Posted on November, 23, 2021 at 09:58 am
The reason often given for the fall in the share of agriculture to the total nation’s wealth basket (GDP) and the low levels of exports of agricultural produce is that the nature of the Tanzanian economy has changed. That the increasing input of mining, manufacturing, construction, and the services sector has watered down the impact of agriculture to the economy. In the future as the services sector develops further, the input of agriculture into the economy will decline more and more, we are advised.
Now, while this is what happened to advanced countries as their economies changed from agrarian to industrialised to services sector-led, it has not yet exactly happened in Tanzania. Claiming otherwise is just a cheap way of explaining away the regressing role of agriculture in the Tanzanian economy. It distorts the truth, which is that agriculture contribution in the economy has wilted because of consistent underperformance of the sector, for some obvious reasons. Because despite what they may say agriculture still makes up the largest share of the GDP, provide most raw materials to the industries and employ the largest section of the labour force. And despite the changes in reducing contribution in percentages Tanzania’s agriculture has been increasing in real terms from Sh21.8 trillion in 2012 to Sh32.2 trillion in 2020.
It is fortunate that in its policy statements the government has avoided the ‘changey economy’ narrative, sticking to the truth, and citing the reasons that have hit agriculture since independence.
Some of these reasons are within the government’s and farmers’ control. The major ones are beyond the government’s control although for agriculture to take off the government must make try to control the uncontrollable. Dependence on rain is one of the major reasons. The unjust global economic system is another major reason for the flaccid performance of agriculture in Tanzania and in other developing countries. It is like this; Buyers of cash crops from rich, industrialised countries are the ones setting the prices they pay farmers in poor countries in contravention of market economic principles; at the same time they also determine the prices they charge for the farm inputs and machinery they export to poor countries. The same industrialised countries also offer billions of US Dollars in subsidies to their farmers to enable them ‘compete’ with poor farmers from poor countries. In this situation no amount of increasing productivity can save African cultivators from collapse.
After independence the young nation realised this sad fact very early when the cash crops it depended for foreign currency inflows started being hit by factors beyond its control.
In addition to uncontrollable global commodity prices that sent Tanzania traditional exports tumbling, the newly independent country also tested another uncontrollable factor in the growth of agriculture; drought. In 1961 itself drought hit the country leading to food shortages. Again in 1965 Tanzania experienced drought which affected agricultural output and obliged the government to import food. Drought continued to recur ever since with varying severity, leading to food aid from the US in the early 1980s. The Americans dished out yellow maize (“mahindi ya Yanga”).
Explaining about the difficulties of drought and lower global prices to Tanzania’s agriculture and the economy Mwalimu Nyerere said, “These difficulties are beyond our control. Government cannot do anything about the weather, and unfortunately neither can it control world prices-although we continue to work for an international system of price stabilisation for primary commodities. Matters such as the organisation of our economy and arrangements for economic cooperation with other nations are, however, the responsibility of the government, and these can also vitally affect the success of our people’s efforts.”
The realisation that the government can’t control world prices and the weather was painful. But it helped increase government’s intervention in the agriculture sector through policy and actions. When the arrangement of the economy permitted, after the adoption of the Arusha Declaration, the government decided to participate actively in the farming of cash crops. It nationalised sisal, coffee, tea, wheat and pyrethrum and rubber plantations and formed boards and parastatals to run them.
But the government also went further to re-arrange life in rural areas through ujamaa villages to organise and re-mobilise peasants with the aim of modernising their agricultural practices. As the agriculture sector continued plummeting, despite the very active interventions of the state, the government created the agriculture policy of 1983. Agriculture remains the only economic sector that got a formal, sector-specific policy before 1990. All the other sectors got their policy documents after the liberalisation of the economy in the early 1990. The government report on the Golden Jubilee anniversary says the 1983 policy was a result of comprehensive reviews of the strategies and programmes on agriculture since independence. The policy focused on household food production self-sufficiency and on nutrition. The policy didn’t save the sector from sliding; no did the structuring of the economy through liberalisation. Dismissing of agriculture’s role in the economy has been because of the smaller contribution of crops in the exports basket. The traditional crops of cotton, coffee and tobacco cant’ compare with exports of minerals, manufactured goods and travel (tourism).
Learning from New Zealand
It is a far off, developed country. But its tradable economy is agrarian. To be able to restore agriculture’s rightful place in the economy-because that is the only way Tanzania can end poverty, ensure food self-sufficiency and realise its industrialisation goals- Tanzania must learn from countries such as New Zealand. In doing this Tanzania must also return agricultural produce prominence in the tradable economy (exports).
Like other developed countries, New Zealand economy is led by the services sector, whose share of GDP is 63 percent. But it is agricultural produce that form the majority of exports. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, New Zealand agricultural produce made up of more than 79 percent of total exports in the year ending June 2019. This is a country in which the share of agriculture is 6.5 percent.
Water is the most important agricultural input
When they plan to procure agricultural inputs most farmers in Tanzania, large and small, do not think about water. They take it for granted that it will always rain. Those thinking about water are the few who undertake agricultural activities in dry seasons. Usually these ones engage in horticulture (vegetables). But it does not always rain, as the experience in the past 60 years since independence has shown.
To take Tanzania’s agriculture to the next level the government and all other stakeholders have to stop waiting for rain and start irrigating most of the farmers, whether large scale or smallholding.
The National Irrigation Master Plan (NIMP) that was crafted in 2002 revealed that Tanzania has an area of 29.4 million hectares that is suitable for irrigation (which is 66.8 percent of the total arable land). Out of that area 2.3 million hectares are high development potential areas, 4.8 million hectares are medium development potential areas. This is the land that is along numerous rivers, lakes, wetlands and aquifers. NIMP also shows that 22.3 million hectares are low development potential.
Currently 695,045 hectares are under irrigation as of March, 2021 equivalent to 58 percent of the target of irrigating 1.2 million hectares by 2025. To reach the target the government has created the National Irrigation Commission (NIRC) and the Irrigation Development Fund (IDF) with the national budget as its source of revenue. The irrigation potential is so huge but the government’s target is pitiable. The small target will leave agriculture at the mercy of weather for the foreseeable future.
Source: The Citizen