Menesia Muinjo
“Africa can feed itself and even export food.” - Dr David Kamchacha. Credit: Zahira Kharsany/IPS
If Africa’s farmers had access to modern farming technology – they could easily feed a billion people.
The continent has plenty of natural resources including vast tracks of arable land and water. But fertile land and rainfall alone are not enough for African farmers to produce sufficient food for its population of one billion people.
“Africa can feed itself and even export food,” said Dr David Kamchacha from the Food Agriculture Natural Resources and Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) Dialogue in Maputo, Mozambique.
He said in some African countries rivers were not utilised to their full potential to provide irrigation to farmers. He explained that through proper planning more farmers would be able to produce bumper harvests.
Dr Francis Joseph, the director for the Centre for Rural Development at the University of Venda, agrees.
“Africa can do it. Zimbabwe did it in the 80s and you can tap from that past experience and use it across the continent.”
Dr Berhanu Alemaw, senior lecturer in the Water Resources Engineering division at the University of Botswana said issues of land and water rights had to be addressed in order to do this. This, he said was because many farmers did not have land or access to water points. The increasing price of land was another problem.
“The land revolution will come. It is only a matter of time,” Alemaw said.
“Farmers need to know about the early warning systems such as rainfall, drought and other issues related to climate change so that they can prepare in advance on what to do. In most cases, drought is realised when people are already malnourished,” he added.
Addressing most of the small holder farmers’ needs can lead to sufficient food production in various countries, therefore moving towards the goal of ensuring food security in Africa. It will also speed up the process of using most of the arable land in African countries for agricultural purposes.
For instance, Mozambique is said to have 36 million hectares of virgin or fertile land, of which three point three million hectares is irrigable land and only 50 thousand hectares of that track of land is being used for agriculture. But is fertile land and rain fall alone enough for farmers to produce sufficient food and ensure food security?
“Farmers should adopt agronomic practices,” said Professor Amos Majule the Associate Director of the Institute of Resource Assessment at the University of Dar-es-Salam, Tanzania. He said
“(This) includes issues of unproductive land that needs appropriate fertilizers; soil and water management; (the) spacing of crops and using a variety of seeds – some of which can be drought resistant like sunflower seeds,” said Majule.
He said farmers also needed to be taught how to diversify their production.
“(Farmers should) engage in other business activities such as the selling of timber or live stock farming during the drought times.”
