Chronicle Editor
Prosper Ndlovu
MRS Elina Dube, a small-holder farmer in Gwanda District in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland South Province was considering giving up on farming citing consecutive years of poor harvests due to poor rainfall.
The poor rains in the last two seasons frustrated her efforts as all the investment she made buying inputs and labour were lost. While the 2020-21 season promises to be good amid positive rainfall forecast, she is not certain of the same in the coming years.
“The climate is no longer predictable of late, and the impact of seasonal rainfall pattern changes is worse on us communal farmers,” she says.
“Input costs keep rising, and given limited capacity to access modern farming technology/equipment and efficient extension services, the risk of drought exposure is high.
“Hard work on the field no longer guarantees food security. Droughts are also killing our livestock due to dwindling pastures. Cattle keeping is no longer viable too. I lost four beasts last year to drought and being a poor small-holder farmer, this is a huge blow. It will be hard to recover.”
Mrs Dube, who stays with four grandchildren and her husband says the last two years saw her family survive on drought relief schemes from Government and NGOs, with occasional support from her children who are based in South Africa.
Her situation strongly captures the experiences of small-holder farmers in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa at large, who now depend more on food aid and social grants for survival. Approximately 45 million people in urban and rural areas of Southern African Development Community (Sadc)’s 13 members states were food insecure by the end of July this year, the bloc’s official report shows.
Zimbabwe, for instance, reaped 1,1 million tonnes of maize in the 2018/19 season and only secured 2,4 million tonnes in the last season, which is below half of the national requirement, according to Government estimates.
The World Food Programme (WFP) estimated recently that the number of food insecure Zimbabweans would clock 8,6 million by this month, which represents almost 60 percent of the total population.
In Mozambique, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), notes that the overwhelming majority of food producers are subsistence farmers. However, chronic food insecurity is being exacerbated by climate shocks and natural disasters such as floods, droughts and cyclones, it noted.
The Covid-19 outbreak and subsequent lockdown measures have worsened household hunger vulnerability levels in the region, with South Africa, the region’s sub-power house, also feeling the pinch. By mid-this year, the South African government was prompted to scale up aid relief and social grants as thousands registered for support, Reuters reported.
With only three years left before the Malabo Declaration target of ending hunger in Africa by 2025, it is disheartening that Southern Africa still lags behind in terms of achieving overall goals for the continent as evidenced by the weaker performance of small-holder farmers in particular.
Ironically, UNCTAD reveals that between 2016 to 2018, Africa (including Sadc) imported about 85 percent of its food from outside the continent, leading to an annual food import bill of $35 billion, which is forecast to reach $110 billion by 2025, if the pattern is unchanged.
Sadc has suffered consecutive extreme weather conditions in recent years that have crippled the region’s food security. The 2015 El-Nino season, 2018’s devastating Cyclone Idai that left nearly 7.8 million food insecure and the 2019/20 drought, come to many people’s minds.
While these experiences have exposed the food production and supply gap, they make a stronger case for climate adaptation with a bias on building household or small-holder farmers’ resilience and capacity to produce enough.
In the spirit of regional integration, Southern African governments should urgently integrate the goals set out in the Malabo Declaration into their national agriculture policies and implement multi-stakeholder platforms to stimulate intensified and inclusive agricultural growth.
Improved small-holder farm output will no doubt help extinguish hunger and buttress the Sadc Food and Nutrition Security Strategy (2015-2025), which seeks to significantly reduce food and nutrition insecurity in the region.
Frank Kuyula, a small-holder farmer in Zambia equally expresses the disdain of reliance on food handouts, which he says are not only unsustainable but also tend to perpetuate the region’s exposure to hunger.
“Small holder farmers hold the solution to sustainable food security but need adequate support. We need hard and soft infrastructure and viable partnerships,” he says.
“We need to harness technology that enhances production, improved seed, mechanisation, pest and disease control capacitation.”
Sadc executive secretary, Dr Stergomena Lawrence Tax, concurs that capacitating small holder farmers is the answer to sustainable food production.
“Governments must put in place practical measures to support small-scale farmers who produce the bulk of food in the region and support medium and large-scale producers and traders that have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic,” she said in her World Food Day remarks on 16 October, 2020.
Indeed, the weakened household capacity to produce food amid climate-change shocks must inspire increased regional collaboration for Southern Africa to save millions of people from the ravaging twin-evils of food insecurity and poverty.
These have become a perennial strain on national budgets as countries are forced to divert development funds to save vulnerable citizens among other unplanned social emergencies.
Alleviating hunger and poverty is at the heart of global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Revitalising small-holder farming capacity, thus, becomes critical given that about 70 percent of the region’s population depends on agriculture for food, income and employment.
Agriculture, according to the Sadc Secretariat, contributes up to 27 percent of Gross Domestic Product and approximately 13 percent of overall export earnings. As such, the contribution by small holder farmers as the majority will have a strong bearing on food security, economic growth and social stability of the entire region.
Oxfam International regional director for Southern Africa, Nelly Nyangwa, laments how the region consistently appears on the world hunger map despite potential and resources to feed itself.
“This (hunger) seems to be a permanent state of the region because our major producers, the small holder farmers, are sidelined at policy and often politicised,” she said in a recent webinar on the subject.
“Small-holder farmers hold the key to poverty eradication. Unless we change their plight, the region will remain poor. We need to take them on board to end food shortage, we can’t continue managing agriculture the way we do.”
The case for prioritising support for enhanced small-holder farmers’ capacity by regional governments and donors to produce enough food has never been urgent than now, says Mr Emmanuel Gondwe, manager for small-holder market access under the WFP in Zambia.
While acknowledging creation of social safety nets such as monthly food relief packages and cash transfers targeting vulnerable groups, he says the WFP and its partners must assist farmers to develop resilience to produce for themselves.
“Access to credit is key for small-holder farmers. These will enhance access to critical inputs, facilitate savings, skills and infrastructure and post-harvest technologies,” said Mr Gondwe.
While small-holder farmers add significant value to food security, operating as informal traders at a micro-level means they are often excluded from the value chain, the Africa Portal stated in its October 2020 report.
This places emphasis around creating inclusive spaces within localised value chains, acknowledging and encouraging small-holder farmer contributions to the wider economy. Investing in women and the youth in agriculture becomes paramount alongside rebuilding sustainable indigenous food systems and increasing budgetary allocations for food security in line with the 2014 Malabo Declaration.
Dr Sifiso Ntombela, a South Africa-based senior economist, says that the Sadc food security challenge must tackled from an access and affordability perspective. He says South Africa, for instance, is producing excess food but blames market ‘system weakness’ that makes access and affordability problematic for small-holder farmers.
“The exclusion of small-holder farmers in mainstream agriculture market is real. Major retailers control the S.A. food market and these are based in major cities. Small-holder farmers are systematically excluded, there is need to localise food systems and empower farmers to participate in these value chains…and address inequality in food access,” he says.
For Simba Sibanda from the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (Fanrpan), there is a need for evidence-based policy interventions to support small-holder farmers. Covid-19 has exposed weaknesses in African food systems, he says, adding emphasis on strengthening farmers’ resilience capacity, which requires Sadc governments to collectively rise to the occasion.
Agricultural market specialist, Charles Dhewa, adds that Southern Africa must invest more in evidence and data-driven solutions to agriculture, which will boost small-scale farmers’ access to markets and incomes.
From a research and innovation standpoint, food policy research analyst, Dr Njongenhle Nyoni, believes that creating a conducive environment that enhance access to agriculture markets and participation of small-holder farmers will be a game changer.
He notes how studies he conducted with Fanrpan have shown inherent gaps within Sadc states, which limit the potential of small holder farmers.
For example, he bemoaned limited use of ICTs, lack of institutional framework and limited access to markets by small-holder farmers in Malawi. The same challanges exist in Mozambique where farmers lack extension services due to inadequate telecommunications connectivity, poor access to inputs and lack of storage facilities leading to post harvest losses, he said.
There is a need, going forward, to strengthen regional dialogue on the above matter and stimulate conversations towards building resilience of small -holder farmers, which calls for more commitment.
Online Reporter