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In terms of access to agricultural technology, how far do small-scale African farmers lag behind farmers in developed countries?
They lack almost everything across the board. Farmers in advanced countries exclusively plant modern seed varieties. In Africa, only one-third of farmers use modern seeds, and the rest use the traditional varieties that they have been using and reusing for generations. The traditional varieties are hardy, but they don't respond to water or fertilizer and they don't generate a high yield.
The other obvious deficits are water and fertilizer. In Africa, only four percent of farms are irrigated and fertilizer use in Africa is the lowest in the world. Fertilizer use, on average, is nine kilograms per hectare, which is only one-tenth the level of the industrial world. And that's one reason that yields per hectare in Africa are only about one-tenth the level of the industrial world – and only about one-third the level of the developing countries in Asia. African farmers also have no access to electricity or to powered machinery, and many lack access to transportation systems beyond carrying things in and out on their heads. 80 to 90 percent of all household transport for farm families is on foot.
It’s an environment that is essentially unimproved by the uptake of any modern technologies, and that is why in Africa the productivity of their labor remains very low. Years ago, there was a Nobel Prize-winning economist named T.W. Shultz who described their circumstances as efficient but poor. Agricultural workers are very careful with every action they take. They cannot afford to waste a thing because they are so poor. They work from dawn until dusk - there is no laziness here - and yet, because they don't have the technologies to increase the productivity of their labor, their average income is about a dollar a day, and one-third of [the workers] are malnourished.
Should reaching parity in agricultural practices with the West then be a top priority of African governments? Are African governments the right vehicle for that push, or should some other actor(s) take the lead?
I'm not sure that parity should be the goal. There are some aspects of agriculture in the United States and Europe that I hope the Africans never imitate. The Americans, the Europeans, and the Japanese use too much fertilizer, instead of too little. We [the developed world] have agricultural systems that use too many chemicals rather than too few. We have become excessively reliant on the burning of fossil fuels, engaging in mechanized farming that is much more than any African farmer should or ever could aspire to. So I wouldn't want parity with the advanced industrial states, but rather a technology upgrade from where they are now.
African governments have to play a role; you cannot ignore them. There are some basic public goods that only governments can provide: rural roads, rural power, schools and clinics, the protection of private property, the maintenance of a sound macroeconomic environment, public investments in agricultural science, public investments to improve technologies for poor farmers who cannot afford to purchase things from private companies, and so on. Private companies are not going to make investments to improve technologies for poor farmers, because poor farmers make poor customers. It has to be done through the public sector.
That does not mean that there is no role for NGOs or for private foundations. I would argue that their role is first to pressure and to advocate public sector investments that are not being made. For example, in Uganda, the government devotes less than two percent of its budget to agricultural modernization even though 60 percent of Ugandans depend upon planting crops and raising animals for their income. A number of NGOs in Uganda are trying to do everything themselves. However, they should devote at least some of their time to pressuring the government of Uganda into expanding investment. As long as NGOs realize that they cannot possibly substitute for the role of the government in providing basic public goods and concentrate instead on what they are good at, which is usually the delivery of private services, then there could be a harmonious relationship between governments and NGOs.
Some NGOs, notably the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM), have been critical of agricultural technology developments, such as the use of nitrogen fertilizer. What motivates these advocates, and is there any validity to their arguments in terms of say, nitrogen fertilizer being detrimental to individual farmers?
There is merit to their arguments. In Germany or in the UK, nitrogen fertilizer use is excessive, which can lead to the pollution of ground water, thereby creating medical hazards. In Europe, where farmers use too many chemicals, it is sometimes a useful corrective to have an organic farming movement. The problem is, the model that they want to follow would go from too many chemicals to zero. Their view is that you cannot use any nitrogen fertilizers. You have to replace nutrients in the soil instead by planting and plowing under cover crops, or by collecting and composting animal manure. These approaches work well enough on about four percent of the crop land in Europe in part because these are more expensive processes that some wealthy European consumers support enough to pay a premium price for crops grown this way.
What African farmers need is not to go from nine kilograms of fertilizer a year to zero; they need to go from about nine to 50 and that is a commitment that agricultural scientists in Africa have made through the New Economic Partnership for African Development (NEPAD). I think that it gets in the way of those sound goals when organic advocates from Europe come in and tell African farmers not to use any nitrogen fertilizer at all. I think that it is an inappropriate export of a European preference into a part of the world that needs more input use, not less.
