Posted on September, 12, 2024 at 06:40 am
Smallholder farmers in Africa face a number of challenges that negatively affect their productivity.
These farmers, who cultivate plots of land often smaller than two hectares, are burdened by immense challenges that limit them to barely producing enough food to keep their own families alive.
These challenges increase the threat of poverty, hunger and malnutrition. The lack of sufficient nutrition leads to obesity and related illnesses such as diabetes in adults and stunted physical and mental development in children. But the challenges do not stop there.
“Food security is inextricably linked to broader global challenges, so we must work to solve them in parallel,” said Janet Yellen, US Secretary of the Treasury, at the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact Meeting in New York in September 2023.
“Pandemics lower income. Conflict disrupts supply chains. Climate change poses risks to entire agricultural systems. So, combatting food insecurity also depends on broader efforts to address these global challenges.”
Challenges include climate change, the lack of access to finance, poor infrastructure, lack of competitiveness, and a low adoption rate of technology and innovation.
Climate change, which include weather phenomena such as high temperatures, droughts, bush fires, floods, soil salinity and erosion, and the shift in the onset and end of the rainy season, is a major challenge to Africa’s smallscale farmers. These phenomena have negative impacts on crop yields and livestock production and, directly influence food security.
Smallholder farmers need to adapt to climate variability so that they can develop resilience to climate shocks. This can be done by implementing sustainable approaches to food production, like planting cover crops, which not only improve soil fertility and ensure efficient land and water use, but also protect biodiversity.
Governments can help by coordinating across the agricultural subsectors of crops, livestock, forestry, as well as the water, energy and infrastructure sectors to capitalise on potential synergies, reduce trade-offs and optimise the use of natural resources and ecosystem services.
Access to finance is key to improving the productivity and livelihoods of smallholder farmers, who are mostly poor with little or no productive capital assets, be it natural, physical, financial, or human.
For these farmers, financial capital or cash is extremely limited, as they are unable to make real investments to improve production. They cannot obtain the capital they need to buy improved seeds, chemical fertiliser, herbicides and pesticides.
Lack of access to good infrastructure, including road networks, as well as storage and marketing facilities, limit the farmers’ ability to transport produce to markets. They also do not have access to farm-related information.
Most of them do not have storage or processing facilities, nor transport to reach markets or distribute their produce, which leads to high postharvest losses. Also, they do not have access to farm inputs, which are either non-existent or delayed, and therefor unreliable.
As a result, production and supply are inconsistent and rob the farmers of bargaining power to achieve higher profits. Often, they receive even less for their products by selling them at their farm gates.
Because of their inability to meet international sanitary and phytosanitary regulations and product quality certification standards, they cannot compete in international markets.
Those who do have the capacity to sell internationally, must be able to export products that meet the minimum standards required by importing countries or enterprises, and they must be price-competitive in international markets.
In general, it is difficult, if not impossible, for smallholders to enter international markets in developed countries without the assistance of private/public sector and donor agencies.
Most smallholder farmers on the continent are still using traditional tools and equipment, which contribute to low productivity. They are slow to adopt new technology, despite government policies or international development partners trying to raise awareness about it.
Unless smallholder farmers adapt to modern technology, the expectations of adequately providing food security for the continent’s increasing population will not be met.
Yet, in some countries where farmers do make use of digital solutions such as smartphones, sensors and satellites connected through the internet and combined with big data analytics, their personal and farm data may be compromised by a lack of security measures in this regard.
These farmers get information about farming methods, market access and financial services, but in the process also provide data about their farming site, operations and commercial transactions, which may be used without their consent and to their disadvantage by the service providers, who are poorly regulated.
According to the African Development Bank (AfDB), a multilateral development finance institution based in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, since September 2014, there are eight factors that could increase productivity. The results are proven by successful application.
Source: Proagri