European Agribusiness in Africa: Opportunities and Challenges

Earlier this month, Agriculture for Impact participated in a one-day workshop, hosted by the European Commission in Brussels, focusing on the opportunities and challenges for European agribusiness in Africa.

As the workshop revealed, many opportunities exist to form win-win relationships for increasing agricultural production and nutrition more sustainably – in short, producing more and better quality from less.

The potential of African agriculture is large.  The continent is estimated to have 25% of the world’s total arable land, yet it produces only 10% of total food and 75% of its soils are degraded. By 2050, its population is expected to have almost doubled to close to two billion and with it food demand, yet current production systems would only be able to handle 13% of this total.

The reasons for this untapped potential are myriad with various workshop sessions highlighting the need for more modern farming techniques, better access to credit and market information, lack of storage and transport infrastructure and more smallholder-inclusive models.

To address any of these challenges at scale, the role of markets in tackling food insecurity and malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa is central.

In his opening remarks, Dacian Ciolos, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development at the European Commission, stressed the need for the private and public sectors to work to complement each other’s efforts even more.  “Africa is at the heart of the EU’s strategic partnerships,” he said. “Perhaps the EU has not prioritised the private sector sufficiently, but we are learning how to do that better.”

Finding the right balance between private investment and public aid and between local relevance yet scaled-up delivery is not easy and requires strong leadership and enabling policies – in other words, to focus on why markets are formed and how they are governed.

Andris Piebalgs, Commissioner for Development and Cooperation at the European Commission, called for a “sustainable shift from subsistence agriculture to a productive agricultural industry allowing farmers to take part in the market economy.” It must be suitable for smallholders and especially for women farmers.

The workshop showed how European agribusiness can play a role in shaping African agriculture by promoting research, innovation and trade as well as governance, transparency and accountability.

Launch of the 2013 Montpellier Panel report – Sustainable Intensification: A New Paradigm for African Agriculture

On the 18^th April, the Montpellier Panel launched a new report, outlining their solution to tackling hunger and resource scarcities in Africa, Sustainable Intensification. At a seminar hosted by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Agriculture and Food for Development at the House of Commons, Panel members, Camilla Toulmin, Peter Hazell and Gordon Conway, and co-chair of the APPG Lord Cameron of Dillington began by discussing the ‘trilemma’ of challenges facing Africa, that of producing enough nutritious food to feed a growing population without harm to the environment and doing so at a low cost.

The Montpellier Panel, as Gordon Conway, Director of Agriculture for Impact and Professor of International Development at Imperial College London, explained is a group of 12 international experts from the fields of agriculture, sustainable development, trade, policy, and global development. In previous reports they have tackled the issues of food price rises, nutrition, resilient agricultural growth and gender. But now, owing to the misconception of Sustainable Intensification as a cloak for industrial agriculture, they are depoliticising, re-defining and re-claiming this controversial term.

Camilla Toulmin, Director of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) began by discussing the contradictory nature of Sustainable Intensification. When first coined, by Jules Pretty, the term was an attempt to bring together supposedly conflicting pathways, those of sustainability and intensification, two pathways that must be aligned if we are to confront a number of growing challenges not least hunger and climate change.

Sustainable Agricultural Intensification: A Practical Solution for the Global Development Agenda

Gordon Conway writes for the Huffington Post.

Hunger, malnutrition, poverty, climate change, environmental degradation – addressing these injustices is at the forefront of political meetings the world over. Yet these problems persist as global leaders strive to find efficient and synergistic ways of tackling them sustainably. 

In Africa alone over 200 million people are chronically hungry and 40% of children under the age of 5 are stunted. At the same time, the African population is still rapidly growing and experiencing serious declines in its agricultural resource base with present food production systems only expected to be able to meet 13% of the continent’s food needs by 2050.
Meeting the challenge of this “post-2015″ development agenda – so-called because it will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) once they expire in 2015 – requires new solutions to addressing food insecurity, resource scarcity and at-risk rural livelihoods. 
One such solution is Sustainable Intensification.

Sustainable Intensification as a new development paradigm
The phrase “Sustainable Intensification” was originally coined as a technical term, but it has become highly politicised more recently by various groups and is often incorrectly associated only with high-input, industrial agriculture.

Click on the front cover to download the report

However, a new report Sustainable Intensification: A New Paradigm for African Agriculture, authored by the Montpellier Panel of which I chair, aims to revisit the original intent of Sustainable Intensification and explain how it can be used by many types of farms, even smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

First coined by Jules Pretty and brought to prominence in a 2009 Royal Society Report and more recently in the FAO’s Save and Grow Report, Sustainable Intensification can be simply defined as “producing more outputs with more efficient use of all inputs – on a durable basis – while reducing environmental damage and building resilience, natural capital and the flow of environmental services.”

A group of international experts from the fields of agriculture, sustainable development, trade and policy, the Montpellier Panel draws on past lessons to inform its views in the report and highlights promising new methods for producing more food with less impact on the environment, intensifying food production while ensuring the natural resource base on which agriculture depends is sustained, and indeed improved, for future generations.

A Growing Opportunity: Measuring Investments in African Agriculture

A brand new report by the ONE Campaign which launches today reveals that despite agriculture’s significant contribution to the economy of most African countries, investment in infrastructure, technology, and market development for the sector remains very low.  19 African governments’ plans to fund agriculture are facing a $4.4 billion shortfall, and G8 countries have delivered less than half the money pledged for food security.

This new report, which strategically coincides with the CAADP Partnership Platform meetings yesterday and today, questions why African leaders and donors have not met their commitments to the Maputo Declaration at the July 2003 African Union summit, which promised to allocate 10% of national budgets on agriculture and seek 6% annual agricultural growth. It declares that 2013 is a critical year for agricultural development and urges leaders to deliver on and go beyond past promises made at previous G8 summits.

ONE looks at 19 African countries with signed, reviewed national agriculture investment plans and assessed progress on their commitments to reduce poverty, invest in agriculture, and include citizens in decision-making. The report also looks at eight donors and evaluates the quantity and quality of agriculture assistance, with special attention to their commitment to support country ownership.

Making links from small farms to markets in Africa: lessons from villages and supply chains

On Monday 25th February, Gordon Conway and Steve Wiggins – along with other guests and panellists – took part in a seminar at the Overseas Development Institute to explore the progress made on our joint Leaping & Learning project.

Smallholders dominate farming in Africa. But for many, productivity of land and labour is low, returns to farming are meagre, thus leaving them living in or close to poverty. Yet domestic and regional markets for food are growing. Technologies for higher productivity exist. But often farmers cannot get inputs, credit or insurance except at very high cost and cannot find ways to sell to the most rewarding outlets.

Creating better links between small-scale farmers and firms in the supply chain thus becomes a pressing issue for agricultural development in Africa.

Below are some videos with comments from the Panelists at the meeting

Steve Wiggins from ODI on small holder farmers and commercialisation

Gem Argwings-Kodhek from ACEF  asks what’s really happening in African agriculture?

Bill Vorley from the International Institute for Environment and Development on how we can make better links between smallholders and others in the supply chain

Christine Okali from the Future Agricultures Consortium on  small holder farmers and commercialisation

Andrew Dorward, Professor at the School of African and Oriental Studies on small holder famers and commercialisation

For further information about this meeting and the Leaping and Learning project and to download the presentations from the meeting, go to the ODI website.

International Women’s Day 2013

Today is the 102^nd International Women’s Day. Annually on 8^th March, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate achievements. Since its establishment it has been growing in recognition and is now a public holiday in some countries.

Here at Agriculture for Impact (A4I) we continue to advocate for greater emphasis on reaching women in agricultural development projects. Policies and programmes are often tailored to a male farming sector. But in sub-Saharan Africa, women contribute up to 50% of labour on farms and over 60% are employed in the agricultural sector. Often they must balance farming work with caring and providing for their families.

Women and gender issues need to be core components of agricultural development investments from the outset to ensure women are empowered and supported to develop their farming businesses and grow their incomes. As an example, if women had equal access to, and control over productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20 to 30%. This could raise total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 to 4%, which could in turn reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12 to 17% (100-150 million).

A4I discusses the role of women and the practical ways in which they can be empowered in several reports and articles.

Agriculture for Impact: changes to our team

Dear colleagues and friends,

I wanted to let you know about some forthcoming changes to our team in the coming months. I will be going on maternity leave from 8th March 2013.  Agriculture for Impact will announce the name of the person providing my maternity cover as soon as possible.  If you would like to reach the team, please contact Miss Jo Seed on j.seed@imperial.ac.uk

For more information about our work, please continue to follow this blog, follow us on Twitter @Ag4Impact, and check out our main website.

If you want to reach me personally you can contact me via Twitter @LizWilsonUK.

Best wishes,

Liz Wilson