become allocated to a few cash crops that cannot secure profitable markets. As is documented in the overview of programs from 1940s-1980s, hunger relief campaigns historically centered on growing plantations of singular starches or legumes, and modern Monsanto and AGRA initiatives have followed suit. This has been the case without exception. Seed sold by distributers to smallholders consist of merely a few varietals which have, in many instances,hydroponic channel produced increased yields in the first generation. Starches include cassava, maize, or rice; and legumes include pigeon peas and soybeans. While techniques involving alternating harvests every few seasons to help fortify soils- rotating crops that fix nitrogen to the soil with crops that are nitrogen expensive – is sometimes encouraged by AGRA facilitators, enhancing yields through intercropping or alley cropping mutually-benefiting species on a shared plot cannot be practiced because heirloom crops and modified crops do not use the same inputs and pesticides. This means that farmers must approach adoption with an an ‘all or nothing’ principle. Therefore, smallholders who have converted all of their land for modified monocrops are left to manage a surplus for distribution, as opposed to an assortment of foodstuffs that includes crops for direct, familial or communal consumption. Plots that once produced groundnuts, cashews, sorghum, bananas, and preferred cassava and sweet potato varieties, for example, come to feature a modified starch or legume species in excess. In this arrangement, the aim is to unload one’s surplus in exchange for capital that can be used to purchase imports of supplementary food items that help achieve complete nutrition. This process is an exhaustively indirect solution to hunger, requires many risks of smallholders, and, in poor rural environments, is perhaps altogether inappropriate. Successful hunger alleviation using this method requires that each step be expertly executed and conditions ideal; for each is dependent upon climate conditions and power dynamics related to access, demand, and relative leverage in the global market. Each is unpredictable.
Alternatively, a modest surplus of local varietals can be more expediently sold in local markets, freeing smallholders of the burden of managing overproduced harvests and from reliance on dubious brokers over which they have limited influence. Importantly, dedicating only a small portion of one’s land to cash crops leaves space for subsistence agriculture, for which it would be premature to wholly abandon. Monocultural estates are claiming large swaths of fertile land that could otherwise be used for supplementary crops or grazing animals. It is obvious that a population cannot be satisfactorily feed on a diet consisting solely of modified maize or cassava. In the past, when populations have been forced into such diets due to prolonged extreme weather events or limited mobility and economic strife related to war, it has led to debilitating outbreaks of non-communicative dietary illnesses such as pellagra, kwashiorkor, and konzo, as well as death. Consuming a diet of high-yielding monocrops such as maize, which is among the most common genetically-modified species, cannot be legitimately argued to alleviate malnutrition. An effective food security campaign would include considerations for adequate dietary needs. Another implication of the adoption of modified seed is industrial agriculture. Fertilizers and pesticides used in industrial agriculture practices raise concerns regarding hazardous waste, namely polluted runoff in wells and municipal water systems near high-input farms. To manage this, wealthy and developed nations have tightly-operated structures and financial resources in place to mitigate harmful waste. Health and public safety issues caused by agrochemical seepage in public drinking water- which occurs frequently in GM maize and soybean-producing regions of the United States, such as Iowa and Missouri- are managed through filtration technologies to purify contaminated water and coordinated warning systems to notify the public and prevent consumption. Because consumption of nitrates inhibits the blood’s capacity to carry oxygen, results in birth defects, and can cause cancers and thyroid dysfunction, “he U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires utilities to deliver tap water with no more than 10 milligrams of nitrates per liter” . The following examples will illustrate the enormity of the task of providing safe drinking water in intensive agricultural landscapes, and the substantial financial costs required to execute the task. The state of Iowa produces more corn than any other territory in the United States. Correspondingly, it is the second largest contributor of nitrate pollution in the Mississippi River Basin, and home to more than 200 communities routinely issued ‘Do Not Drink’ orders. Water in agricultural communities that use these approaches must be consistently monitored. On treating rivers and other freshwater sources from which people derive drinking water, Bill Stowe, general manager of Des Moines Water Works reports that “between 1995 and 2014, nitrate concentrations at his utility’s intakes on the Raccoon River exceeded the federal drinking-water standard on 1,635 days, or 24 percent of the time” . In 2015, local utility service spent $1.5 million to strip nitrates from the water, which required denitrification equipment such as ion exchange vessels priced at around $15 million USD . Wells are equally susceptible and harder to service. Nitrate levels as high as 168 ppm were found in private wells in rural Iowa and unsafe levels of nitrates were discovered in one-fifth of the 1,700 wells recently tested by the Iowa Department of Public Health . 1.5 billion gallons of contaminated water is treated annually in northeastern Missouri , where activated carbon powder is used to remove the atrazine, an herbicide used on GM maize fields that can hinder immune function . The district spends $130,000 USD per year removing atrazine alone . Utility services in the United States, which is almost completely converted to industrial agriculture techniques, spent $4.8 billion removing nitrates from public drinking water supplies in 2011 . This financial burden is often absorbed by those living in rural communities, who receive higher utility bills to offset the costs of sophisticated purification services . Unlike bacterial contamination, water polluted by industrial contaminates cannot be treated by boiling at home. Rural populations in the US rely on regular monitoring, action plans, and early warning systems to avoid illness. Warning systems include sensors and “automated event detection software” . Then contamination is confirmed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and other methods. Analysts alert agencies to issue ‘Do Not Drink’ orders that are relayed through wireless emergency text messaging, updates on utility and government websites, and news and media outlets. These protocols inform and empower populations so that they may make healthy choices and, despite the inconvenience, seek drinking water elsewhere. SADC nations, however, do not have the capacity to fund these types of purification utilities nor are rural areas equipped with qualified administrators and testing equipment to routinely monitor water sources, particularly following the defunding and dismantling of public service departments under structural adjustment.