East Africa Rice Conference 2021 kicks off

Yesterday (18 May, 2021) saw the start of the 2021 East African Rice Conference (EARC), with in-country workshops across six East African countries: Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. EARC aims to identify policy reforms to transform Africa’s rice sector through scientific innovations. Reports show that Africa has become a major consumer of rice with an estimated annual import cost of US$5-6 billion. Between 2010 and 2035, an additional 116 million tonnes of milled rice will be needed worldwide to meet this increasing demand, of which 30 million tonnes will be needed for Africa.

Following yesterday’s in-country workshops, which all took place in a physical setting in each of the six countries, the remaining two days of EARC are taking place online. An online format will allow the conference to be as inclusive as possible for stakeholders across all regions, as well as remaining compliant with COVID-19 measures. The conference is bringing together government officials, development partners, members of the research and academic community, donors and investors, the private sector, and farmer and civil society groups to lead critical discussions for the region’s agri-food systems transformation and development. Specifically, EARC will discuss key topics surrounding the region’s rice value chain in a bid to increase domestic rice production to fulfil the increasing demand.

Hannington Odame, regional coordinator of the APRA programme in Nairobi, notes that sustained multi-stakeholder collaboration is a worthwhile investment and a step in the right direction for the achievement of national and regional rice self-sufficiency, food and nutrition security, poverty alleviation and improved livelihoods. He explains the discussions are focussing on accelerating progress in rice research and development, inclusive markets and value chains, rice-based livelihoods, gender and youth integration, integrated rice sector development in a changing climate, inclusive finance and investment, and agricultural policy processes and reforms.

The conference will give impetus to agricultural growth, food, and nutrition security, and rural development as outlined in the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme. Additionally, it will optimise gains from national rice development strategies and initiatives by organisations including the Africa Rice Center, APRA, the Center for African Bio- Entrepreneurship, the Coalition for African Rice Development, the International Rice Research Institute, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency, among others.

The conference also provides an opportunity to revisit progress towards the 2014 Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods commitments, adopted by African Union (AU) Heads of State and Government.

Ultimately, the conference outcomes and recommendations will provide useful multi-stakeholder information and perspectives to current Africa-wide and worldwide food and nutrition security initiatives such as the upcoming United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021. This is critical as, according to Kilimo Trust, over 1.5 million farming households in the East African Community depend on rice for food and income security with an average of US$550/household/year from rice production enterprises.

Attendees of the Tanzania country workshop on Day 1 of the East Africa Rice Conference.
Photo credits: APRA Tanzania

At the mercy of politics? The groundnut value chain in Malawi

Written by Blessings Chinsinga and Mirriam Matita

This blog highlights the findings of APRA Working Paper 56, observing the groundnut value chain in Malawi in both historical and contemporary perspectives through qualitative tools of inquiry. This study found that this value chain has experienced notable recovery in terms of productivity, but remains primarily informal and struggles to re-enter the lucrative formal global export markets. The following blog explores why this is the case, as well as examining the socio-economic importance of this crop and what can be done to support it in reaching its full potential moving forward.


Socio-economic importance of groundnuts

Groundnuts are the most important legume crop in Malawi, both in terms of area planted and volume produced. It is grown by about 93 per cent of smallholder farmers, and largely, in central region districts of Dedza, Dowa, Kasungu, Mchinji, and Salima.

Groundnuts play a key role in the country’s national and household economies. They are a vital source of nutrition, especially for rural communities, improve soil fertility and are a source of income. This crop is estimated to contribute about 25 per cent of total income at household level in rural Malawi.

Decline of the groundnuts value chain in the 1990s

The production of groundnuts in Malawi was at its peak in the 1970s and 1980s, at which point it constituted the third largest export crop. The production of groundnuts dramatically declined at the turn of the 1990s and, at the same time, the export market disappeared as a result of a combination of several factors.

First was the collapse of the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC), which guaranteed farmers a ready market and facilitated exports with unwavering commitment to meeting international standards. ADMARC streamlined its activities following the full-scale implementation of structural adjustment programmes.

The collapse of ADMARC made it difficult for groundnut exports from Malawi to meet the stringent quality measures imposed by the European Union to counter aflatoxin contamination. It has been very difficult for Malawi’s groundnut industry to recover from this failure to maintain appropriate levels of aflatoxin in order to become competitive again in lucrative export markets.

Farmers also face serious marketing challenges and constraints, as the market is dominated by vendors who tend to offer farmers very low and exploitative prices. The vendors’ market is characterised by significant price fluctuations, which affect farmers’ production decisions and marketing behaviour.

Lastly, the devastating impacts of climate change, labour intensity requirements and limited credit facilities conspired to limit groundnut production. These constraints were further exacerbated by the following factors, among many others: poor access to improved seed materials; poor crop husbandry practices; erratic rainfall and dry spells; low adoption of improved technologies; and pest and diseases.

Re-emergence of the groundnut value chain

The main driver for the re-emergence of the groundnut value chain is the apparent decline of tobacco as the dominant cash crop. Tobacco farming has experienced progressive decline, especially since the turn of the 1990s, due to decreases in quality and yields, and increased transport, transaction and marketing costs.

The men who dominated the cultivation of tobacco at its peak are now displacing women in the cultivation of groundnuts as a potential alternative cash crop. The decline of tobacco has been further accelerated by the fierce anti-smoking lobby mounted within the context of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

The other drivers for the recovery of the groundnut value chain include NGO and donor initiatives, and government policies and programmes. NGOs and donors have been quite instrumental in mobilising farmers into clubs, associations and cooperatives, which promote and market groundnuts, and hence contribute to their competitiveness as a potential alternative cash crop. Meanwhile, government policies and programmes are essentially designed to support the production of high quality groundnuts with lower aflatoxin levels. For example, through the Farm Input Subsidy Programme, the government provided beneficiary farmers with improved groundnut seed, which progressively improved the productivity of this crop.

Politics of groundnuts export marketing

Stakeholders agree that lucrative groundnut export markets can be revived through the establishment of structured markets through the declaration of export mandates, which would ensure that all groundnuts are sold and exported through structured markets. Two commodity exchanges currently exist: the Agricultural Commodity Exchange (ACE); and the Auction Holdings Limited Commodity Exchange. While government officials push for these two exchanges to pioneer export mandates, private traders, both indigenous and Malawians of Asian origin, are fiercely opposed to using them. These traders feel that these two exchanges do not have the requisite capacity and cannot be independent arbiters, especially since some of the stakeholders behind the exchanges also operate as traders.

Progress towards the possibility of establishing structured markets has stalled completely. Indigenous traders feel they will be unduly exploited, while Malawians of Asian origin resist the entrenchment of export mandates which they feel will expose their tendencies of export under-declaration and transfer pricing. Policymakers are profiting from the impasse, with some of them exporting their share of crops through the shady deals.

Meanwhile, Mgona informal groundnut export market thrives right at the heart of the capital city, Lilongwe. This market is dominated by East Africans, especially Burundians, most of whom have settled in Malawi as refugees. Through this market, Malawi’s groundnuts are exported to the East African capitals of Nairobi, Kampala, Kigali, Bujumbura etc. This market is estimated to be worth more than US$100 million annually, despite being blatantly illegal and a subject of several policy discussions. The study found that key stakeholders in the groundnut value chain, such as policymakers and private traders, are linked to this market. This perhaps explains why the condemnation of this market does not translate into any concrete policy action to dismantle or regulate it.

Concluding reflections

The groundnut value chain in Malawi has huge potential to contribute positively to the transformation of livelihoods, especially in rural Malawi. The recovery of the value chain is quite significant, and further efforts could make it even more competitive as a potential alternative cash crop to tobacco. The study shows that the value chain can only realise its full potential if the politics of marketing are addressed once and for all. Policy efforts to dismantle the vested interests that have captured the chain are urgent, and it is critical to ensure that women are at the centre of the policy innovations to prop up the contribution of the groundnut value chain to the growth, development and transformation of Malawi’s economy.

Political economy of agricultural input subsidies in Tanzania: Who benefitted from the National Input Voucher Scheme?

Written by Ntengua Mdoe and Gilead Mlay

This blog explores the programmes implemented in Tanzania to promote rice commercialisation since the country’s independence in 1961, as found in the course of a recent APRA study for Working Paper 57, as well as their impact on different socio-economic groups. Specifically, this blog is about agricultural input subsidy programmes implemented since 1967 to support smallholder farmers as part of the ujamaa (“socialism”) model of economic development. It focuses on the National Input Voucher Scheme (NAIVS), the biggest agricultural input subsidy programme implemented in Tanzania.


Tanzania’s input subsidies

Several agricultural input subsidies were implemented in Tanzania since 1967 with the intention of reducing the cost of using agricultural inputs among smallholder farmers. The major agricultural input subsidy programmes implemented since Tanzania’s independence were the pan-territorial fertiliser pricing policy with varying levels of price subsidy over the years of its existence and the National Input Voucher Scheme (NAIVS). The focus of the blog is identifying those who benefitted from NAIVS, the biggest subsidy programme implemented in all districts and regions in Tanzania.

  • Pan-territorial Fertiliser Pricing Policy

The pan-territorial fertiliser pricing policy was introduced in the early 1970s as a response to intermittent food shortages (Geier 1995). The main objective of pan-territorial pricing was to encourage farmers in remote areas to produce more for the market by subsidising their transport costs in addition to the direct fertiliser subsidy provided to all farmers in the country. Through this policy, the government also hoped the income differentials between regions would decrease and equal regional development would be encouraged. Nevertheless, pan territorial pricing was found to be an inefficient way to promote production due to high transportation costs. Consequently, it was abolished in 1984 as part of the economic reforms under the Structural Adjustment Programme due to escalating government expenditure and criticism from donors that it was implemented at taxpayers’ expense.

  • National Input Voucher Scheme

NAIVS was introduced in the 2002/2003 farming season as a fertiliser subsidy in the four major maize-growing regions in the southern highlands of Tanzania, despite resistance from donors that subsidies are an inefficient way of spending taxpayers’ money. The subsidy was expanded to all regions in the country in 2005. Despite donor resistance to support subsidy programmes, the World Bank decided to support the input subsidy programme by expanding the fertiliser programme to cover both rice and maize-growing districts in the country, extending the subsidy to seeds, provided as a package with fertiliser for an acre of maize or rice through NAIVS (Minot and Benson 2009). However, the targeted smallholder farmers with 1 acre or less had to cover 50 per cent of the voucher cost up-front, which many of them were unable to do. The distribution of the voucher to the eligible smallholder farmers was entrusted to village voucher committee members and village leaders who were eligible for about 60 per cent of the vouchers allocated to the village. As a result, many of the vouchers remained with the village elite or ended up with wealthier medium/large-scale farmers who purchased vouchers from the smallholders when they were unable to generate the up-front costs.

In general, the input subsidy programme through input vouchers appeared attractive based on the argument that it would contribute to the development of input markets. The government decision to reintroduce the subsidy and the introduction of NAIVS to facilitate distribution of the inputs were well received by smallholder farmers because input provision was their most pressing problem in agriculture. However, political economists associated the pattern of reintroduction and expansion of the subsidy programme with political motives of the ruling party to win elections because they coincided with the 2005 and 2010 general elections. NAIVS was phased out in 2016 due to budgetary constraints. Instead of NAIVS, the government decided to enhance imported fertiliser procurement modalities through the bulk procurement system (BPS), coupled with indicative fertiliser prices, as strategies to reduce the price paid by farmers. The BPS began operating in 2017, but faces challenges including delays in supplying fertiliser to farmers, lack of availability of fertiliser in remote areas and failure to purchase fertiliser among smallholder farmers due lack of cash or credit.

Who benefitted from NAIVS?

Although NAIVS was designed for smallholder farmers with one acre of land or less, it benefitted the village elite who were allocated relatively large share of the vouchers for the village and medium/large-scale farmers who purchased vouchers from financially-constrained smallholder famers. This created a wider gap of fertiliser use between better-off medium/large scale farmers, resource poor and the village elite, leading to differences in rice yields, incomes, food security and poverty levels between the poor farmers (the losers) and better-off farmers (gainers).

Conclusion

Although NAIVS covered a large number of eligible smallholder farmers, it suffered from targeting inadequacies. As a result, NAIVS, which was intended to support resource poor smallholder farmers ended up benefitting resource rich medium/large-scale famers at the expense of taxpayers’ money. This suggests that policy interventions geared towards lowering the cost of agricultural inputs among smallholder farmers should be accompanied by a provision of credit to enable them to purchase inputs. The credit could be in the form of provision of inputs through farmer organisations during the planting season, and recover the credit through the same farmer organisations during the crop harvesting season.

Beyond the silver bullet solution: towards a ‘systems agronomy’ perspective


This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

The previous two blogs (here and here) have discussed the Pfumvudza conservation agriculture programme that has become a high-profile, politicised intervention during the last season. In a very wet year, the results have been interesting. Yields have been good on the small plots, but many problems have been faced. And, because of the good rainfall, yields have been impressive too under conventional farming in larger open fields, especially for those who planted early. The result is a predicted bumper harvest of maize, perhaps around 2.8 million tonnes, one of the highest on record.

For the proponents of Pfumvudza the return of food security after many years of importing food due to drought, this shows how the programme has been a huge success, witness to the commitment of the party-state to the people and development. While there have clearly been important gains, as the previous blogs have emphasised, we have to avoid getting carried away with the Pfumvudza hype.

Beyond the hype of a silver-bullet solution

Just as with the range of other supposed magical, silver-bullet interventions that are supposed to revolutionise agriculture, promoted with similar evangelical zeal – whether under labels of ‘green revolution technologies’, ‘regenerative agriculture’, ‘climate-smart agriculture’ or ‘agroecology’ – we need to understand the context for the intervention in the wider farming and livelihood system.

As farmers will always explain, particular technologies, techniques and packages are seen as useful additions for particular challenges, but are definitely not panaceas. They work under certain conditions (of rainfall, soil, labour, seed, fertility and so on), but not automatically as the results from across our sites discussed in last week’s blog have shown.

Yet, added to the mix, new practices, such as conservation agriculture, can be part of a complex farming performance, where external inputs, local knowledges and indigenous resources are combined. In this way of thinking, farms must be seen as complex systems and managing them requires skill and knowledge and the adaptive combination of techniques as part of a repertoire. For farmers, as Paul Richards explained long ago, agriculture is always a performance, a carefully managed drama across scenes and sites, within a wider system.

As the previous blogs in this series have shown, Pfumvudza definitely has merits in certain socio-ecological circumstances. Conservation agriculture as a gardening technique applied to home fields it may have merit, if labour can be mobilised and inputs – including mulch – found. But we have to understand the dynamics of farming systems within farms and across years, as home fields/gardens and outfields interact. There are social and gender dynamics here too, as it is often women who tend home fields/gardens, while men focus on the outfields, but this may be upset by focused extension investment in a particular part of the farm.

The need for a complex systems approach

In other words, following the arguments of Ken Giller and colleagues, we need more ‘systems agronomy’ thinking. This means thinking about where different practices fit (land area/soil typegarden vs. outfield); how labour is deployed and by whom (seasonally, between men and women, including the costs of hiring); the levels of mechanisation (beyond a reliance on just garden-based hoe farming on very small plots) and the management of different inputs across the farm (such as through competition over crop residues as mulch and animal feed, the levels of production of manure as livestock herds decline and how focused inorganic fertiliser inputs are applied). And so on.

This is what farming systems research made the case for from the 1970s in response to the failures of the single, magic bullet approach of the ‘green revolution’ of the 1960s. The high yielding varieties, fertility inputs and water control technologies only worked in some controlled settings, and a more attuned approach was needed. This extended to more participatory approaches from the 1980s and 90s when farmers became involved in, and helped design, scientific experiments.

But sadly much of this impetus has been lost in the last two decades as a technology transfer mode has returned to agricultural development. This applies not just to the ‘green revolution’ technologies, promoted through such organisations as AGRA, but also the so-called ‘alternative’ technologies of agroecology and regenerative agriculture promoted by NGOs, donors and some UN agencies. Conservation agriculture and Pfumvudza is just one such example.

How should we assess what works from a more holistic, systems perspective? Too often agronomic and even economic efficiency assessments are just on the basis of a single plot, but this is not how farmers must respond. Focused attention on a metre squared is not the same as managing a whole farm, and indeed a wider livelihood system.  The focus on the field plot and the obsession with single packages pushed by extension has long been shown to be inadequate, as argued by Robert Chambers and many others (including me…) in the Farmer First book series over decades (also here and here). The wider approach to ‘sustainable livelihoods’, originally promoted by Robert and Gordon Conway in the early 1990s, added to this argument (see also here from me).

From a technology focus to a systems approach

Zimbabwe’s history of agricultural research and development has followed a similar path. The high point of green revolution technology-led enthusiasm was in the 1950s and 60s when the famous Rhodesian maize varieties such as SR52 were out-performing the American mid-West. The package approach of ED Alvord was the basis for extending successful technologies to the ‘natives’ through demonstration even earlier, from the 1920s, as part of the ‘gospel of the plow’. This technology focus persisted but after Independence, but in the 1980s the Farming Systems Research Unit was established in the Department of Research and Specialist Services of the Ministry of Agriculture, which led on adaptive and later participatory research.

Indeed our research team grew out of this unit and has maintained its philosophy even after it was abolished in the restructuring of the 1990s, the result of the collapse in state funding to research resulting from the structural adjustment programme. Since then government agricultural research in Zimbabwe reverted to a more technical focus, but with limited funding has been seriously hampered and it has been the NGOs and the donors that have led, with a cycle of fads and new project efforts that have emerged.

From Alvord onwards, Zimbabwe has frequently succumbed to fads in agricultural production, with promises of silver bullet solutions, and with committed, sometimes highly politicised, evangelists showing the way. The story of Pfumvudza is therefore one part of a longer history. However, just as with previous interventions, understanding how such technologies and practices fit within a wider agricultural and livelihood system is essential.

As the results from this past year show – discussed in this blog series and indeed reflected in much longer-term studies – Pfumvudza and conservation agriculture more generally may be one part of the solution, but only one part. Rather than getting carried away with the hype of a singular solution, a more systems perspective that appreciates the complex performance of farming is urgently needed. 

APRA Ghana presents research findings in a dissemination workshop

Written by Louis Hodey

Key findings emerging from APRA’s research in Ghana were presented to representatives of oil palm farmers and oil palm processing companies, agricultural extension officers, district and regional directors of agriculture, and the media at a workshop on 17 March 2021 at the Takoradi Library & Office Complex.


Introducing research

In his introductory remarks, the APRA Ghana team lead, Dr. Fred M. Dzanku, highlighted APRA’s research in Ghana, explaining that their overarching research goal is to identify pathways to agricultural commercialisation that have been most effective in a) empowering smallholders (including women), b) reducing poverty and c) improving nutrition and food security. He further emphasised that APRA seeks to produce new evidence to inform policies and investment in commercial agriculture, to make them more effective and inclusive, and to provide a better understanding of the political economy behind agricultural commercialisation policy processes.

Dr. Fred Mawunyo Dzanku interacting with workshop participants on APRA’s research work in Ghana [Credit: Louis Hodey]

Prior to highlighting the key research findings from the APRA study on oil palm commercialisation, Dr. Kofi Takyi Asante detailed the socio-economic context, conceptualisation of agricultural commercialisation and livelihoods, as well as the objectives and research methods of the study.

Methodology

The research used a combination of detailed household surveys and qualitative research (focus groups, life histories, key informant interviews) to analyse individual and household ‘selection choices’ related to different agricultural commercialisation pathways, and the livelihood outcomes resulting from these related to women’s empowerment; labour and employment; food and nutrition security; and poverty and inequality. Two rounds of surveys were conducted, involving 726 oil palm farming households. Dr. Asante revealed that four main oil palm marketing channels were operating in the study area – direct sales to oil palm processing companies (OPCs), sales to OPCs through agents, independent sales on local market, and own/artisanal processing (palm oil, alcohol, soap, etc.). Though there was unequal access to these channels based on structural and personal factors, 27% of respondents sold directly to OPCs, 33% sold to OPCs through agents, 29% were engaged in independent sales through local markets, and 11% were engaged in their own/artisanal processing.

Dr. Kofi Takyi Asante presenting the key findings from the APRA WS1 study to workshop participants [Credit: Louis Hodey]

Social dimensions of oil palm commercialisation

Presenting the findings on welfare outcomes of the four commercialisation channels, Dr. Asante revealed that those engaged in direct sales to OPCs, and those who process their own oil palm, produce similar subjective and objective welfare outcomes. Households engaged in these channels earn more and are happier compared to those engaged in sales to OPCs through agents and independent sales through local markets. On the other hand, those engaged in sales to OPCs through agents and independent sales through local markets are more profitable, compared to their counterparts.

Dr. Kofi Takyi Asante addressing some questions and suggestions made by participants [Credit: Louis Hodey]

Moving forward

In conclusion, Dr. Asante affirmed that there is a huge potential for enhancing the oil palm sector’s productivity, though challenges such as mistrust, limited access to financial and other resources, and land tenure issues remain. Finally, Dr. Asante proposed a stronger collaboration between smallholders, estates, and the Tree Crops Development Authority (TCDA) to boost productivity in the oil palm sector.

Following the presentation, participants engaged the research team with thought-provoking questions, providing relevant insights and suggestions for policy and practice. Key highlights include a proposal by representatives of oil palm farmers and processers for the government to establish an oil palm board (like the COCOBOD for cocoa) to regulate and address the needs of the sector and maximize the potential of the value chain. Mr. Samuel Avaala, who doubles as the CEO of the Tree Crops Development Authority (TCDA) and the Managing Director of the Benso Oil Palm Processing Ltd. (BOPP), indicated that the establishment of the TCDA is aimed at resolving the challenges confronting the oil palm sector in Ghana. He bemoaned the inability of the TCDA to perform satisfactorily due to political apathy resulting from changing political regimes.

APRA WS1 research team in a group photograph [Credit: Vincentia Quartey]

In his concluding remarks, Dr. Dzanku summarised evidence from the study which it is hoped will help to guide policy and practice:

  1. There are high commercialisation rates, due to high levels of specialisation in non-food cash crops, but this leads to seasonal food insecurities.
  2. The relationship between farmers and oil palm processing companies is highly informal.
  3. The oil palm economy is highly differentiated, and this could be perpetuating inequality.
  4. There seems to be a breakdown of trust among participants in the oil palm economy.

The event was widely reported in the Ghanaian media by radio stations, online news sites, and newspapers. These include Ghanaweb (https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/business/Oil-palm-farmers-advocate-a-Board-for-sector-1208383), and Ghana News Agency (https://www.gna.org.gh/1.20398920).

Conservation agriculture: latest experiences from Zimbabwe


This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland

In the last blog, I introduced the Pfumvudza programme in Zimbabwe, a version of conservation agriculture that has been heavily promoted across the country during the last season. In this blog, I look at what happened, based on reflections from our field sites across the country – from Chikombedzi in Mwenezi in the far south, to Matobo in Matabeleland South to Masvingo and Gutu districts to Mvurwi in the north.

Across our sites, even in the resettlement areas where there are larger land areas, the uptake has been impressive. According to our informants (mostly agricultural extension officers living in the area), it is lowest in the tobacco farming area of Mvurwi (around 50%) and high in the poor sandy soil areas of Gutu/Chatsworth (over 90%) and Wondedzo (about 80%), as well as in the drier areas of Mwenezi and Matobo (80-90%).

But what Pfumvudza actually is in the different sites varies. Across the sites different packages – mostly maize, but also soya and sorghum – were offered. But there was a huge range of different seed varieties delivered. Some proved excellent, others less so. And the timing of the deliveries varied too. Some were available before the early rains, allowing dry planting, others arrived late, missing the plentiful early rains and hitting the mid-season drought that affected many sites. In addition to variations in types of seeds there were different levels of provision of fertiliser (compound D and top dressing), with many farmers complaining that this was inadequate. All these factors had a big effect on the outcomes of the programme.

Comparing Pfumvudza and conventional approach: a very rough assessment

In the last few weeks as crops have matured, the team has done a visual assessment of the likely harvests in the Pfumvudza plots and in other fields. This is very rough-and-ready, and should not be taken as a definitive assessment, but it’s based on long experience of working in the areas, and in most cases with experience as trained extension workers. Within these averages there is of course wide variation, much to do with timing. Those who planted early and benefited from early rains did well, both on their Pfumvudza plots and in their other fields. The results (with all the caveats) are in the table below.

SitePfumvudza (very approximate tonnes/ha)Conventional (very approximate tonnes/ha)
Mvurwi4.86
Gutu Chatsworth3.52.4
Wondedzo Masvingo1.52
Matobo4.22.5
Chikombedzi Masvingo43
Average yield3.63

Except in Mvurwi and Wondedzo, the Pfumvudza plots seem to have yielded more than the conventional agriculture in the open fields, but of course only on very small areas. The yield levels in the main fields this year were actually quite good, including in the usually very dry areas of Matobo and Mwenezi, where average yields are usually below a tonne per hectare. Any assessment must take account of what is happening in home and out fields, hence the comparison above. In good seasons, the use of more extensive outfields is feasible, and many ploughed furiously in December when the rains arrived in earnest. Even though planting late, they did reasonably well.

Of course the inputs supplied may not have all ended up in the Pfumvudza plots; as in past free distributions free inputs are applied carefully across the farm, making any evaluation tricky. In terms of the overall volume of output, outfield crops under conventional systems across several hectares will far exceed those produced in the small 0.06 ha Pfumvudza plots. Even with higher yields per hectare, the plots provide only a small fraction to the total. This of course might have been different in a dry year, when outfield crops may fail completely, and small garden-like plots provide an important production safety net, and so any evaluation must look across years, with the above figures taken in context.

Farmers’ reflections reveal a complex story

So what happened on the ground across our sites? A number of themes emerged in discussion with farmers and the field research team, relating to the effects of soils, rainfall pattern, seed supply, labour and politics:

Soils. Different soil types make a big difference. In sandy soils, there have been complaints of leaching due to heavy rains. This was particularly the case in Wondedzo in Masvingo where sandy soils suffered through the incessant rains this season. By contrast, in some areas where there are heavier soils and farmers complained about pooling of water in the pits and waterlogging. This meant adaptation of the system, including the building of cross furrows and other drainage systems, noticed in particular in Mvurwi, where the Pfumvudza plots fared worse than the conventional farming areas. 

Rainfall. It was an unusually wet season this past year, with good early rains, a gap and then later rains. The season was in three periods, and those who planted early and got inputs in time did well. However those who planted later had poor results. This was a pattern across all our sites. However the high rainfall particularly affected our northern site in Mvurwi, which would normally expect reasonable rains for crop growth. Here waterlogging and even algal growth along with a massive weed burden proved a big problem in the conservation agriculture plots. By contrast, normal drainage and the use of herbicides in other fields proved helpful, resulting in higher yields there. By contrast in the dry south, where drought conditions are more common high rainfall on rich, heavy soils proved a bonanza and both Pfumvudza and conventional plots did spectacularly (at least for these areas). Of course any agronomic system must be able to adapt to different conditions, as there is no such thing as a ‘normal’ year. Mixing different approaches within a farm may be an important way forward, rather than seeing Pfumvudza as ‘the’ solution.

Seeds. It was comments about seed varieties that dominated the discussions with farmers across the sites. The government programme had a challenge in gaining access to seed and too often it resulted in inappropriate seeds being offered to Pfumvudza farmers. For example in Wondedzo and Gutu Chatsworth, farmers complained bitterly about the poorly-performing Syngenta variety supplied for their Pfumvudza plots. The SC513 that they bought locally did much better. In Mvurwi, farmers refused to collect the seed offered under the programme, and much remains rotting in the stores. Instead, they used their own seed, which proved more effective. In Matobo, farmers were happy with the Pioneer varieties that were supplied and this was the same in Mwenezi where Seed Coop varieties were offered. Early planting on high fertility soils in these sites resulted in bumper yields on the Pfumvudza plots, and also good yields elsewhere.

Labour. The digging of pits was a requirement for receiving inputs. So last year resulted in a growth in demand for labour, especially to help older and infirm people. Young men in particular were able to get piece-work employment during the lockdowns of 2020 to dig pits. And some richer farmers also employed labour as it is very hard work digging a full plot for Pfumvudza farming. Those in Mvurwi resettlement areas, where tobacco farming dominates, argued that Pfumvudza is not for commercial agriculture, where you need larger areas and digging pits is impossible (although with the loss of many cattle due to January disease last year, many had to resort to this technique due to a lack of draft power). The local nick-name for conservation agriculture is ‘dig and die’ (diga ufe). Many still refer to the programme in this way, but the term is now used quietly, as today criticising the programme is definitely not encouraged given its political cachet.

Politics. Many farmers complained about the politicisation of the programme. In the past you had to perform what the NGO or development project wanted to get the inputs for conservation agriculture, but now it’s more elaborate given how Pfumvudza has become a party-led, state backed campaign. Many commented that this politicisation means that (as with command agriculture) that patronage politics are played out around the programme, and those not supporting the programme are deemed to be in opposition to the government and are victimised. Others expressed suspicions that the Pfumvudza programme was part of a larger aim of down-sizing farms in the resettlement areas. If it can be proven that good yields are achievable on a small plot, then subdivisions become more possible, they observed. Farmers argued that the programme should be solely under the control of the ministry, and not within the purview of politicians, councillors and party cadres. However, the offer of free inputs is not shunned, although many argued that earlier programmes, such as the Presidential Support Scheme that was not tied to digging pits, were more effective. Many farmers said they would not continue with the practice if there were no free inputs.

Agronomy in context

In sum, while appreciating the programme, farmers complained a lot about the poor seeds, the late delivery and the uneven provision of inputs. They argued strongly that a blanket approach to the whole country controlled centrally – with everything from seeds, to fertility inputs to plant population to the size of the pits – does not make sense.

The programme instead needs to be much better attuned to local circumstances, including learning from how farmers have adapted the system, and not hiding this from extension workers and others for fear of admonishment. One extension worker recalled being tackled by a group of farmers earlier in the season: “You are from government”, they said, “what sort of people are you? You give us rubbish seeds. Who is responsible for this?”. As a front-line worker in a hierarchical, centralised system, he had no answer and had to agree (quietly). The failure to adjust, adapt and attune of course undermines any technological intervention. Learning from failures is always important.

Agronomy is always site specific, making big generalisations about interventions and techniques very problematic, as many reviews of conservation agriculture have pointed out (e.g. here and here). Context matters. There is never a magic bullet for farming. It all depends. This is why a more rounded perspective – beyond the idea of single magic bullet intervention – is needed. This is the theme of the blog next week, which is the final one in this Pfumvudza blog series.

Youth Employment and Politics Seminars

The Youth Employment and Politics webinar series is linked to IDS’ strategic research initiative: ‘Ensuring decent work and political inclusion for young people’, which is part of the 2020-25 IDS Strategy.

Presentations will primarily focus on sub-Sahara Africa and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. In line with our values on inclusiveness of voices and co-construction of knowledge, the webinar series will capture diverse perspectives. Speakers and discussants represent academia, civil society, governments and UN agencies. Researchers involved in the IDS Europe Engagement Initiative will also share insights. Together we aim to strengthen development thinking and practice for more effective interventions for ‘the Covid generation’ to tackle what is a universal development challenge.

The battle of youth continues: Shifting the policy narrative from security to peace

7 May 2021 14:00–15:30 UK

Register here to watch on Zoom.

Speakers

  • Dr. Salvador Forquilha, researcher, Institute for Social and Economic Studies (IESE) and a senior lecturer at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique.
  • Dr Sofya Shabab, Research Officer, Institute for Development Studies (IDS).
  • Ali Altiok, Youth, Peace and Security Project Officer, Interpeace.

Discussants

  • Cecile Mazzacurati, Head, Secretariat on Youth, Peace & Security, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
  • Shadi Rouhshahbaz, PeaceMentors

Chair

  • Dr. Marjoke Oosterom, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies (IDS)

Hard work and hazard: Youth and the rural economy in Africa

28 May 2021 14:00–15:30 UK

Register here to watch on Zoom. This event is co-hosted with INCLUDE

Speakers

  • Dr James Sumberg, Emeritus Fellow, Institute of Development Studies (IDS).
  • Justin Flynn, Research Officer, Institute of Development Studies (IDS).
  • Dr Thomas Yeboah, Research Fellow, Bureau of Integrated Rural Development Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

Discussants

  • Prof. Ben White, Emeritus Professor of Rural Sociology at the International Institute of Social Studies.

Chair

  • Dr. Marjoke Oosterom, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies (IDS)

Critical considerations for youth agency in humanitarian settings

22 June 2021 14:00–15:30 UK

Register here to watch on zoom.

Speakers

  • Dr. Claudia Seymour, Senior Researcher, Graduate Institute Geneva
  • Dr Philip Proudfoot, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies
  • Prof Dorothea Hilhorst, Professor, International Institute of Social Studies

Discussants

  • Mallika Lyer, Programme Coordinator, Global Network of Women Peacebuilders
  • Natascha Skjalsgaard, Global Youth Advisor at Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark

Chair

  • Dr. Marjoke Oosterom, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies

APRA Research Note: The Covid-19 Pandemic and Household Rice Consumption Patterns in Ethiopia: The Case of Addis Ababa

Written by, Dawit Alemu and Gashaw T. Abate.

The outbreak of COVID-19 also resulted in moderate changes to the operation of the domestic rice value chain in Ethiopia. These were caused by changing responses of value chain actors (domestic and others engaged in rice imports) to the COVID-19 prevention measures put in place by the government. These changes increased the price of rice, which favoured rice producers and adversely affected urban consumers. This research note assesses household rice consumption patterns in Addis Ababa by comparing the situation before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, using a representative sample of households.

Youth and the Rural Economy in Africa: New book explores current realities

In a new book edited by IDS researcher, James Sumberg, and published by the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International, authors examine the engagement of youth in the rural economy. The book, entitled ‘Youth and the Rural Economy in Africa’, unites recent findings from quantitative and qualitative research from across Africa to illuminate how young men and women engage with the rural economy and imagine their futures, and how development policies and interventions can find traction with these realities.

Through framing, overview and evidence-based chapters, this book provides a critical perspective on current discourse, research and development interventions around youth and rural development. Chapters are organised around commonly-made foundational claims: that large numbers of young people are leaving rural areas, have no interest in agriculture, cannot access land, can be the engine of rural transformation, are stuck in permanent waithood, and that the rural economy can provide a wealth of opportunity.

This book: a) engages with and challenges current research, policy and development debates, b) considers social difference as a way of examining the category of youth, and c) is written by authors from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, providing varied perspectives. The book draws from existing literature and new analysis of several multi-country and multi-disciplinary studies, focusing on gender and other aspects of social difference. It is suitable for researchers, policymakers and advocates, as well as postgraduate students in international development and agricultural economics.

To learn more, and access the book, click here: https://www.cabi.org/bookshop/book/9781789245011/

Political economy of rice commercialisation in Tanzania: Socioeconomic impact of trade policies, strategies and programmes

Written by Ntengua Mdoe and Gilead Mlay

This blog summarises the findings of APRA Working Paper 57, as the authors discuss the policies, strategies and programmes implemented since Tanzania’s independence in 1961 to promote rice commercialisation and reduce poverty and food insecurity among smallholder rice farmers, and their impact on different socio-economic groups based on findings from literature review and key informant interviews.


Import policies and regulations

Imports of rice into Tanzania have been regulated through import tariffs. These tariffs have been increasing over time with the aim of protecting local farmers from cheap rice imports. The tariff in Tanzania increased from 25 per cent, before 2005, to a common external tariff of 75 per cent for East Africa Community (EAC) member states in 2005. However, the application of the official tariffs has not been consistent. Despite the official tariffs, the government has been issuing import permits and tariff exemptions to major importers to reduce consumer prices as rice is one of the preferred food staples among urban dwellers.

Export trade policies and regulations

Export trade regulations have taken the form of export bans and export permits. Export bans have been in place since the 1980s and were formally lifted for the first time in 1999, following economic reforms in 1986. However, these bans re-emerged and gained prominence again in response to a sharp rise in global grain prices in 2007 and 2008. Export bans were finally abolished by the government in 2012 to honour Tanzania’s commitment to promote trade among EAC member states. Export bans were replaced by export permits which have to be obtained prior to purchasing, transporting and exporting a consignment of rice.

Agricultural input subsidies

Major agricultural input programmes were pan-territorial fertiliser pricing policies, first introduced in 1970 and abolished in 1984 due to escalating government expenditures. In the 2002/2003 farming season, the government reintroduced the fertiliser subsidy in the four major maize growing regions in the southern highlands of Tanzania, despite resistance from donors. The subsidy was then expanded in 2005 to all regions in the country. In 2009, the World Bank decided to support the Tanzanian efforts to establish and expand the fertiliser programme. Such expansions included covering both rice and maize-growing districts in the country and extending the subsidy to include seeds, provided as a package with fertiliser through a National Agricultural Input Voucher Scheme (NAIVS). However, NAIVS was phased out in 2016 due to budgetary constraints and replaced by the bulk procurement system (BPS) for fertiliser in 2017, coupled with indicative fertiliser prices and subsidised credit from banks.

Agricultural development programmes and strategies

a. Agriculture Sector Development Programme: The government of Tanzania is implementing the second Agriculture Sector Development Programme (ASDP II) as a follow-up to the first Agriculture Sector Development Programme (ASDP I) implemented from 2006/2007 to 2013/2014. It aims at transforming the agricultural sector (crops, livestock and fisheries) towards higher productivity and commercialisation levels, and increasing smallholder farmers’ incomes for improved livelihood, food and nutrition security and contribution to the GDP. ASDP has received substantial funds in support of small-scale irrigation schemes from various donors, including the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, and USAID. Irrigation was allocated more than 70 per cent of the ASDP resources.

b. Kilimo Kwanza: Kilimo Kwanza (‘Agriculture First’) was launched in 2009. Unlike ASDP, which is implemented under the Ministry of Agriculture, Kilimo Kwanza was implemented under the Minister’s Office. The programme was intended to use the private sector as the engine of growth for promoting large-scale commercial farming.

c. Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT): SAGCOT was a public-private partnership programme launched in 2011. This programme sought to contribute to food security, reducing poverty and spurring economic growth through the development of a cohesive, modern commercial agricultural area in the “Southern Corridor”’

d. Big Results Now (BRN): BRN was launched in 2013 with the aim to fast-track development and achieve ‘quick wins’ in six priority sectors, one of which was agriculture. BRN targeted both smallholder and commercial agriculture, and included setting up collective rice irrigation and marketing schemes, as well as improving maize and sugarcane production.

e. National Rice Development Strategy (NRDS): NRDS was officially launched by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives in 2009. This strategy sought to double rice output by 2018, to improve food security and rice exports to neighbouring countries. The second NRDS, launched in 2019, seeks to double the land planted with rice and double rice yields from 1.1 million ha and 2t/ha in 2018 to 2.2 million ha and about 4t/ha by 2030, respectively.

Socio-economic impact of the policies, strategies and programmes

Key findings that emerge from the review of literature and key informant interviews indicate that import tariffs and export permits have unintentionally exacerbated inequalities between different scales of actors and by gender and age. Social differences have become more pronounced in terms of access to resources, improved agricultural technologies and agricultural services. Specifically, large/medium scale, male and old farmers have had more access to resources than small-scale, female and young farmers, respectively. In addition, access to improved rice production technologies and agricultural services is greater among large/medium, male and old farmers than small-scale, female and young farmers, respectively. These disparities in access to resources, technologies and services have led to social differentiation.

Conclusion

In general, trade policies implemented concurrently with agricultural input subsidies and agricultural development programmes and strategies have not achieved the expected outcomes of increasing income and reducing poverty among smallholder rice farmers. On the contrary, they have created social differentiation and exacerbated existing inequalities between social groups in Tanzania.

The political economy of cocoa value chain in Ghana

Written by Joseph Kofi Teye and Ebenezer Nikoi

This blog presents the findings of APRA Working Paper 53, which adopted the political settlement framework to analyse the political economy dynamics of Ghana’s cocoa value chain. Researchers Joseph Kofi Teye and Ebenezer Nikoi discuss these findings, which indicate that policies implemented in this value chain have gone through several shifts in relation to changing agrarian political economy and distribution of power among interest groups, and highlight the steps that can be taken to harness the cocoa sector’s potential to contribute to economic development in Ghana.


Ghana’s cocoa sector has, historically, been the backbone of the Ghanaian economy. It contributes significantly to GDP, foreign exchange and employment. Aspects of the cocoa industry, such as input supplies to farmers and cocoa pricing, feature prominently in national and local politics. However, there are very few studies on the benefits that accrue to various actors in the cocoa value chain. This study found that successive governments have maintained control over the lucrative cocoa marketing segment, which has enabled them to distribute costs and benefits (rents) to actors in their patronage networks. The contribution of Ghana’s cocoa sector to socio-economic development is affected by tenure insecurities, inadequate labour supply, lack of accessible credit, shortage of farm inputs, climate change, income and gender inequalities and corruption in the cocoa sector.

Political settlement analysis of the cocoa value chain in Ghana

Consistent with the political settlement framework [i] interactions among various interest groups have created different rents for different actors in the cocoa sector. Policy development in the sector went through four periods. The first period (1920–1957) was the colonial era, characterised by a fairly corporate governance system and struggle between European traders and farmer cooperatives for monopoly over internal marketing of cocoa. The second period (1957–1980) was the early post-independence era with a state-controlled economy, characterised by neopatrimonialism and over-taxation of cocoa farmers to create rent for maintaining power. The third period (1980–2000) marked the introduction of economic reforms and liberalisation which were adopted in response to international pressure and economic crisis. While the reforms brought about a gradual increased in producer prices, they also contributed to rising costs of production to farmers as subsidies were removed. The fourth period (2000–present) is characterised by further liberalisation and public-private partnerships, and geared towards modernisation of cocoa farming, promotion of environmentally friendly farming activities, empowerment of women, and protecting the rights of children in cocoa growing areas. In reality, however, these partnerships have not yet significantly resulted in improved outcomes for youth, women, children and other marginal groups in the cocoa sector.

Although the government continues to fix the cocoa prices in this current era, prices offered to farmers since 2000 have been quite stable, as both the political parties which have governed Ghana in the last three decades have been using cocoa pricing to solicit political votes from farmers. Similarly, even though the cocoa sector has been liberalised, subsidies on fertilisers and agrochemicals have become a key political tool for ‘buying’ votes in since 2000. [ii]

Social difference in the cocoa value chain

Significant social differences exist across the entire cocoa value chain. Actors in the production segment, mainly farmers and farm labourers, are generally poorer than actors in the marketing and processing segments. There are also significant ‘horizontal’ social differences between actors even within the same segment of the value chain. In the production segment, for instance, large-scale cocoa farmers tend to be wealthier and have better chances of receiving technical and financial support from both the government and the private sector than young and smallholder farmers. Young farmers struggle to get sizeable financial grants because they generally do not have assets to serve as collateral. Vulnerable groups, such as women, the youth and migrants, also find it difficult to access farming land. [iii]

Challenges with the cocoa value chain

All segments of Ghana’s cocoa value chain are confronted with challenges that could significantly impact the sustainable delivery of cocoa to both domestic and international markets. Cocoa production is affected by tenure insecurity, shortage of labour, pests and diseases, and lack of access to credit, climate change, and inadequate inputs, especially fertilisers and agro-chemicals.

The main challenges in the internal marketing segment are poor transportation networks and low prices of cocoa beans.

Recently, the challenges in the cocoa sector have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.  In the production segment, the closure of land borders has affected the supply of migrant labour from neighbouring countries. The pandemic has also affected farmers’ access to inputs, as some of the cocoa processing companies who depend on imported materials for packaging reported that, due to the closure of the borders, they were unable to access materials for packaging their products. These companies have also reported that the closure of the borders made it difficult to transport their goods to other African countries. The pandemic and associated lockdowns also affected the implementation of marketing and product promotion campaigns by some of the companies, as many events at which products are sold were cancelled.

Looking forward

While Ghana’s cocoa sector has the potential to contribute to economic development, there is a need to address various challenges, which include: tenure insecurities, inadequate labour supply, lack of accessible credit, shortage of farm inputs, climate change, social differences, rent seeking behaviours, and the emerging COVID-19 related problems.


[i] Khan, M. (2018) ‘Political Settlements and the Analysis of Institutions’, African Affairs 117.469: 636-655

[ii] Teye, J.K. and Torvikey, D. (2018) The Political Economy of Agricultural Commercialisation in Ghana: A Review, APRA Working Paper 15, Brighton: Future Agricultures Consortium (accessed 4 March 2020)

[iii] Amanor, K.S.; Yaro, J.A. and Joseph, J.K. (2020) Long-term Change and Agricultural Commercializisation in Ghanaian Cocoa, APRA Working Paper 31, Brighton: Future Agricultures Consortium


Feature photo: Cocoa in Ghana. Credit: Rebecca Bollwitt

The need for rice sector modernisation: a key outcome of the Ethiopian National Rice Platform Meeting

Dawit Alemu, The 2021 Annual National Rice stakeholders’ platform meeting, hosted by the National Rice Secretariat at the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), was held on 19 April in both Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar, concurrently. The meetings were divided into two locations to accommodate wider stakeholders while abiding by the COVID-19 restrictions currently in place. The participants were drawn from MoA, the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, Bahir Dar University, Amhara Regional Bureau of Agriculture (BoA), regional agricultural research institutes, private actors (such as machinery manufacturers and importers), development partners (MEDA, AgroBig, and JICA), farmers from Fogera plain, and APRA Ethiopia team members.

The timing of this meeting was appropriate, as many different initiatives and plans are in the early phases of their implementation by the government. Specifically, (i) the government’s new 10-year rice development strategy (2020–2030), (ii) the new initiative related to rice import substitution and (iii) reinstating the importation of rice through Franco-Valuta privilege, in addition to other priority commodities (edible oil, wheat, milk and sugar). These initiatives create opportunities, but also present potential challenges, which were important to discuss, such as (i) the need to have adequate implementation capacity and (ii) competition from imported rice.

The presentations and key discussion points during the meeting were related to (i) the overview of the recently approved national rice development strategy (2020–2030), (ii) existing experiences in modernisation of irrigation, mainly with regard to solar pumps and diesel pumps, and (iii) rice processing technologies, primarily in terms of parboiling, and (iv) technologies on value addition on rice by-products (charcoal making).

Overall, the discussions concluded with an emphasis on the need to modernise rice production and processing through wider adoption of rice technologies if domestic rice is to become competitive with imported rice. In this regard, the discussions can be summarised into (i) how to capacitate local manufacturers (both private and government organisations) to further improve the quality of the designed/adapted technologies and their wider multiplications, (ii) how to ensure improved access to these available technologies considering the current trend of expansion of rice to the three major rice ecosystems (lowland, upland and irrigated rice ecosystems), and (iii) what role different actors, especially those in the public sector, should play in this regard.

In conclusion, it was agreed that respective stakeholders, specifically the MoA and regional BoA, will lead further efforts to address the key issues discussed, along with (i) documentation and sharing of information about various available technologies, (ii) documentation of existing experiences in ensuring access to finance for smallholder rice farmers to facilitate better adoption of rice technologies, (iii) engagement with different organisations to facilitate access to finance, (iv) the MoA and Regional BoA to oversee and advise on the types of irrigation pumps most appropriate for the different types of irrigation facilities (shallow and deep wells), and (v) engagement with  relevant organisations like Agricultural Transformation Agency and the agricultural mechanisation directorate of MoA to address the challenges of importing diverse models of rice-related machineries that generate issues such as difficulty accessing required spare parts, demanding different maintenance skill, and overall costliness.

The key outcome of the meeting was related to the need to modernise the rice sector, not only through improved adoptions of  technologies but also through a supply of skilled labour for production and processing activities, as documented in various APRA research outputs (APRA – WP 51; APRA – WP 44; and APRA Brief 22). Finally, the need for regular and continuous organisation of the rice stakeholders’ platform was recognised in addressing the emerging challenges, through effective collaboration and the sharing of responsibility among relevant stakeholders.

Can the Pfumvudza conservation agriculture programme deliver food security in Zimbabwe?


This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.

It looks like it’s going to be a good harvest this year in Zimbabwe. Early crop assessments suggest that there will be a bumper crop of maize, perhaps the highest since the early 1980s at 2.8 million tonnes, planted across 1.9 million hectares. The season saw heavy rains throughout the country. As a result there is much optimistic talk of national food security for the first time since 2016. This would be exceptionally good news, especially given the dire situation in the wider economy and the challenges of importing food during the pandemic.

Some are claiming that this success is because of the promotion of a high profile conservation agriculture technique (now branded Pfumbvudza/Intwasa in Shona and Ndebele), involving the digging of pits as small planting basins to concentrate water and nutrients. There has been a major push by the state, with high-level political backing. The national drive has been backed by international agencies, including many donors and the UN’s FAO, and the Pfumvudza programme has been touted as the nation’s saviour, aimed at achieving the elusive goal of national food security after years of food imports due to successive droughts.

The president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is a big fan, and it has been promoted vigorously by the new minister agriculture, Anxious Masuka, and his enthusiastic Permanent Secretary, John Basera, along with all MPs and local officials. Enlisted as part of a technocratic renewal and revival of the economy, Pfumvudza has taken on a political role with substantial political investment from the ruling party, ZANU-PF.

What is Pfumvudza?

Pfumvudza is not a new innovation. Conservation agriculture has been hyped in particular by the FAO and a number of NGOs and donors, over a number of years, both in Zimbabwe and the region, with decidedly mixed results. So what does Pfumvudza involve?

Originally promoted by Brian Oldrieve of Foundations for Farming in Zimbabwe since his early experiments on Hinton Estate in the 1980s, the approach has taken on an evangelical tone, with the required mulch in the pits described as ‘God’s blanket’ and the practice being promoted as ‘God’s way’. The energetic extension of particular packages of agricultural production combined with religious zeal of course has longer precedents in Zimbabwe. E.D. Alvord, the American missionary, who promoted improved agricultural practices from his position of agriculturalist in the Native Affairs Department from 1926 to 1950, promoted in his book, The Gospel of the Plow.

The Pfumvudza programme has a rather different evangelical zeal, driven by a politics of desperation, as the government tries to get agriculture moving. With the much touted ‘command agriculture’ programme aimed to promote more commercialised agriculture faltering through corruption scandals and uneven results, the government has switched to focusing on small-scale agricultural areas, mostly the communal lands but also A1 resettlement areas, where the majority of farm land lies.

Conservation agriculture is founded on several core principles, including practising minimum soil disturbance or tillage; having permanent soil cover by using organic mulch and using crop rotations and intercropping cover crops with main crops. In Zimbabwe the practice involves the digging of shallow pits using hoes and using mulch to cover the growing plants. The Pfumvudza programme has designed a highly specified package involving the requirement to prepare two 39 x 16 m plots (0.06 ha) for grains (mostly maize, and some sorghum in some parts of the country) and a third plot for soya beans, sunflower or another commercial crop for sale. Pits of a certain depth and spacing are required to be dug and mulched, and seeds along with fertiliser (officially, Compound D and AN top dressing) are supplied by government. The whole operation has been supported by over 5000 extension workers with new motorbikes issued and ambitious targets have been set.

Huge claims have been made about the potentials, with expectations of one tonne of maize per grain plot, allowing one tonne for consumption and one for sale to national grain marketing board. But that’s an expected yield of 15 tonnes per hectare, higher than the famed ‘ten tonne club’ of top commercial farmers, so somewhat unlikely.

However, putting aside the wild claims, even modest improvements on very low yield levels experienced in drought years, resulting in increased yield stability, would be good. So despite the excessive hype we do need to take the programme seriously. Can it deliver?

Does it work, can it deliver?

Past evaluations of conservation agriculture have been rather mixed. Some agencies have been so vested in the approach that they have been alleged to suppress negative results, as I learned from a colleague in Zambia. But a quick Internet search of scientific articles reveals dozens of studies that explore the different dimensions – fertilisation rates, pit sizes, mulching practices and more.

I have not done a systematic review of the results, and couldn’t find one that was up-to-date and Zimbabwe focused (although see herehere and here for good overviews), but most plot-focused studies show (perhaps not surprisingly) that it all depends. It depends particularly on soil type (and so natural fertility and drainage), on the type and timing of fertility inputs, and on rainfall levels, and so the risk of flooding or drying of the pit area. It also depends on the seeds used (of course) and the amount of labour applied. Indeed, just what you’d expect from any agronomic intervention.   

Most studies conclude that per area, yield levels can increase in the small intensively farmed area. Given the amount of labour required, returns to labour are low, and so again it all rather depends whether it is farm area or labour that is the limiting factor. And it also depends on what soil you have and what the season is. And even if yields go up, given the total areas are necessarily small, the studies show that such approaches do not deliver food security at the household let alone national level.

In other words, it’s just like any other farming practice…. there is no magic, with or without divine intervention, in conservation farming. Adding caution to the hype makes much sense. Next week, I will look at what happened in our sites over the past season.

COVID-19 and the disappearing tobacco in Zimbabwe: Makoronyera and the new value chains

Written by Toendepi Shonhe

In this blog summarising APRA Working Paper 55, Toendepi Shonhe discusses the growing prevalence of informal tobacco aggregators, their impact on farmers’ wealth accumulation potential and the changes in this value chain since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Shonhe also assesses how Zimbabwe’s government can address the challenges in the chain.


The financing and marketing channels for tobacco, a crop responsible for over 24% of foreign currency earnings annually in Zimbabwe, are central to its production and circulation in the country. Reports indicate that farmers who are financed through contract farming tend to secure better prices compared to independent growers, and so tobacco financing is reportedly now dominated by this system. For example, by Week 53 of the 2020 marketing season, at least 94% of tobacco purchased was marketed under contract farming. However, our APRA survey administered in Mvurwi farming area in Mazowe (2017–2020), shows that as low as 13.5% of the communal area farmers, 17.5% of A1 farmers and 35.9% of A2 farmers actually grew the crop under the contract farming system.

How can such a significant majority of tobacco be marketed under contract farming, and yet so few farmers report actually growing under this arrangement? What can account for this ‘missing’ tobacco? This discrepancy indicates that many independent growers who self-finance their cropping programmes end up selling their crop through contract merchants, presumably because there are better prices offered. In other words, while they do not finance their activities through the contracting system, their end products are marketed and sold through this system.

The growth of the Makoronyera

An intricate and emergent tobacco marketing practice is distorting the tobacco value chain, creating new winners and losers and negatively affecting financial rewards for farmers. This practice is driven by informal tobacco aggregators – the Makoronyera –who buy tobacco and other crops directly from farmers, and have overtaken formal marketing arrangements.

The Makoronyera buyers disregard the government’s limit on foreign currency payment to farmers, which stipulates that only 60% of the value of the total tobacco sales may be paid in foreign currency, with the remaining balance being paid in Zimbabwean dollars. By offering the full value in foreign currency, albeit often at lower total prices, the Makoronyera lure farmers into selling their crops.

Within the context of COVID-19, farmers are exposed to more risks, which diminish their wealth accumulation potential. Many such risks are exacerbated by movement restrictions which mean that farmers are not present throughout the marketing and auction processes. These include but are not limited to the following:

  • The use of a complex matrix in calculating tobacco pricing enables buyers to manipulate prices. The inability of farmers to monitor the selling prices under COVID-19 exacerbates this.
  • Representatives of the farmers are given an opportunity to assess the sale of tobacco, but since the onset of COVID-19, as little as five minutes is allowed after the process has been concluded. This timeframe is inadequate for an effective assessment to be carried out.
  • Tobacco leaves of poor quality are often mixed with good quality tobacco to lower the prices without the farmers’ knowledge.
  • Disqualification of tobacco bales on the basis of only a few leaves that could instead be removed by the farmers, if they were present. This results in the need to regrade the tobacco and causes unnecessary additional costs or an unexplained
  • loss of weight.
  • Transporters are accused of making changes to tobacco bales during transportation.
  • Delayed payments due to the use of incorrect details, which farmers are unable to immediately correct as they are not present during the sale.
  • Stop order are created for farmers without their consent. This results in deductions being made upon the sale of tobacco without the farmers’ knowledge.
  • Some tobacco bales are getting lost and farmers are losing value due to their inability to effect timely follow-ups.
  • Deliberate exchange of price tags, which results in farmers being paid a lower value for the crop.

As a result of these challenges, the involvement of the Makoronyera has increased in the wake of COVID-19 because their engagement in the process has shifted the burden of transporting the crop to the auction floors away from the farmers. This responsibility is deemed worth the disadvantages of the significantly lower prices they offer and their unclear grading processes by farmers. The APRA survey shows that Makoronyera dominate the purchase of tobacco from farmers, with at least 52.1% of A1 farmers selling to these aggregators compared to 30.3% who sell directly through tobacco merchants. Only 17% now sell through the auction floors.

Finding loopholes

The Makoronyera may well be composed of some registered growers who choose to buy the crop and resell to tobacco merchants under contract farming. Some of them work for the merchants directly, so this crop is not recorded in the auction system, creating a loophole for informal processing and illicit production of cigarettes and well as the sale of the semi-processed produce to Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa. Illegal exports are carried out through undesignated crossing points, and therefore Zimbabwe faces losses of export taxes and foreign currency to syndicates.

Studies show that registered tobacco companies are responsible for the bulk of the illegal export of the produce, thus circumventing the payment of export taxes and depriving the country of much needed foreign currency. Millions are lost through mispricing and illegal exports, and so are employment opportunities in local value chains. The government should consider options for increasing the level of retention of foreign currency for growers to curb the incidence of Makoronyera. The disappearing of tobacco, now being exacerbated by COVID-19, undermines the prospects for farmers’ wealth accumulation. The government must prioritise revisiting the marketing framework to avoid exploitation of the producers and thus stop leakages at the national level, as this practice undermines rural and agricultural development in the country-side.

FAO recognises farmer-led irrigation as a major contributor to agricultural development


This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.

Buried deep in a long report on water and agriculture by FAO – the flagship state of food and agriculture report of 2020 – there is a really important section, signalling a big shift in mainstream thinking about irrigation and the use of water in agriculture.

It focuses on farmer-led irrigation, a theme discussed on this blog quite a few times before, and central to research in our field sites in Zimbabwe’s resettlement areas. Farmer-led irrigation is not a new phenomenon of course, but it has not been central to discussions about irrigation, seen as peripheral and not following ‘proper’ engineering recommendations. That FAO has addressed this in its major report is therefore a significant moment. They argue:

“Small-scale farmer-led irrigation systems can have lower unit costs than those managed by government agencies and offer much higher internal rates of return (28 percent) than does large-scale, dam-based irrigation (7 percent). They also improve yields and income, and reduce risks from climate variability. Governments should support these initiatives….”.

What is farmer-led irrigation, and how important is it?

As the FAO report comments:

“In sub-Saharan Africa, only about 3 percent of cropland is irrigated, and small-scale farmer-led irrigation systems are rapidly expanding. Farmers invest their own resources and access water from shallow groundwater, rivers, lakes and reservoirs. These are an attractive option to small-scale farmers because they use simple affordable equipment, including buckets, watering cans, treadle pumps, drip systems and conservation agriculture technologies, such as terracing and in situ rainwater harvesting. More than 80 percent of farmers who use irrigation employ manual lifting and watering using buckets and cans, although demand for more mechanized options is growing.”

Of course, the statistics on ‘irrigated land’ are massively upset by an acknowledgement of farmer-led practices, as they don’t normally count as ‘irrigation’. When we produced our paper on farmer-led irrigation in Zimbabwe for Water Alternatives, one reviewer was highly dismissive. Coming clearly from a conventional irrigation background, they argued that what we were reporting from our study sites was not significant, and that investment in effective and efficient small-scale irrigation schemes was the way forward. We begged to differ.

As noted in the paper, our findings were not unusual and are replicated elsewhere. Box 10 in the FAO report highlights research from Burkina Faso, Tanzania and Zambia, quoting a 2012 IMWI report by Meredith Giordano and colleagues, Water for Wealth and Food Security:

“In Burkina Faso, 170 000 farmers – mainly small-scale farmers – irrigate 10,000 hectares of vegetable crops using buckets, watering cans and small motorized pumps. This tripled vegetable production between 1996 and 2005, raising dry season incomes by USD 200–600. In Ghana, 185 000 hectares are under small-scale irrigation, primarily cultivating vegetables in the dry season, benefiting half a million small-scale farmers. This adds between USD 175 and USD 840 annually to household income. In the United Republic of Tanzania, more than 700 000 farmers lift water from rivers and wells using buckets and cans to irrigate vegetables on 150 000 hectares. Half of small-scale farmers’ dry season cash comes from irrigated vegetables. In Zambia, 90,000 hectares are under private irrigation, and the 20 percent of small-scale farmers who grow dry season vegetables earn 35 percent more than those relying solely on rainfall.”

In our two sites in Masvingo district in Zimbabwe, the farmer-led irrigated area represented on average 2.02% of the total arable and non-arable area. Extrapolating up to the provincial level, if the same extent of farmer-led irrigation is seen across the whole province (estimated at 5.15 million ha, excluding Gonarezhou national park), this would represent 104,056 ha of farmer-irrigated land. Assuming that the proportion of land that is arable is the national average of 10.3%, this would represent 19.6% of arable area, a very significant proportion. By contrast, formal irrigation through government schemes in Masvingo province is estimated to cover 4,176 ha in total, across 60 schemes, ranging size from eight ha to 625 ha. This represents only 0.08% of the total area of the province (again excluding Gonarezhou national park) and 0.8% of estimated arable area. Under these, admittedly extremely rough, assumptions, this is only 4% of total farmer-led irrigation. Given that many of these formal schemes are not functioning to full capacity, farmer-led irrigation, by any calculation, represents a very significant contribution to the provincial agricultural economy.

Policy support to farmer-led approaches must be central to irrigation development

In a way the specific figures don’t matter: what is important is that those promoting irrigation – so central to agricultural productivity and boosting incomes for farmers – recognise farmer-led practices in all their variety and provide support for these. As discussed in our paper, this must include:  

  • improving security of land tenure and access to water, and adaptation of environmental rules excluding use near rivers and wetlands;
  • regulation of water supply to avoid over-use of groundwater in particular;
  • support for market development, particularly for horticultural products to avoid seasonal and local gluts;
  • credit support for investment in irrigation development, and
  • enhancement of technology provision for cheap pumps, pipes and other water lifting and distribution systems, including having preferential import arrangements for basic kit and spares, especially from China.

Why then do policymakers and donors still focus on irrigation ‘schemes’, when their track-record has been so bad? At Independence in 1980, Zimbabwe had about 150,000 hectares under ‘formal’ irrigation schemes; about 3% of the arable area. However, only 3.5% of this area was under smallholder schemes. This area increased over the following decades, with investment in ‘block’ schemes, with irrigators usually being allocated small 0.1 ha areas under centrally controlled schemes. Many of these schemes failed.  Economic analyses highlighted that all capital costs and 89% of recurrent costs were covered by the government, and when this support dried up, the scheme collapsed.

Following the land reform from 2000, the talk has once again been investment in ‘schemes’ to support the new farmers. Various programmes during the 2000s invested in the rehabilitation of irrigation infrastructure on former large-scale farms. Election manifestos promoted ‘modern’ irrigation as central to a new push to upgrade and commercialise agriculture. From 2016, ‘command agriculture’ included investment in irrigation facilities. Foreign donors, from the Brazilians to the Chinese, have offered irrigation equipment, mostly suited to large-scale production. And most recently the minister, Anxious Masuka, announced that $57 million had been allocated for rehabilitating existing schemes, with strict requirements for sustainable use. As part of a new statutory instrument issued in February there are also big plans to boost state-led irrigation capacity, with an irrigation development fund, the assignment of district irrigation engineers and so on. And of course the controversy around land use changes in the Chilonga area is all about a massive, high-profile irrigation investment. Today, as in the past, hydrological transformations and images of modernist progress are closely tied with a project of state-building and shoring up political support through high-visibility investments.  

There is nothing wrong with formal irrigation schemes for supporting smallholder agriculture, particularly in the drier parts of the country, as long as they remain supported and the infrastructure is maintained. But they need to be seen as part of a more integrated, flexible irrigation policy, where farmer-led approaches are given greater prominence. For sure, the mention of farmer-led irrigation in the FAO report was a small element of a much larger report (just on page 64 and box 10 for those wanting to point to it), but it does signal that farmer-led irrigation can now be announced as mainstream (because the UN’s FAO said so….).

Maybe in the future, national governments and donors – all members and supporters of FAO – will shift their focus and catch up with what farmers have been doing for millennia.

Global food regimes and China – Agrarian Conversations episode 2

Join the second episode in Agrarian Conversations webinar series on “Global food regimes and China” on 28th April.

What relationship does China have to current food regime transitioning, with the changing geographies of production, circulation and consumption of global food commodities, and the growng significance of agroecological farming? Does China’s deepening international presence portend a new form of food regime hegemony? And what might that look like? If so, what are the implications of such changing dynamics for local, national, and international political struggles for a fairer and kinder agro-food system?

The webinar has a conversational format: initial short inputs from the speakers and panelists, followed by a much longer plenary Q&A. To allow for a dynamic conversational format, we provide a background paper for the webinar that we hope participants will be able to read before the event. For this episode, the (free access) background paper is: McMichael, P. (2020). Does China’s ‘going out’strategy prefigure a new food regime?. Journal of Peasant Studies, 47(1), 116-154.

Speakers & panelists:

Philip McMichael, Cornell University, USA
Yan Hairong, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Paul Nicholson, La Via Campesina
Refiloe Joala, PLAAS, South Africa
Andrea P. Sosa Varrotti, Universidad Nacional de San Martin, Argentina
Carol Hernandez, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
Co:Chairs: Ruth Hall, PLAAS; Katie Sandwell, TNI.

The Policy Context of the Oil Palm Sector’s Underperformance in Ghana

Written by Kofi Takyi Asante

In this blog summarising his research in the newly published APRA Working Paper 54, APRA researcher Kofi Takyi Asante highlights both the historical importance and the future potential of the oil palm industry in Ghana. He outlines the findings from the paper, explains the political and societal factors that have prevented this value chain from reaching its full potential in the past, and provides insight on how the Ghanaian government can engage stakeholders and take advantage of regional and global demand for this commodity to improve the outlook for this sector moving forward.


The oil palm industry is of strategic importance to Ghana’s agricultural sector and the economy as a whole. It is the country’s second most important cash crop after cocoa and makes a key contribution to agricultural development. The agricultural sector employs over a third of the economically active population, and between 2013 and 2018, this sector’s average contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) was 21.6 per cent.[1] The contribution of oil palm to agricultural development can be further expanded if productivity in the sector is enhanced. Demand for oil palm has been growing in Africa and the world market, stimulated by the following factors:

  • population growth;
  • rising prosperity and nutrition;
  • increasing demand for palm-based halal food products;
  • shift from petroleum-based products and the search for alternative sources of fuels;
  • use as ingredient in the manufacture of detergents, surfactants, pharmaceuticals, and nutraceuticals.[2]

This shows that oil palm has potential to greatly contribute to the country’s GDP. Additionally, the past few decades have witnessed an expanding demand for vegetable oils, with palm oil accounting for well over half of the global trade in edible oils. Between 1980 and 2008, global palm oil production grew from 4.5 million tonnes to 45.1 million tonnes, and in 2010, palm oil contributed 34 per cent to global vegetable oil production.

Barriers to oil palm sector success

However, despite the strategic importance of the oil palm industry, the oil palm sector has consistently underperformed in Ghana and other West African countries. In 2010, West Africa produced less than 4 per cent of the global output. Within this regional picture, Ghana’s performance is even poorer, accounting for just 6 per cent of African crude palm oil supply. By contrast, Nigeria produces 46 per cent and Cote d’Ivoire 16 per cent of the African output.[3]

Palm oil production became politically important from the early decades of the nineteenth century. When the slave trade was abolished in 1807, the ensuing economic vacuum was filled by the so-called ‘legitimate trade’, consisting of the export of primary commodities like palm oil, groundnut, and ivory, and the import of manufactured goods from Europe. It thereafter became an important source of revenue for the colonial government but started declining after the 1890s, partly as a result of the rise of the cocoa as a major cash crop.

Government efforts to revive the sector since the attainment of independence has only yielded disappointing results. This was partly the result of the environment of political instability in which these policies where implemented. Military interventionism was rampant in Ghana from 1966 – when the Kwame Nkrumah government was overthrown – to 1980 – when the Hilla Limann government was toppled from power. Between these two events, the military overthrew five other governments, three of them democratically elected. The first transition of power from one democratically elected government to the other only occurred in 2001. These frequent abrupt changes of government affected the implementation of broad development plans, including specific policies targeting the oil palm sector. For instance, after the 1966 coup, the seven-year development plan of Nkrumah was abandoned, as was the two-year plan of Busia when he was overthrown.

Policy efforts

Policy initiatives since the early 2000s have been focused on the opportunities arising from the regional and global demand for the commodity. By developing the oil palm sector, the government hopes to reduce the import bill on palm oil as well as reducing rural poverty by stimulating the agrarian economy. The focus on poverty reduction has motivated the policy strategy of targeting smallholders with inputs like seedlings and fertilisers. However, inadequate supporting infrastructure, weak marketing systems, and poor industry-wide coordination continue to frustrate such efforts. At the same time, political leaders prefer the distribution of targeted goods to smallholders because of its potential electoral payoffs.

However, the inauguration of the Tree Crop Development Authority (TCDA) in September 2020 has raised optimism among stakeholders in the oil palm economy. The authority, which is governed by a board led by the private sector, is expected to help coordinate the activities of all stakeholders involved in the six-crop value chains under its ambit. The TCDA is expected to generate an annual revenue of about $16 billion once fully operational.[4]


[1] ISSER (2019) The State of the Ghana Economy in 2018, Accra: Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research
[2] MASDAR (2011) Master Plan Study for the Oil Palm Industry in Ghana: Final Report, Accra: Ministry of Food and Agriculture
[3] MASDAR (2011)
[4] Donkor, K.B. (2020) Benefits of Tree Crop Devt Authority: $16bn to accrue annually, Daily Graphic Online, 01 October 2020 (accessed 20 March 2020)

Working Paper 57: Agricultural commercialisation and the political economy of value chains: Tanzania rice case study

Written by Ntengua S.Y. Mdoe and Glead I. Mlay

This paper presents the political economy of rice commercialisation in Tanzania. It is based on a review of trade policies, regulations, strategies, and programmes implemented since the 1960s to promote rice commercialisation, and the views of key informants. Key findings that emerge from the review of literature and key informant interviews indicate that the performance of the value chain over time has been negatively affected by the combined effects of the policies, regulations, strategies, and programmes implemented concurrently.

Working Paper 56: The political economy of the groundnut value chain in Malawi: Its re-emergence amidst policy chaos, strategic neglect, and opportunism

Written by Blessings Chinsinga and Mirriam Matita

This paper explores the political economy of the groundnut value chain in Malawi. The paper uses a combination of insights from the theoretical perspectives of political settlement, rents and policymaking to examine this value chain. Fused together, these theoretical perspectives underpin a political economy analysis framework, which entails systematically mapping all key actors in an issue area; identifying their interests and recognising their forms of power (political, economic, social, and ideological); understanding their relationships with each other; and appreciating the issues, narratives, and ideas that shape how and why they interact with each other.

Working Paper 55: COVID-19 and the political economy of tobacco and maize commodity circuits: Makoronyera, the ‘connected’ and agrarian accumulation in Zimbabwe

Written by Toendepi Shonhe

This paper analyses the global commodity circuits – value chains – for maize and tobacco in Zimbabwe, in the context of a reconfigured agrarian economy and COVID-19 induced shocks. The study focuses on the political economy dynamics of agricultural commodity circuits to reveal how they can contribute to understanding the drivers and constraints of agricultural commercialisation in Zimbabwe. This paper traces the circuits of maize and tobacco, the two major crops for food security and foreign currency earnings in Zimbabwe.

Working Paper 54: Political economy of the oil palm value chain in Ghana

Written by Kofi Takyi Asante

Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) is of strategic importance to the Ghanaian economy. It is the second most important industrial crop after cocoa and is used widely in local food preparation as well as in industrial processing. In spite of its importance, however, oil palm has consistently underperformed since the early twentieth century. This paper conducts a value chain analysis of the crop, foregrounding the political economy factors that shape the performance of the sector. It draws on a combination of in-depth interviews conducted in March 2020 with a variety of value chain actors and a review of the secondary literature. Additionally, between late May and early June 2020, twelve further interviews were conducted as part of a rapid market survey to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the value chain.

Working Paper 53: The Political Economy of the Cocoa Value Chain in Ghana

Written by, Joseph Kofi Teye and Ebenezer Nikoi.

The cocoa sector has, historically, been the backbone of the Ghanaian economy. Many households depend directly on the cocoa sector for livelihoods, and aspects of the cocoa industry, such as input supplies to farmers and cocoa pricing, have historically featured prominently in national and local politics. This paper examines the basic underlying political economy dynamics of the cocoa value chain, with particular focus on how the interests, powers and interactions of various actors along the value chain have contributed to agricultural commercialisation in Ghana. The paper also explores the challenges affecting the cocoa value chain, social difference within the chain, and how various segments of the cocoa value chain have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana since March 2020.

Land, Investment & Politics

By Jeremy Lind, Doris Okenwa and Ian Scoones for Boydell and Brewer

In this blog, Jeremy Lind, Ian Scoones and Doris Okenwa discusses their new book, Land, Investment and Politics: Reconfiguring Eastern Africa’s Pastoral Drylands. This book explores the consequences of the investment spike which began over a decade ago in the pastoral drylands of Eastern Africa.


More than a decade since the investment spike began in the pastoral drylands of Eastern Africa, it is possible to see how a new generation of projects are reconfiguring power, livelihoods and conflict. What do investments look like in Eastern Africa’s drylands? Do the diverse inhabitants of these lands benefit, or is this a new type of territorialisation? And what types of resistance, mobilization and activism are evident?

These questions are explored across thirteen different contexts of largescale investment in our new book, Land, Investment and Politics: Reconfiguring Eastern Africa’s Pastoral Drylands. Focusing on local cases, stretching from the Gulf of Aden ports on Somaliland’s coast in the north to the Kilombero rice developments in southern Tanzania, the book highlights diverse experiences and perspectives of investment from the bottom up. 

Many pastoral and agro-pastoral societies were marginalised by centralised state power and maligned as backwards by earlier ‘modernisation’ efforts to create sedentary (and compliant) governable subjects. Violence and the destruction of livelihoods was the experience for many. Set against such legacies of contestation and underdevelopment, global investors, project developers and national governments herald new large-scale investment as transformational, ushering in new-found prosperity and secure livelihoods.

When large-scale investments encounter local economies, the social and spatial outcomes do not reflect merely the state’s aspirations of ‘development’ or the interests of large global capital. The outcomes also intersect with local realities and aspirations. Seen from the dryland margins, struggles around the framing and meanings given to investments in oil, wind, livestock, land and water are the crux of many tensions.

Even the most elaborate plans of financiers, contractors and national governments come unstuck and are re-made in the likeness of not only states’ visions of modernity and ‘progress’, but also those of herders and small-town entrepreneurs in the pastoral drylands.

‘Seeing’ and responding to investments

Ports, pipelines, roads, wind farms and plantations are part of development visions of state actors at the centre as well as private capital across Eastern Africa. National development plans emphasise the presumed benefits of large outside investment for expanding markets and economic activities in marginal rural areas. Actors in national governments become gatekeepers to foreign investment and are well-positioned to benefit personally from deals.

Investors promote the benefits of project activity to residents of nearby communities. Examples include the construction of new infrastructure, easing transport difficulties and promoting marketing activity, providing opportunities for work and creating corporate social investments in bursaries, classrooms and the provision of water.

Yet, these efforts at corporate social responsibility have ignited debates around belonging, entitlements and inclusion. In Turkana in northern Kenya, tensions cropped up around the efforts of oil investors to curry favour with communities and stem any potential resistance through ‘participatory’ and ‘consultative’ processes, inadvertently creating asymmetric power relations. 

State actors at the sub-national level may not see investments in the same way, however. The position of sub-national political administrations can waiver between embrace and hostility. Mixed views of large-scale investments often hold among local business elites, as well.

Ultimately, investment is something to be welcomed, but the terms of inclusion in land deals, compensation and contract and tendering opportunities dictate the nature of politics. For example, around new geothermal developments in Baringo in Kenya’s northern Rift Valley, Pokot elites are at the forefront of land privatisation, fencing the most valuable plots along new roads that connect geothermal sites with national infrastructure.

The views of other dryland residents – small-scale pastoralists and dryland farmers – cover a spectrum, from opposition and resistance to the perceived loss of key grazing resources and farmland, to accommodation in anticipation of deriving personal benefit, to simple antipathy.

For example, residents of small settlements near the Lake Turkana Wind Power site, also in northern Kenya, blockaded roads to protest their alleged exclusion from investment benefits – including compensation for the extraction of sand and the felling of trees, as well as access to jobs.  Even so, at the local level, there is no uniform opinion or interest: while young people seek an economic foothold, elders agitate to uphold precedence for grazing rights and women seek to safeguard cultural rights as well as work opportunities as cleaners and cooks for contractors.

Ambiguous outcomes, unclear ‘winners’

Exploring ways that largescale investments are ‘seen’ by stakeholders at various levels of project design, finance and implementation brings into frame the questions: investments for whom? In whose interests? And with what consequences?

The reconfiguration of land ownership and use, while perhaps not as dramatic as earlier ‘land grabbing’ debates feared, has been profound, creating new politics of land and investment in the pastoral regions. Simple narratives of the ‘state’ and/or ‘investor’ versus ‘local people’ do not relay the more complex dynamics and assemblages of interests that mobilise behind, anticipate and pursue large-scale investments. In Ethiopia’s Awash Valley, local Afar elites have become complicit in seeking personal advantage from the state’s investments in sugar estates, which have dispossessed livestock-keepers from prime grazing areas.

Infrastructure and investments have ignited intense competition for land, as well as its revaluation, as local elites, and other domestic and foreign investors, jostle to claim tracts of land. Far from resisting and obstructing investment, many have sought to position themselves to benefit from it. In Somaliland, intense competition to command a favourable position in wider trade networks are evident in struggles to capture the expected windfall of the Berbera corridor development. A common saying in Somaliland – He who sits close to the cooking pot gets a good bone – is invoked by some far from infrastructure who worry they will miss out the benefits.

Inequality and mobilisation from below

So, how do communities around the edges of big projects gain more than arbitrary compensation? Local governments and leadership need to be more creative in negotiating investments beyond the national government agreements with developers. It is crucial to demand clear terms of engagement and more long-term benefits for differentiated local stakeholders – not just one-off disbursements or short-term work.

While national governments often side with investment, citizens and civil society alike can press for accountability – through statutory human rights instruments, the implementation of land reforms to guard against grabbing, the enforcement of environmental regulations and scrutiny of contracts by anti-corruption agencies, to name a few. 

Meanwhile, as Land, Investment and Politics argues, the more imperceptible influences of investments on territory, as well as economy, politics, and citizenship, will accentuate inequalities and social difference that increasingly characterise dryland margins. While there is no simple view ‘from below’, resistance, mobilisation and subversion are something to anticipate as part of the ongoing development of infrastructure, land and resources across Africa’s drylands.

Frontier politics in Zimbabwe: the Chilonga case


This post was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.

Chilonga, a small settlement in a dry communal area in Chiredzi district, has been all over the news in Zimbabwe over the past few weeks. A huge controversy over a major new land investment has blown up, with rights groups up in arms. There have been high-profile visits from politicians of all stripes, a large presence of security agents, court cases, activist protests and much commentary on the legal twists and turns of the case.

So what is all the commotion about? In late February, the government issued a Statutory Instrument – the now preferred route of governing it seems – announcing that an area 12,000 hectares of land in Chilonga area (including Chilonga, Makosiya, Dzindzela, Chibyedziva and Gwaseche) was to be allocated to a major investment project, focused on the livestock fodder grass, Lucerne (or Alfalfa). The company involved is Dendairy from Kwekwe, who have plans to develop Lucerne production for export. The company, via the Coetzee family, is alleged to have close connections to the President. This, it was claimed, was the ‘Midlands mafia’ in operation, exerting influence in other parts of the country and in this case in an area occupied by Shangaan people, a recognised minority.

Many Chilonga people objected. This was not the first time they had been moved. Originally settled to the north in the area that become Hippo Valley they were moved in the 1960s. Others had been shifted in the 1970s when Gonarezhou national park was established nearby. And now the state was proposing to repeat the upheaval all over again it seemed.  A strong narrative of ethnic discrimination was being aired by locals spoken to by our team. Many swore that they would no longer vote for ZANU-PF, so outraged were they.

Meanwhile, the government claimed that this was a major investment into a poor and marginalised area, an indication that the government cared about the area and its people.  The local chief, headmen and councillors at least publicly supported the project, pointing to the fact that the government had recently rehabilitated the Chilonga irrigation scheme, and that this new project would expand opportunities, including for contract farming.

Challenges to the legal basis of the plan were made, and the SI was changed. To comply with the Communal Lands Act, the basis for acquisition had to be clarified indicating that the land transfer was for an irrigation investment. Most recently, the government has conceded that compensation is due for evictions that affect ‘improvements’ (mostly houses and other structures) under the Act, but pointed out the impacts would be limited and the land acquisition would actually result in very few people’s homes being moved, although large areas of farm land would be required for the new scheme.

This is our land

Our informants suggest that, despite the assurances, most people are against the plan. This is less to do with the project per se but objection to the imposition from ‘Shona’ outsiders. This comes on the back of a longer history of dispossession and discrimination against Shangaan people, as they see it. Having lost access to sacred sites in Gonarezhou national park and the sugar estates they do not want to lose their last areas, such as the sacred baobab tree at Dzindzela where they conduct rainmaking ceremonies, Bendezi mountain where rituals are undertaken or the sites where their ancestors are buried.

This is a struggle around identity and cultural autonomy not just land and Lucerne. As someone put it: “We are stuck in a small place that is ours, it’s a good place and we love our land. This is our land. The Shona people have plenty of land, surely they can grow their Lucerne grass there”. With good rains this year, the locals have got impressive yields from the heavy basalt soils, expecting to deliver large quantities of maize and sorghum to the grain marketing board.

Some locals don’t believe that this is a project about grass growing at all, but involves an attempt to develop mineral deposits in the area. In the last few years there have been several mineral rushes, as people have come to the area to undertake alluvial mining of gold or the harvesting of precious stones. Locals say that the big bosses have noticed this and now they want to claim the riches.

As ever in Zimbabwe there are rumours that the Chinese are involved and that they have found a particular drug and medicine in this grass that they use in China, so all the profits will be exported and the locals will be exploited just as labour. Rumours swirling around the villages of course feed into local uncertainties and concerns, adding to the objections.

Not everyone objects of course. Some farmers in the area are apparently quite happy about the project, and see commercial opportunities through contract farming. Some observe that the Chilonga irrigation scheme has been rehabilitated in line with government promises. This is a big deal in a poor, dry area, even though scheme has had a chequered history with periods when it was left in disrepair due to state neglect. The promotors of the scheme however are in the minority and, according to local informants, most do not trust the government and outsiders.

The heavy-handed legalistic approach by the state, without concern for local sensitivities, has resulted in wide resentment. Politicians of course respond that they are for all of Zimbabwe, and the local people in this area are Zimbabweans first, not Shangaans. But this doesn’t completely wash. Ethnic histories have deep roots in Zimbabwe, and people do not offer a generous comparison between colonial and contemporary impositions: they are seen as the same, exploitative intrusions from outsiders.

Living on the capitalist frontier

The concerns raised by the Chilonga people are not just about the Lucerne project. The Lowveld is a frontier of expansion of politically-driven capitalist projects. Today, the Chilonga people are hemmed in from all sides and this is only the latest threat to livelihoods.

To the north are the sugar estates run by the Tongaat Hullett company, with areas expanding as deals are struck on new land. To south and east is the Gonarezhou national park, now run through the Gonarezhou Conservation Trust, a partnership with national parks and supported by Frankfurt Zoological Society and other investors, which is re-establishing a fortress-style conservation approach, with big investments in electric fencing. To the east are the conservancies around Chiredzi and notably the private conservancy, Malilangwe, which also has invested in greater security after land invasions in the early 2000s. To the west is the sprawling Development Trust of Zimbabwe (DTZ) land, stretching as far as the Beitbridge road, now state land once linked to Joshua Nkomo’s estate and with areas leased to the notorious local investor, Billy Rautenbach. Just next to these lands too are the displaced people from Chivi who were moved to this area following the established of the Tokwe Mukosi dam. Like the Chilonga people they must compete with much more powerful forces in this frontier.

The Chilonga Lucerne project therefore must be seen in light of this wider story of frontier expansion and selective capital accumulation going alongside dispossession and enclosure. Frontiers are the last opportunities for the extension of capitalism and are usually occupied by those who are marginalised, politically, economically and ethnically. Frontier politics therefore refashion property, institutions and social orders in ways that new arrangements are defined, with powerful forces and capital always having the upper hand. This is what is happening all over the Lowveld, including in Chilonga.

Communal land rights

The Chilonga story has also raised the long-standing question about the status of ‘communal land’. These areas, once designated ‘reserves’ or ‘tribal trust lands’, are state-owned land where residents have usufruct rights. These are governed under the Communal Lands Act, which offers some protection against expropriation by state or private projects; although as Lovemore Madhuku explained in a fascinating SAPES dialogue recently, the 2013 Constitution supersedes these provisions requiring the state to provide further protections, as well as compensation.

As communal land, long-term residence and community institutions do offer a level of tenure security and sui generis rights, with day-to-day land governance left to traditional leaders who have wide-ranging powers. These of course have been widely criticised as being gender discriminatory and often arbitrary but, contrary to the claims of some, communal area dwellers do have rights to their land and the state cannot arbitrary remove them without consultation or court challenge.  

The solution for some is to offer individualised or village-based tenure in the communal areas, arguing that this would offer improved security over land. For sure, the Communal Lands Act is a remnant of the colonial era and, as argued by Mandi Rukuni and others over many years, the updating of legislation around communal areas is clearly required, especially to offer land rights to women.

Whether securing private land rights in communal areas would offer tenure security is however far from certain. Compulsory acquisition, just as with the land reform, is always going to be possible, and if minerals are found, the Mining Act supersedes everything – another colonial inheritance. What has been missing in this case, as Prof Madhuku argued, has been the following of due process, ignoring the Constitution and avoiding administrative justice. It is not new legal arrangements that are needed, but greater political accountability and commitment to existing laws and Constitutional provisions.

Visions of development

Today there still are many competing and powerful players with interests in the Lowveld, many with strong political connections. What voice do local Shangaan farmers and herders, the original inhabitants, have in this context? Political representation is weak and channels for dialogue are limited, while participation and consultation too often is performed through consultants in the pay of investors. Development plans are concocted in far-off places and investments come from outside the area led by those with limited idea about the local history and politics, and the passions with which these are expressed.

The Chilonga case has highlighted the importance of having a wider debate about visions for development in the Lowveld; and this must involve local people leading the dialogue. This applies as much to the Lucerne project as it does to the expansion of conservation areas linked to the park, hunting areas and conservancies, new projects in the DTZ area, accommodation of those displaced by dam development and new land allocations in the huge sugar estates.

The Lowveld has always been the site of struggles over competing visions, centred on divergent framings of ‘wilderness’ and ‘modernity’. Dating back to the allocation of extensive hunting lands in the early colonial era and the establishment of the emerald green sugar estates by the earliest settlers in Triangle, these debates have been central, and conflicts with local Shangaan people have recurred. As Will Wolmer described in his important 2007 book, From Wilderness Vision to Farm Invasions, such contrasting perspectives on landscape are also struggles over land and politics.

Zimbabwe has signed up to the FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines on land and tenure, as well as the African Union’s land policy. These are all frameworks that are meant to govern the acquisition of land for investment. They were developed in the wake of the massive explosion of land grabbing that occurred across Africa after the fuel, financial and food crises of 2008, and are aimed at governing investments in ways that assure due process (including formal consultations, and free prior informed consent). They in turn provide guidelines for states and investors for effective processes of compensation, reallocation of land and community support. Such frameworks are not anti-investment, but recognise that effective investment must occur under conditions that are acceptable locally, otherwise they will come unstuck, as so many did after Africa’s initial land rush.

In its eagerness to rush ahead with the Chilonga project and to provide opportunities for capitalist expansion on the frontier, Zimbabwe’s government has overlooked its national constitutional commitments and wider international obligations, as different powerful actors and multiple ministries were involved in a process of issuing executive orders without appropriate parliamentary and other scrutiny.

For now, given the controversy, there seems to be a pause. This is a good time to relook at these wider agreements, and learn from this episode. This might be a moment too to explore more broadly the diverse visions of the Lowveld, including how new investments in commercial agriculture and the expanding conservation estate sit alongside more traditional uses and local priorities.

Agricultural livelihood paths and their determinants: the role of smallholder farmer commercialisation in central Malawi

By Mirriam Matita

In this blog summarising APRA Working Paper 50, the APRA researcher Mirriam Matita explores the results of a recent study into the role of smallholder agricultural commercialisation in livelihood trajectories in central Malawi, and examines the longer-term policy implications of such findings.


Introduction

Agriculture remains the main livelihood strategy for many people in low-and-medium income countries. In Malawi, subsistence farming has dominated much of smallholder agricultural production where households produce their own food for consumption. However, surpluses realised above household food requirements are marketed. The past decades have seen significant investments aimed at increasing the integration of smallholder farmers into crop/produce markets. These have included policy reforms such as liberalisation as well as direct support in form of input subsidies. However, the pace of agricultural transformation and its outcomes have been disappointingly slow, as demonstrated by persistence of poverty and low productivity challenges.

Whilst some households may have experience increased livelihood productivity and incomes, others have failed to succeed, or even experienced a decline in their livelihood activities. This study placed households under four different trajectories: dropping-out, stepping-up, hanging-in and stepping-in. To identify which of these four categories households fell into, we used a set of indicators, including income sources, income diversification and participation in social assistance programs.

Different household categories

Steppingout households are households whose main income source is either a salary or through a business enterprise.  Stepping-up households diversify their income sources and expand investments in agriculture, as is signified by the positive proportional change in income from agriculture between the two survey periods. Hanging-in is associated with stagnation in agricultural income, whilst dropping-out households obtain a significant proportion of their income from other sources, including being on social protection programs. Stepping-in households are new entrants into agricultural livelihoods, including new farming households and those that never registered agricultural income at baseline survey in 2007. 

The assessment took advantage of longitudinal tracker quantitative survey over a span of 10 years of households from central district of Mchinji and Ntchisi in rural Malawi. About 240 households that were interviewed in 2007 as part of agricultural input subsidies evaluation by the School of Oriental and African Studieswere tracked. 210 households were successfully tracked and interviewed in 2018. Additionally, 303 branching off (e.g. children who leave whole to start independent lives) households from original cases, but leading independent livelihoods, were traced, and participated in a questionnaire.

The main findings

We find that factors driving livelihood trajectories are not the same for farmers in different pathways, as smallholders are not a homogeneous group.

Steppingup of households is more likely with increasing commercialisation and significant asset accumulation (livestock and durable assets) over time, though such farming households hire significantly less agricultural labour.

On the other hand, while households that are stepping-in tend to be more constrained by initial land holding sizes. By extension branching-off households found it difficult to start agricultural livelihoods without entitlement to land. Results further show stepping-into agricultural livelihoods is more likely if a household has had experience with the cultivation of several different kinds of crops. These households are also usually better educated, with its members spending a higher number of average years at school.

Our results also indicate that there is less chance of households dropping-out of agricultural livelihoods with increasing market engagement and crop diversification, which mitigates crop failure. However, elderly heads of farming households are more likely to drop out of agriculture due to farm labour constraints.

However, it is a concern that households tend to hang-in and merely survive in their livelihoods irrespective of level of commercialisation, implying that commercialisation may be failing to increase their welfare. Further, the odds of hangingin increase with higher crop diversification. This is partly a result of spreading resources thinly over several crops cultivated. Households hanging-in are also characterised by falls in assets.

Implication of findings

The findings of this paper have important implications for transforming agriculture. Agriculture offers readily available employment for the majority of rural young people who are finding their first job. In this study, such young people had relatively higher years of schooling, but the sector fails to retain them. Increasing productivity and profitability could make agriculture value chains more attractive to young people with more years of schooling and therefore better poised to easily adapt to and utilise opportunities that exists in the sector.   

Entry into agriculture livelihoods will be possible where cultivatable land is available, and inputs are affordable. Particularly, land is critical for stepping-in households whose original members may not own sufficient land to pass on to the next generation, thereby negatively affecting livelihood paths. Addressing issues related to land entitlement is vital for agrarian change, as are innovations to make the most of the limited resources. Additionally, extension services would be useful for new farming households, especially given that some studies highlight that young people are often left out, or receive a small amount of agricultural extension services.

The finding that crop diversification prevents households from dropping-out of agriculture, but does not prevent hanging-in status is important. This, despite any level of commercialisation, may help us to understand why previous recommendations to farmers to diversify crop production, without taking into consideration their contextual differences, has not delivered the same benefits to all farmers. Overall, the study findings detailing the different livelihood paths and their determinants for farmers in central Malawi emphasises the complex nature of smallholder commercialisation in Malawi, as well as the challenges that must be overcome. Furthermore, there is a clear need for policymakers and practitioners to aim for context-specific solutions to provide sustainable way out of poverty. An integrated and coherent approach to rural development, that looks at both farm and off-farm opportunities to create a diversified livelihood portfolio for households in rural areas is crucial.

Photo credit: ILRI / Mann

East Africa Rice Conference 2021

18 – 20 May

Africa holds great potential in contributing to food and nutrition security, and economic growth through innovative science, sustainable agri-food systems, and transformative partnerships. As rice becomes a potentially strategic commodity in Africa, many countries have embarked on different programs to boost domestic rice production along with continental initiatives.

The East Africa Rice Conference 2021 aims to initiate discussions and sharing of experiences among countries in relation to existing challenges and emerging opportunities, in an effort to ensure adequate domestic production to fulfil the ever-increasing demand.

APRA International Advisory Group members:

  • Janet Edeme – Director for Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture, African Union
  • Kiyoshi Shiratori – Chief Advisor, Project for Functional Enhancement of National Rice Research and Training Centre

APRA Researchers:

  • Dawit Alemu – APRA Ethiopia Country Lead
  • Paul Amaza – APRA Researcher
  • Miltone Ayieko -APRA Researcher
  • Aida Isinika – APRA Researcher
  • Ntengua Mdoe – APRA Researcher
  • Hannington Odame – APRA Regional Coordinator for East Africa
  • John Thompson – APRA CEO

Challenges to commercialisation of the rice and cocoa value chains in Nigeria

By Emmanuel Remi Aiyede

In this blog summarising his research in the newly published in APRA Working Paper 52, APRA researcher Emmanuel Remi Aiyede highlights the challenges facing the rice and cocoa sector in Nigeria. He outlines the findings from the paper, how COVID-19 has impacted the value chains, and provides policy advice on how Nigerian governments can improve the outlook for these two core agricultural crops.


Since the 1980s, Nigeria has sought to diversify its economy away from dependence on oil as a major source of government revenue through agricultural commercialisation. Agriculture has been chosen as a priority sector because of its very high growth potential, and opportunities to provide widespread employment and create export revenue for the government. The cocoa and rice value chains are central to the government’s engagement with agriculture to achieve these objectives.

Cocoa is Nigeria’s major agricultural export, while rice is a major staple for food security. In this study, I investigated the underlying political economy dynamics of the commercialisation of the cocoa and rice value chains in Nigeria. Using the political settlement theory – that is assuming leaders, elites, coalitions, and their followers reach agreements about the political conditions and practices they will observe – I study agricultural commercialisation in terms of (1) smallholder farm households’ shift from semi-subsistence agriculture to production primarily for the market, and (2) predominantly commercial medium- or large-scale farm enterprises complementing or replacing smallholder farm households. While carrying out the study, I examined key secondary sources pertaining to cocoa and rice value chains in Nigeria, as well as recent policies and regulations that govern the value chains. These were complemented with official statistics regarding the structure and performance of the value chains. Additional data was drawn from in- depth interviews with knowledgeable actors, including federal and state government officials, donor agencies, rice and cocoa farmers’ organisations, processors, fertiliser and seedling suppliers, agribusinesses across the rice and cocoa value chains, and academics from the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria and the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture.

Findings

I found a consensus among policymakers to promote agricultural commercialisation in Nigeria, which can be traced back to the adoption of structural adjustment in the 1986. Pressures to increase the foreign exchange earnings of agricultural products and the need for food security have ensured that a policy of commercialised agriculture has been sustained since the 1980s

The national government has invested its power and resources more in the commercialisation of the rice value chain compared to cocoa. The goal to achieve food security seems to have placed rice above cocoa in terms of government intervention to support primary production in these value chains. Rice is a staple food with a huge gap between domestic production and demand. It is grown more widely than cocoa across Nigeria’s states. Successive governments have sought to make the country self-sufficient by substituting rice imports with domestic production. Thus, commercialisation of the rice value chain is driven by rising urban markets and the government’s goal to substitute imports with local production. Large-scale investors are driving the development of the rice value chain, which is helping to improve the livelihoods of smallholders.  Even so, Nigeria has not been able to close the huge gap between consumption and local supply of rice.

Unlike rice, however, which is a staple, cocoa products cannot command a large market in an economy that has a very large population of poor people. It is therefore difficult for the government to create a local market for cocoa production, since it lacks control over the consumption end of the chain. A few transnational companies such as Barry Callebaut, Cargill, Olam/ADM and Blommer Chocolate Company, continue to dominate the downstream sector of the cocoa value chain. Smallholder farmers face structural poverty, are largely poorly organised, and voiceless in terms of price transmission, power, and influence in chain decision making.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s response have had mixed consequences on the rice and cocoa value chains in Nigeria, and some of these are still unfolding. For rice, the lockdown and fear of the pandemic has been the major challenge, while the increasing demand for food and government desire for palliatives (food) have benefited producers and processors. The cocoa value chain has been affected by the shrinking export market in Europe and other importing countries, which are currently experiencing lockdowns. The lockdown has created modest logistic problems for local input supplies and farm labour. Although governments have provided exceptions to the movement of agricultural produce, enforcement has been difficult.

Policy implications

To improve the performance of the rice value chain, Nigeria needs to address low input farming practices and inadequate, or poor, use of fertilisers and other agro-chemicals to enhance productivity. Nigeria will have to increase paddy production and improve the quality of rice processing to a level that is price competitive globally. The federal government has to sustain partnerships with donors to encourage state governments and large-scale businesses to mechanise and expand local production and processing of rice. The Nigerian governments should provide physical infrastructure and financial incentives to encourage investors to participate in the downstream and midstream segments of the cocoa value chain as a long-term government programme. For cocoa farming to thrive, Nigeria should encourage farmers to discard old production practices and embrace new technology, including drone service, grafting, tissue culture and drying technology. Nigeria should also inspire younger generations into cocoa farming and collaborate with international cocoa organisations to ensure the enforcement of sustainable cocoa initiatives to by transnational companies.

Photo credit: ICARDA

Sunflower commercialisation in Tanzania: Everybody benefits but with social difference

By John Jeckoniah and Aida Isinika

In this blog, based on research shown in the newly published APRA Working Paper 49, the authors explore the social impacts of sunflower commercialisation in Tanzania. They highlight the key findings from their research, and outline changing livelihoods are affecting different actors in the sunflower value chain. They then offer policy advice to the government and development partners on the most sustainable way forward.


Context

Our study on the political economy of sunflower commercialisation in Tanzania has highlighted several social differences between stakeholders within the sector. Key to this finding has been the relationship between the importers of edible oil and local actors of the sunflower, farmers and processors, who are both struggling to influence national policies and strategies in their favour. While there is potential to increase local production to meet local demand and increase exports, local production currently only provides for 45% of local demand. The remaining 50–55 per cent comes from imports – mostly palm oil from Asia. As part of this study, we analysed existing secondary data from journal articles and government policies, the information from secondary data was complimented with an APRA field survey, which was conducted in 2018 to assess the impact of sunflower commercialisation on livelihood outcomes.

Key findings

Sunflower production and processing capacity have evolved from the 1970s, during which it was only a minor crop, produced mainly for subsistence and processed by mortar and pestle mostly done by women, with little surplus being sold to neighbours within villages. As agronomy and processing improved, the crop has become increasingly popular since 2000, mainly through area expansion use of higher yielding varieties and improved agronomic practices. In due course, processing moved from mortar and pestle to diesel and electric powered machines.  This also meant processing and marketing activities switched to men since it sometimes involves travelling outside the village. In this transition women lost control of some postharvest decision making power.  Sunflower commercialisation increased the area under crops, taking over some of the traditional grazing land such that land for livestock has become very scarce in many villages.  This has led to changes in the institutional framework for managing livestock, forcing large owners to redistribute their herds to poorer neighbours as caretakers. The livelihood has led to a widespread disparity in accessing resources for production, which differ by gender, age, wealth status. This in turn has led to social differentiation. Consequently, poorer households and women, especially female-headed households, benefit less from sunflower commercialisation. Even the traditional practice of nsoza, among the Wanyiramba ethnic group (the most dominant in Singida region) where a husband was obliged to give land to his wife the proceeds from which were sorely under her control.  Increasing land scarcity and rising divorce rate threatens to end this practice, which has been quite empowering to women.

In the context of sunflower commercialisation in Singida, we found that males had more ownership of land than female-headed households, rich-and middle-wealth ranked farmers own more land relative to small and poor farmers.  Men have taken over processing following sunflower commercialisation since 2000s. While this, to some extent, has lessened the burden on some women who were involved in the physical-intensive task of oil-processing, the takeover has also disempowered women, who have lost control of the proceeds from the sale of sunflower seed, oil or seed cake.   We also found that the changes in the level of wellbeing over time differed across wealth rank, gender and age, leading to social differentiation. The highest proportion of middle-wealth rank farmers experienced improvement in their livelihood status. Those categorized into low wealth rank either stagnated or their wealth status declined. The highest proportion of stagnating or declining livelihoods was experienced among low-ranking households. Older household heads, both male and female, also faced a higher risk of decline due to prolonged sickness and being widowed. The sunflower commercialisation has also changed the institutional framework for managing livestock, forcing large owners to redistribute their herds to poorer neighbours as caretakers. These neighbours have benefited from keeping the animals as they sell milk and use the animals for cultivation, thereby reducing inequality in access to livestock as assets, but also to related goods and services.

Conclusions and policy implications

Despite some improvement in production and productivity, the supply of sunflower seeds is still inadequate to meet local demand and the processing capacity, which is still dominated by small and medium-scale processors using the crushing extraction method, these processing machines/technology have low efficiency as it leaves a lot of sunflower oil remain in the seedcake. The government, NGOs and actors in the value chain should continue to promote the use of improved seeds and good agronomic practices to increase production and productivity as well as improving the efficiency in sunflower processing to avoid losses. Discussion with FGD members also revealed everybody has benefited from sunflower commercialisation but not to the same extent due to various factors that lead to social differentiation.  It was noted that family cohesion and hard work also paid off.  Drinking and laxity was associated with many households that declined, irrespective of age or gender. Overall, the sunflower value chain is characterised by low-women participation at higher levels of the value chain (marketing, processing). They are instead concentrated at lower-return nodes of the value chain (farming). Younger farmers tend to perform better in having higher productivity and more diversified livelihood options but they own significantly less land and livestock assets on average. But they sell a higher proportion of what they produce, hence a higher commercialisation index, probably because they have smaller families.  The social differentiation observed suggest that women, youth and poor men still encounters many barriers to lift them out of poverty through sunflower cultivation and marketing. The government and development actors should continue to empower women against cultural barriers, such as limitations imposed on women travelling outside of their villages to lucrative markets, as well as make it easier for them to obtain access to credit.

APRA Ghana team to present findings in dissemination workshop

The findings of a recent APRA Ghana research project will be shared with a range of stakeholders at a forthcoming event. This workshop will include a discussion of the team’s research, the implications of these findings. The outcome of discussions will be incorporated into subsequent analyses and reports on the APRA project, and contribute to informing policy and practices related to rural development, empowerment of women of girls and food and nutrition security. This will ensure that this research is used to inform effective and relevant policy.

The project, undertaken by a team of researchers from the University of Ghana, has been analysing the impacts and outcomes of pathways to agricultural commercialisation on rural poverty, empowerment of women and girls and food and nutrition security in Ghana and across six other Sub-Saharan African countries. Specifically, the research has explored which farmers engage with oil palm commercialisation arrangements, analysed the poverty implications of participation in these arrangements (and how these outcomes differ across different groups), explained the relationships between different arrangements and resource allocation to other crops, and examined whether the different arrangements have varying effects on other farm and non-farm enterprises.

The sharing and discussion of these findings will take place at a dissemination workshop on Wednesday, 17 March 2021 in Takoradi, Ghana, hosted by the research team. The workshop will bring together key stakeholders including the research team, respondents (municipal directors of agriculture, opinion leaders, agricultural organisations, farmers and farmer associations), and the media. Discussions will also include representatives from both the public sector, including the Ghana Ministry of Food and Agriculture, and the private sector, such as Benso Oil Palm Plantation.

Feature photo: APRA Ghana team outside the University of Ghana. Credit: Amrita Saha

The political economy of rice value chain in Ethiopia: actors, performance, and discourses

Written by Dawit Alemu and Abebaw Assaye

This blog summarises APRA Working Paper 51, which shows the importance of rice in Ethiopia since its introduction the 1970s covering trends in terms of actors engaged, domestic consumption and policy attention. The authors identify the key challenges that have contributed to the poor performance of Ethiopia’s rice sector, along with suggestions on how to promote its commercialisation. They also look at how COVID-19 has affected the sector.


Motives of rice sector development

The motive of rice introduction to Ethiopia and its promotion was the government’s initiative to ensure food security and the settlement programmes during the Derg regime, which has evolved in recent years into the agenda of ensuring self-sufficiency linked with ever-increasing rice imports, which is adding a burden on the already meagre foreign currency reserves.

Key actors of the rice value chain

  1. The Ethiopia’s research system: with the support of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and AfricaRice, as well as technical and financial support from development partners, mainly the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the national research system has managed to release 37 improved varieties of rice seed, along with recommended production practices. However, the availability of other rice related technologies is very limited.
  2. Rice producers: rice production is dominated by smallholder farmers and the use of quality seed of the released varieties is very low due to limited participation of actors engaged in certified seed production. On gender, smallholder female farmers have, on average, less in terms of household labour and land allocated for rice production. The average rice productivity levels achieved by female-headed households is also, on average, smaller than male-headed households.
  3. Rice processors: who work closely with rural collectors and farmer traders, processors play a crucial role in marketing both paddy and milled rice, in addition to the processing services and job creation they provide. The major challenges facing processors are the poor quality and inadequacy of paddy supply, the instability of electricity supply, and the lack of price incentives for quality rice products.
  4. Labourers: The commercialisation of rice has contributed to the emergence of rural labour and land markets. 52 per cent of smallholder rice farmers use hired labour to meet their demand. The same is true for rice processors as, on average, a processor hires six casual labourers.

COVID-19 and its impact on rice value chain

The impact of COVID-19 has been associated with the responses of the different value chain actors to the measures put in place by the Ethiopian government, and governments of other countries from which Ethiopia imports rice, mainly India and Pakistan and, to some extent, Vietnam. Accordingly, our assessment indicates that (i) farmers’ rice production processes were not affected – rather, they have seen higher prices; (ii) rice processors have limited their processing service provision. Instead, processors have been purchasing paddy and storing it in private storehouses as paddy rice, waiting for higher prices; and (iii) consumers are negatively affected due to higher domestic prices.

Discourses around rice value chain development

Recognising the strategic importance of rice and increasing challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) has designed intervention options to boost domestic production and productivity. These include the expansion of rice production in the lowlands of the country, where there is huge potential for irrigated agriculture. In this regard, the key areas currently debated are (i) how to enhance the role of smallholder rice farmers and commercial farms without destructive competition; (ii) how to modernise the rice processing industry to ensure competitiveness with imported rice; (iii) how to boost the contribution of the rice industry in the creation of job opportunities and women’s empowerment; (iv) how to generate reliable national rice statistics for improved strategic decision making, mainly in relation to rice production, the area cultivated for rice, and the productivity achieved; and (v) how to ensure rice import substitutions.

Conclusion

We conclude that the poor performance of the rice value chain along with the emerging/dynamic challenges facing the sector need specific attention from policymakers and development partners. Initiatives need to boost domestic production and productivity in a manner that capitalises not only on the existing agricultural potential, but also on taking advantage of the labour that is already available.


Feature photo credit: Carsten ten Brink on Flickr.


Please note: During this time of uncertainty caused by the COVID19 pandemic, as for many at this time, some of our APRA work may well be affected but we aim to continue to post regular blogs and news updates on agricultural policy and research.

Working Paper 52: Agricultural Commercialisation and the Political Economy of Cocoa and Rice Value Chains in Nigeria

Written by, Emmanuel Remi Aiyede.

Nigeria has sought to diversify its economy away from dependence on oil as a major source of government revenue through agricultural commercialisation. Agriculture has been a priority sector because it has very high growth potential and the greatest potential for employment and export revenue. The cocoa and rice value chains are central to the government’s engagement with agriculture to achieve these objectives. This paper sets out to investigate the underlying political economy dynamics of the commercialisation of the cocoa and rice value chains in Nigeria in terms of smallholder farm households’ shift from semi-subsistence agriculture to production primarily for market, and predominantly commercial medium- and large-scale farm enterprises complementing or replacing smallholder farm households.

Working Paper 51: The Political Economy of the Rice Value Chain in Ethiopia: Actors, Performance, and Discourses

Written by, Dawit Alemu and Abebaw Assaye.

The goal of this working paper is to identify the core challenges that have contributed to the poor performance of Ethiopia’s rice sector, and highlight approaches to successfully promote the commercialisation of the rice value chain. The authors achieve this by emphasising the underlying political economy dynamics of the rice value chain in Ethiopia, and how these can offer a better understanding of the drivers and constraints of agricultural commercialisation in the country. The paper also discusses the performance of, and challenges faced by, actors involved in the rice value chain. In addition, it looks at the role of development partners in promoting the rice value chain, the role of rice in the rural labour market, as well as the impact of COVID-19 on the various actors.

Working Paper 50: Determinants of Smallholder Farmers’ Livelihood Trajectories: Evidence from Rural Malawi

Written by, Mirriam Matita, Ephraim Wadonda Chirwa, Stevier Kaiyatsa, Jacob Mazalale, Masautso Chimombo, Loveness Msofi Mgalamadzi and Blessings Chinsinga.

The authors of this paper attempt use quantitative methods to determine the different factors of livelihood trajectories in the context of agricultural commercialisation. To do this, they draw on primary evidence from household surveys conducted over a span of ten years in Mchinji and Ntchisi districts, in rural Malawi. The authors hypothesise that households that are more commercialised are more likely to expand their investments in agriculture and/or take up livelihoods outside of agriculture. Crucially, they find that factors driving livelihood trajectories are not the same for farmers in different pathways, and highlight the need for policymakers to study findings emphasise the need to adopt context-dependent development approaches, in order to provide sustainable relief from poverty for farming households.

Working Paper 49: The Political Economy of Sunflower In Tanzania: A Case of Singida Region

Written by, Aida C. Isinika and John Jeckoniah.

This paper looks at the challenges and shortcomings facing the sunflower sub-sector in Tanzania. It showcases the political economy of sunflower based on analyses of the performance of the sector over a 30-year period since the early 1990s, also studying the relations between the importers of edible oil, and the local actors of the sunflower value chain (farmers and processors). In addition, the authors discuss how disparities in accessing resources for production were established across gender, age, wealth status, which led to social differentiation. Following this, they examine how restrictions introduced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has affected activities and relations along the sunflower value chain.

Vaccine politics in Zimbabwe


This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.

If you didn’t know already, vaccines are political. And in southern Africa perhaps particularly so as the Chinese, Russians, Indians and the so-called international community through the COVAX facility jostle for position, each trying to show their benevolence towards Africa, reaping soft power diplomatic benefits in return.

In this context, the vaccine becomes the symbolic totem of a new form of political power. This competition between old and new powers has important implications for how public health and development more broadly are seen and responded to across Africa, including in Zimbabwe.

Vaccine nationalism and diplomatic competition however is raising concerns. These exist in Europe of course, perhaps especially around the British-Swedish AstraZeneca vaccine, which at different times has been cast as dangerous, ineffective or highly efficacious, depending on which politician or selective media commentary you listen to.

These uncertainties of course feed into anxieties and contestations over different types of vaccines, some of which have a major commercial dimension. It’s predicted that those with a profit-making business model behind them – Pfizer, Moderna and the rest – will make huge profits over the coming years as the coronavirus settles into its endemic state across the world.

Of course many Africans will not be vaccinated well into 2022, such is the inequality of vaccine distribution and access. Zimbabweans currently only have one vaccine being administered: the Sinopharm vaccine from China. Arriving through a coup of diplomacy on a specially chartered Air Zimbabwe flight, and met by the Chinese ambassador and the Constantino Chiwenga, Vice-President and health minister, it was a symbolic moment showered across the press.

Other vaccines from China are expected (including Sinovax), along with the Indian vaccine, Covaxin and the Sputnik V vaccine from Russia. Nearly a million COVAX vaccines (AstraZeneca) are also expected as Zimbabwe (finally) signed up for a share, although the first deliveries to Africa from the international facility went to Ghana and Ivory Coast while nearby Malawi got a first shipment last week.

Zimbabwe’s vaccine roll-out: intense debate

With 200,000 Sinopharm doses delivered in the first batch, the Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe was quick to approve the vaccine, and the Ministry of Health presented a plan for delivery across three phases. Initially, following the symbolic injecting of the vice-president (the president and the rest of the cabinet it seems await the next batch), 34,000 ‘front-line’ workers were targeted. In Zimbabwe, the front-line is nurses and doctors, but also police and soldiers, who have been very present throughout the various lockdowns.

Agricultural extension workers were supposed to be in this batch apparently, but have been relegated to the next phase, alongside teachers, college and university lecturers and those deemed vulnerable, including the elderly and some with particular health conditions. After these groups are vaccinated, the rest of the population will be offered vaccinations, which are free and not compulsory, with the aim of covering 60% of the population.

In all our sites bar one (and this is expected this week), the selection of frontline workers have been vaccinated. Not all took up the offers, with quite a few preferring to wait to see if there were any problems. Others were eager to get protection, while some feared that vaccinations were going to be used to restrict jobs in the health service – no jab, no job was the (actually unfounded) rumour. In our sites there were few side-effects commented on, and only a few nurses in one site who got a fever for a few days were mentioned. Sadly in one site someone died of a stroke following vaccination, although this was apparently due to high blood pressure rather than the inoculation.

With vaccinations underway, our team discussed with local people about their views. Many repeated the arguments that COVID-19 is not seen in the rural areas, so why bother get vaccinated. Others pointed to indigenous herbs and treatments that were proving sufficient. Rumours and strongly-stated viewpoints abound. Suspicion of China’s motives were presented: “China has economic and political interests in our country. They can now expand and exploit our resources”. Others observed that China “is known for sub-standard goods. This makes us worried… We definitely don’t rule out fake vaccines from China”. Some backed China – a war veteran from Mwenezi argued “We have a long relationship with China. It assisted us during the war of liberation. We have confidence in them, more than the West”.

Others shared more dramatic conspiracy theories circulating on social media: “COVID-19 is man-made; the vaccines alter our DNA and can kill us”. Others commented on the financial gains to be made: “This is about money. There are trillions to be made. How can we trust those companies?” Alongside the proliferation of stories on social media, a number of influential actors are adding to anxieties, despite the best efforts of government health services, with prophets, bishops and some churches urging people to avoid the vaccine.

Thus in the villages across our sites – from Mvurwi to Matobo – there is intense debate. As the vaccine rollout continues things may change, but there seems to be widespread hesitancy right now, which is concerning medical doctors. Even amongst our team there are quite contrasting views. In part this emerges from the context. The rural areas have not suffered massive deaths from coronavirus; indeed in the past weeks the number of cases has declined significantly across the whole country and no cases were reported from our study sites. People in all sites once again emphasised the importance of local medicines, vegetables and herbs. Their popularity has resulted in some commercialisation of these products, with Tanganda, the famous Zimbabwean tea manufacturer, producing a new green tea line made from the popular COVID-19 treatment, Zumbani (Lippia javanica).

As team members commented, the shifts in behaviour over the past year around hygiene in particular have been impressive. As one commented, “you go to people’s houses and there’s hand sanitiser or soap to wash; even the kids will pull you up and ask if you’ve washed your hands!” The village health workers reinforce health messages, and continue to work on small allowances, but are widely respected in local communities. With schools opening soon again, school development committees have been mobilised to supply sanitisers and masks and parents have set up duty rotas to clean and sanitise classrooms.

Despite the lack of coronavirus, people have seen the potential risks through high-profile deaths and sickness (including of relatives) in towns and in the diaspora, in South Africa and the UK in particular. This has prompted local mobilisation and collective action in the absence of state support.

Lockdown easing, but other challenges

In early March, the president eased the lockdown conditions. You can now move without permits between towns (although police are still at road blocks, extracting ‘fines’), and the massive price hikes that were seen in the last lockdown have reversed to some extent. There is more transport on the road and so greater competition among operators and now lower prices, which is in turn easing transport challenges for farmers who can bring their produce to towns to sell. Many suffered badly in the last lockdown as perishable crops just rotted at home, unable to be moved. Now things have improved, and there was a definitely more positive mood reported this month.

What has really struck people hard in this last period has been the tick disease of cattle known as January disease (theileriosis). People refer to this as ‘cattle COVID’, and it is hitting cattle herds really hard. Our team member from Mvurwi estimated that around 25 percent of all cattle have been lost. This collapse in a core asset will have long-term consequences, including damaging knock-on effects for ploughing next season. Tick grease has been supplied as part of government packages, but this is not easy to use given the density of ticks that have grown in number thanks to the heavy rains this season.

Lockdowns have meant that movement of animals is not possible, and people could not go to town to buy dipping chemicals, and even if farmers could get there they were in short supply. Standard government dipping has not been functioning effectively for a while, and the veterinary department has been overwhelmed and not been able to respond. In many ways, the impact of this cattle disease on people’s livelihoods is far greater than COVID-19, and it is being felt across our sites, with farmers selling animals for as little as US$60, and many have died.

***

We never expected to be reporting on the responses to COVID-19 a full year on, but this is now the eleventh report since our first post at the end of March 2020, and we will continue to monitor what happens across our sites in the coming weeks and months as vaccines become more common and the seasons shift from the wet to dry season, hopefully with a decline in tick diseases resulting along with a continued decline in COVID-19.


Thanks to the team from Mvurwi, Gutu, Masvingo, Matobo and Mwenezi. Photo credits: Felix Murimbarimba

Journal Article: Old Tractors, New Policies and Induced Technological Transformation: Agricultural Mechanisation, Class Formation and Market Liberalisation in Ghana

Written by: Kojo Amanor and Azindow Iddrisu

This article examines the recent uptake of tractor ploughing services in northern Ghana. It examines the historical continuities in mechanisation and the emergence of a class of medium-scale commercial farmers. In the light of this, it questions the thesis that the recent uptake of mechanisation and emergence of medium-scale farmers reflects the successes of market liberalisation. It is critical of neoclassical theories of agricultural transformation rooted in theories of induced innovation and argues for a political economy approach that links agricultural transformation to processes of social differentiation and the historical role of the state in promoting agricultural commercialisation.

Journal Article: Of Zinc Roofs and Mango Trees: Tractors, the State and Agrarian Dualism in Mozambique

Written by: Lídia Cabral

This paper reviews the latest mechanisation programme by the Mozambican government, asking how it is politically driven and how it shapes and is shaped by agrarian structures. Old ideas about agrarian dualism are reproduced today, albeit with a new language of public-private partnerships that are seen as potentially driving the modernisation of the peasantry. State-sponsored and privately-run service centres, featuring zinc roofed warehouses, are the government’s preferred route to modernisation, yet failing to reach the average farmer and understanding the motives and predicaments of private managers. Emerging small to medium farmers, who keep tractors under shady mango trees in their backyards, are also offering mechanisation services to their peers, which are instrumental to stepping up their production and commercial activities. The state’s push for mechanisation feeds uneven patterns of accumulation and social differentiation.

Cocoa farming: Experiences beyond the Osun River bank, Ogun State, Nigeria


Written by Kehinde Thomas and Adeola Olajide

In this blog, the APRA Nigeria Work Stream 2 team examined the different types of land ownership (leasing and borrowing), and the impact of a new generation of young farmers beyond the Osun river bank. They also investigated the effect structured marketing systems, labour arrangements for the large force of migrant workers, and challenges to cocoa production in the area. The APRA team also gave their thoughts on the field trip.


Crossing the hurdle of Osun River to cultivate cocoa emphasises what the crop offers for the people of ‘ehin osun’ (behind Osun River, in Yoruba). The large number of productive cocoa plantations in this area highlights the rich soil and favourable climatic conditions that attracts migrants from Osun, Oyo, Kwara and Ondo states to settle.  On the contrary, although there is a smaller indigenous population, they consist of the majority of landholders.

To reach the cocoa farms, the APRA team embarked on the same journey taken by cocoa farmers to reach their fields across the river.  The canoe meets passengers at the entry point is ‘ebute’ (river bank) where interestingly, it not only carries people, but also transports motorcycles, which are a key means of transport for communities behind Osun River bank.

Land ownership: lease and borrowing

In an interview with Mr Somade (Assistant Director, Produce Service Unit, Ogun State Ministry of Agriculture), he noted that 70% of cocoa produced in the state comes from the Ijebu zone, which ehin-osun forms a major barrier. Access to land that they farm is mainly by lease or borrowing. An interesting trend observed by the team was that those who lease the land are not obliged to pay royalty to the land owners, while those who borrowed land are meant to pay for the agreed tenancy period.  

Sales of farmland for cocoa is not a common practice as the land inheritance system is still held from generation to generation. During the 1970s, most of the land was cultivated, but now a large portion of it has been left to fallow for between 30-50 years due to the youth migrating to find better opportunities. Therefore, some land areas were already empty. For new applicants, a community leader called a Baale is responsiblet o allocate farm plots and create a title agreement for the rental period. The land is usually measured in ‘ropes’, which is usually 3 plots of 60m by 100m, two of which is equivalent to an acre. Charges for land rent varies from community to community, but on average a ‘rope’ fee was N10, 000, after which yearly royalty is paid.  

Example of motorcycles crossing the river, which act as transport for farm produce. Credit: APRA Nigeria WS2.

Young farmers

Cocoa farming in Ehin Osun is dominated by an older work force. Youth involvement in cocoa production has reduced over time, while the few youth still in the area are commercial motorbike riders (Okada). Meanwhile, this further enhances transportation of farm produce, as the major farm roads are bad few adequate feeder roads

More structured marketing systems

At the community level, there are Local Buying Agents (LBAs) who practice informal contract farming arrangements with coca farmers. The LBAs advance farm inputs or money to service cocoa production with a view to buying the cocoa produced. Although there are bigger cocoa enterprise companies (off-takers) like OLAM and TULIP in the region who buy cocoa produce at better price than LBAs, who they sell to are limited by contracts.   

Arrangement for labourers

Labour arrangement is usually arranged hourly, daily and yearly. However, migrant labour from Benin, Ghana, Mali, Togo, Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Liberia dominated labour sources for cocoa production in ehin osun. A male labourer will earn N1,500 (US$3.65) per day, while a female labourer only earns N1, 200 (US$3).  They are supervised by labour agents, who makes work available on yearly basis, with “Onise Odun” to the farming communities at the rate of  N200,000 (US$485) from February to October yearly. Farm owners are also responsible to pay the agency fee and labourers’ welfare costs (feeding, medical care and clothing) for the contract period. The labourers are expected to work every day of the week, except for Sundays, which is considered as labourers’ resting day. Labourers are free to work on other farms on a Sunday to increase their income.

Affects of climate change on cocoa in the area. Credit: APRA Nigeria WS2 team.

Challenges to cocoa production

The success story of cocoa production in ‘ehin osun’ is not without challenges. Some of the problems encountered include high cost of cocoa production, which often is characterised with low economic returns. For new cocoa farmers, one of the farmers said:

The first three years is usually very demanding as cocoa competes for their limited resources (time, money and energy). It takes patience and perseverance to wait before reaping any harvest.”

Climate change, causing growth retardation, fruit abortion, disease and pest infestation,  is another challenge identified by local farmers, as one explains:

 “Change in rain fall pattern experienced this year, with the lack of rainfall from late June all through August, 2020 and torrential rainfall that started in September 2020 has significantly affected planting, fruiting and harvesting of cocoa.”

Other issues include inadequate extension services, lack of access to quality and effective agro-chemicals and poor infrastructural facilities (e.g. roads, hospitals, financial institutions and processing plants) to support production.  The scenarios of cocoa production activities in ehin Osun are promising for the future of cocoa enterprise. This is noticeable by a new generation of younger farmers, marketing systems are more structured, access to land is more flexible, and labour relations are quite manageable.

   

APRA Ogun State field trip: reflections from the field

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From left to right: Miss Ola Ifeoluwa, Dr Olutayo, Mr Ebunoluwa Osadare, Miss Opeyemi Folari, Miss Tomilola Ojo, Mr Olawale Bada and the canoe operator.

The field study above, conducted APRA Nigeria Work Stream 2 team, involved a number of researchers. After the trip, members of the team shared their thoughts and experiences on cocoa farming in the Ijebu North East Area of Ogun State. Read their insights, below:

Arogundade Olufunke

The fieldwork has been very educative. From a rural sociologist’s point of view, it has provided us with an opportunity to gain insights into how people’s culture, values, beliefs, etc. relates to their professions and/or livelihood activities. An example of this is how women are compensated for assisting their husbands on cocoa farms with the kolanut fruit that falls on the ground only while that on the tree belong to the men. This shows a level of respect that exists in the cocoa farming communities.

Balogun Olabanji

It has been an interesting experience. We started from communities on land, and for the first time during our research field trips, we had to cross the river to access more cocoa producing communities. By travelling across the river on canoe, I understood first-hand that, despite the barrier of the river, agricultural production activities still keeps on going on. Hence, people find a way to survive in whatever situation they may find themselves.

Olorunkoya Olubusayo

This study has been an eye opener, especially on the transporting and marketing in the communities behind the Eyin Osun River. It was interesting to see how the livelihood activities of those who live in this area depend on this river environment, but also that the social lives of these communities can be problematic, with very poor amenities in the area. Overall, it has been a very interesting experience.

Agbakwuru Dorcas

This field survey further revealed to me the untapped agricultural resources in my country that the government has ignored for many decades. On the other hand, it was a very challenging but thought-provoking trip. From river crossings, to travelling through difficult terrain on motorcycles for long periods, it really highlighted how remote this area is, and how difficult it must be for those who live here. I won’t forget this journey in a hurry!

Ogungbaro Oke

It has been very interesting and educative to relate with cocoa farmers, especially those of whom we visited in Ijebu North-East where in some circumstances, a river could have served as barrier/limitations to their cocoa production. The farmers are optimistic and see further prospects in the enterprise.

Olonibua Oluwafemi

This study has shed more knowledge on the fact that some people migrate from urban areas to rural areas because they want to cultivate cocoa as a major source of livelihood.

Adebayo Adedeji

With respect to land tenure system, the study has revealed the disproportionate power relationship that exists between the natives and settlers in Ijebu land.

Adeleke David A.

This field trip has outlines the beautiful environment, wonderful people and culture in this area. It was an incredibly valuable experience.


For more information on the challenges facing cocoa farming in Ogun state, read these APRA blogs:
The challenges of cocoa bean commercialisation in Ogun state, Nigeria

Sustainability of cocoa in Nigeria: preventing the worst case scenarios

Youth and a lack of involvement in cocoa production in southwest Nigeria


Feature photo: Osun river Nigeria near Oshogbo Ipetu-Ijesa. Credit jbdodane on Flickr.


Please note: During this time of uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as for many at this time, some of our APRA work may well be affected but we aim to continue to post regular blogs and news updates on agricultural policy and research.

The politics of medium-scale A2 farms in Zimbabwe


This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.

The findings of our recent open access Journal of Modern African Studies paper, shared in the last blog, show that A2 farmers are not one uniform group. They vary a lot both between and within sites. They are not universally the standard caricature of a party-linked ‘crony’ who is doing very little and extracting rent from state-funded patronage schemes (although of course such farmers do exist). Instead, we see a highly differentiated context, with different pathways of accumulation (or lack of).

This is important for understanding the politics of medium-scale farms. We also have to situate these farms in a wider understanding of the new agrarian structure, now made up of small-scale farms (communal areas, old resettlement farms and newer A1 resettlement farms), medium-scale farms (A2 farms, and the old small-scale commercial farms, formerly the purchase areas) and large-scale farms, estates and conservancies, and think about where medium-scale farming sits in this wider agrarian landscape, now substantially dominated by smallholder farming.

A political bargain

A2 farms were allocated as part of the political bargain that emerged around land reform. Across the country, most land was taken by land-poor communal area people and un/der-employed people from towns, with these areas seized through occupations subsequently becoming A1 smallholder areas. A2 farms, a smaller but nevertheless substantial area (details in the paper), were allocated later as part of a political deal with the middle classes – the professional and bureaucratic elite – along with some going to those linked to the party-state and military (see Table below from our A2 farm survey).

% PercentageMvurwiMasvingo-Gutu
Communal area farmer1816
Farmworker32
Urban employed4112
Civil servant1035
Security services1810
Self-employed businessperson812
Other213

Our studies show how previous occupations varied across sites, but that those with jobs in town and civil servants (many teachers and agricultural ministry workers) were dominant. There were also some who previously farmed in the communal areas and a few farmworkers. Those with direct links to the party and having benefited from allocations organised through political connections were mostly in the ‘security services’ category, estimated at 10% and 18%  of farms in the two sites – although these farms included those occupied by retired police officers, army personnel and others, now with few on-going connections although with strong party affiliation.

We looked at the full population using census and audit data alongside information from knowledgeable key informants in each site to compare our sample data with the wider picture. There was a good match overall.  In the wider population, there were several MPs, one (now late) former Vice President and a few politically-connected church leaders, as well as a scattering of military top brass, councillors and others.

As in our sample, these especially well-connected people were a small minority. While media headlines focus on the acquisition of multiple farms by certain politicians – including former President Mugabe – this is clearly not the whole story (although of course an important part of it – and still an impediment to reform and the realisation of the Constitutional requirements on land ownership).

Among the sample population, there were also those who identified as ‘war veterans’ (a notoriously flexible category) averaging about 23% of farmers across our sites. Although some war vets were simply peasant farmers from the communal areas before their status was revived in the late 1990s, some remain influential in political circles and can make use of this in their relationships with the state.  

Accumulation trajectories and class formation

As the last blog discussed, some A2 farmers have been able to make a go of farming despite the constraints and this was especially so in the period from around 2009 to around 2016.

Accumulation trajectories differed though. Some invested from their own sources of funds or from patronage allocations (or sometimes combinations), others were able to mobilise funds through joint-venture arrangements and contracting. Others relied on ‘projects’ funded by relatives and others, sending money home. Others still expanded production through settling relatives on the farm, and creating a ‘villagised’ arrangement, with multiple farms effectively working together.

Each of these forms of investment has resulted in accumulation – of equipment, homes, cars, trucks and further investment in the farm. Those who were struggling and doing little were either failing because they had no resources, or were ill or infirm, or out of choice, as they had other activities going on elsewhere but were holding land for speculative purposes.

How does this complex picture pan out in terms of class and political dynamics? We can identify a core group of a productive accumulators, with different sources of finance, and varying dependence on the party-state political nexus. This group is an emergent capitalist class, some independent, others very much tied into the state through patronage relations. They make profits, employ people and are investing. They are the commercial farmers expected by the plans.

Next, we have those who are aspiring to be commercial farmers, but lack the financing. They produce reasonably well, but on smaller areas and with fewer animals; they employ few workers and cobble together financing from various sources, including off-farm work. As emergent capitalist farmers, they are severely hampered by the economic conditions and very often lack of access to patronage funds.

Others are struggling, operating more as ‘petty commodity producers’, combining peasant-style farming on small areas, with some level of market engagement. In Mvurwi they may be assisted by contracts with tobacco companies, and in other cases there are investments in ‘projects’ by relatives who transfer funds from outside. In some cases too, the land is effectively subdivided or at least shared by a number of families, as sons take up small-scale farming on the larger plot.  There are others still who have abandoned farming and may have a care-taker looking after the plot and any houses. This may be due to ill-health, age or because the household decided A2 farming was definitely not for them. In addition, there are those who are holding the land speculatively for future generations, making sure the windfall of gaining a farm is not lost for others in the family.

Each of these broad groupings have different associations with the party-state and so different linkages with party politics and patronage. With different levels of production and investment and different patterns of accumulation resulting, they have contrasting political interests. Those capitalist and aspiring capitalist farmers are keen to ensure that the state resolves major blockages to financing, including issuing leases, addressing compensation to former owners and facilitating bank finance. They are committed farmers, with capacity, but currently constrained. While some will rely on patronage, through the Command Agriculture scheme, most observe that this is not sustainable and all are aware of the whims of political favours that can change at any minute.

Those who are struggling may make it in time with the right support, but many will not. They are concerned about holding on to their land given land audits of utilisation. Such families actually may benefit from some form of subdivision of land, taking on a more manageable size of farm. Land taxes would hit such farmers hard given that they produce so little, and they are widely resisted, but may encourage a more appropriate land use. Those who have effectively abandoned their land fear the consequences of an audit. While some are well-connected and may hold onto their land through corrupt means, others are not and may lose it. The wider policy challenge is how to re-absorb such farm families into the smallholder areas in places where broader social safety nets can be provided or into gainful urban jobs, and in turn how to reallocate land to new entrants.

Emerging debates: future politics and policy questions

In sum, as processes of differentiation have emerged over nearly 20 years in the A2 farming areas, there is no one standard ‘A2 farmer’. Far from it: in fact there are many different types, with patterns varied over sites. This has implications for rural politics. The better-connected, richer farmers, with close alliances to the state, may succeed in lobbying for commercial farmer-friendly policies, including on-going subsidies and investment, just as their white predecessors so successfully did during the colonial era. They are also keen on joint-venture arrangements, including with former white farmers, as well as Chinese and other investors, making new alliances in the countryside.

With the current government’s penchant for neoliberal policies and a focus on business, these commercialising A2 farmers are well-placed. However, currently they are not well organised, and cohesion is fractured by the invidious effects of patronage politics, made worse by the endless reconfiguration of factions amongst the party-military elite.

Those who are struggling or abandoning farms may still wish to join the ranks of more successful farmers, but this will require concerted external support, which is currently absent. Their class characteristics are more akin to ‘petty commodity producer’ smallholders, especially in the A1 areas, and in the end following subdivision or movement to other areas may become part of a larger political force in the countryside lobbying for support for investment in agriculture and rural development, with smallholder farming at the centre.

Beyond the populist rhetoric, there is little political support for this position currently and connections to the party-state remain weak, but the war veteran lobby that is strong amongst this grouping, as well as others advocating a smallholder path of development, may yet provide the basis for longer-term support if a vision for smallholder-led transformation, perhaps in time with donor support, can be forged.

Numerous policy issues emerge from the analysis, including the need to address land tenure/lease issues, farm financeland administration and wider agrarian support, including investment in basic infrastructure. The lessons from the successes of white commercial agriculture from the 1930s onwards is that a clear vision for the sector is needed, with strong leadership and backing from the state, as well as accessible and cheap private finance.

To date, the economic and political chaos that has dominated Zimbabwe’s recent history has prevented this, but there are opportunities. Maybe a new political settlement emerging from proposed dialogues across political parties will generate the sort of stability seen in the GNU period, and once again the chance of farm investment.

And over a longer period as it becomes clearer who can make it as a commercial farmer maybe a smaller, focused medium-scale sector may yet emerge around the nascent commercial farmer groups we have identified, potentially specialising on certain products and with a variety of joint-venture arangements. With land in the A2 areas subdivided further to allow a greater number of people to take up farming in the future, others may join a solid and powerful core farming sector based on smallholders (centred on the A1 areas).

Only time will tell what the future holds, but our study has revealed important dynamics, allowing a more open and informed debate on commercial agriculture and its future in Zimbabwe than has happened to date.


Feature photo credit: Ian Scoones.

The political economy of land use land cover change in Mvurwi, Zimbabwe, 1984—2018


Written by Caleb Maguranyanga and Toendepi Shonhe

In this blog summarising APRA Working Paper 48, the authors explore the effects of variable rainfall and the land reforms of 2000 alongside other political and economic factors, to determine how land use land cover in Mvurwi, Zimbabwe has changed between 1984 and 2018. The study complements the longitudinal analysis of agricultural commercialisation in APRA Working Paper 35.


From 1984 to 2018, the Mvurwi area of Zimbabwe experienced significant vegetation fluctuations related to major land use and land cover changes, especially post-1999. Our latest APRA study examined the extent of change and explored the underlying drivers leading to land use land cover change (LULCC) – defined as a loss of natural areas, such as agricultural areas to urban or exurban (an area outside a typically denser inner suburban area) development – in Mvurwi. The study explores land cover changes in former large-scale commercial farms (up to 2000), new resettlements areas (after 2000) and a smallholder farming communal area.

Over several decades, land cover has varied through different phases, with periods of vegetation expansion and contraction linked to a range of factors. The factors include changing macro-economic conditions, political dynamics and climate change. Beyond a simplistic view where environmental change in vegetation cover is viewed as a result of changing rainfall patterns and the effects of land reform (via resource extraction and overuse by humans), a more nuanced picture emerges. This captures how land use change in the longer term is an outcome of socio-ecological and political economy dynamics at play.

Detailed analyses of land use land cover change

The normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI), a simple graphical measurement that analyses vegetation health using remote sensing measurements, was calculated from Landsat data[1] in order to test for significant changes in the vegetation cover in the study area at five-year intervals: 1984–1999, 1999–2004, 2004–2009 and 2009–2018. Although major LULCC occurred as a result of land reform after 2000, when large-scale commercial farms were taken over by smallholder and medium-scale farmers, tree cover varied over time without following a particular pattern, as increases and decreases were observed across the four phases, which did not simply relate to changes in rainfall or demographic shifts. 

A focused study was carried out in Ward 26, in Mvurwi, where insights from interviews and focus group discussions across the area helped to identify the land use change drivers. Using empirical data collected through interviews and discussions in the field was essential to gain a full picture. Thus, combining NDVI analysis of LULCC using satellite-based imagery with insights from a grounded political economy analysis revealed how environmental changes reflect an interplay of socio-economic, political and environmental factors. 

A typical scene of land use in rural Zimbabwe. Credit: Ian Scoones

Factors influencing land use change

Socio-economic factors included how the macro-economic environment – and so access to bank financing, inflation and markets – had an impact on the cropping patterns and resulted in changes in the land cover. Similarly, climate change affect cropping and land cover in the countryside. Thus, these factors and processes are intertwined.

In addition to the actions of local land users, our research shows that environmental changes are also affected by the wider macro-economic and political situation. For example, the contraction of commercial farm fields in the 1990s was linked to growing incentives to focus on high value crops for export, which required smaller land areas but increased capitalisation, as was the deforestation and mining, which led to an expansion of forested areas, reducing the area of cropped fields. Equally, the period of hyperinflation in the 2000s, or before then, the lack of government support after the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), all saw a contraction of agricultural production and reduced levels of field expansion.

Differences in ways of accessing resources, including land, is often heavily influenced by political connections, which affects cropping patterns, and thus the land cover over time, in different localities. The study revealed that changes varied across communal areas (small-scale farming), large-scale commercial farms/estates and, after the land reform from 2000, resettlement areas with different farm sizes. These included A1 (villagised smallholder farmers on 6 ha of land) and A2 medium to large-scale commercial farms averaging 100 ha). Explanations for these changes highlight social, economic and political drivers that have changed over time. While important, the simple explanations about changes in rainfall patterns were inadequate. The multiple drivers mentioned above intersect, and merge with social dynamics and the political economy to shape environmental change.

The effects of climate change will likely see more erratic rainfall, and drought shocks combining with wider political and economic drivers in particular ways to create shifts in land use, rather than seeing a simple, one way change over time. 

Conclusion

Over the last four decades, land use in the Mvurwi area has changed dramatically due to land reform. However, there have been other factors, all combining in a complex way to result in a highly variable pattern that shows shifts back and forth in land cover categories in ways that differ across localities. A consideration of social and political economy factors that impact on land use land cover changes is therefore crucial, as we observed in Mvurwi. 


We conclude that a simplistic view associating land cover reduction with changes in rainfall or the resettlement programmes is inaccurate. Based on our findings, we propose a broader view that takes into account the changes in macro-economic conditions, the wider political economy dynamics and the changes in the environment. These factors, we found, led to changes in cropping programmes and shifts in strategies for livelihoods by Zimbabweans in general, and farmers in particular.


[1] The Landsat Program is a series of Earth-observing satellite missions jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey


Feature photo: Watering a chilli farm. Credit: David Brazier/IWMI.


Please note: During this time of uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as for many at this time, some of our APRA work may well be affected but we aim to continue to post regular blogs and news updates on agricultural policy and research.

Regenerative Agriculture: An Agronomic Perspective

Ken Giller, Renske Hijbeek, Jens. Andersson, and James Sumberg.

Outlook on Agriculture

Agriculture is in crisis. Soil health is collapsing. Biodiversity faces the sixth mass extinction. Crop yields are plateauing. Against this crisis narrative swells a clarion call for Regenerative Agriculture. But what is Regenerative Agriculture, and why is it gaining such prominence? Which problems does it solve, and how? Here we address these questions from an agronomic perspective. The term Regenerative Agriculture has actually been in use for some time, but there has been a resurgence of interest over the past 5 years. It is supported from what are often considered opposite poles of the debate on agriculture and food. Regenerative Agriculture has been promoted strongly by civil society and NGOs as well as by many of the major multi-national food companies. Many practices promoted as regenerative, including crop residue retention, cover cropping and reduced tillage are central to the canon of ‘good agricultural practices’, while others are contested and at best niche (e.g. permaculture, holistic grazing). Worryingly, these practices are generally promoted with little regard to context. Practices most often encouraged (such as no tillage, no pesticides or no external nutrient inputs) are unlikely to lead to the benefits claimed in all places. We argue that the resurgence of interest in Regenerative Agriculture represents a re-framing of what have been considered to be two contrasting approaches to agricultural futures, namely agroecology and sustainable intensification, under the same banner. This is more likely to confuse than to clarify the public debate. More importantly, it draws attention away from more fundamental challenges. We conclude by providing guidance for research agronomists who want to engage with Regenerative Agriculture.

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Emerging dynamics as result of COVID-19 in Mngeta Division in Morogoro, Tanzania


Written by Gideon Boniface and Aida Isinika

This blog uses data from recent APRA surveys to examine the changing situation among farmers resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. The authors look at how the farmers are responding to such changes, how their livelihoods have altered, and what the government and development partners can do to help.

This blog is linked to APRA Round One and Round Two country reports on the Impact of COVID-19 on Food Systems and Rural Livelihoods in Tanzania.

Read the full APRA synthesis report on the Rapid Assessment of the Impact of COVID-19 on Food Systems and Rural Livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa, here.


Since March 2020, COVID-19 has caused many changes to livelihoods and social-relations (affected by social distancing and a fear of contracting the virus) among farmers in Mngeta division, Mlimba district in Morogoro region. The crisis caused people to adapt to control the spread of infection and cope with its impacts. In the two rounds of phone surveys that took place in July 2020 and October 2020 from five APRA study villages, the findings highlight the perceptions and effects of the pandemic among respondents.

Understanding and interpretations of COVID-19 among respondents

All respondents in both survey rounds showed that they are aware of the pandemic based on media coverage and instructions from the Ministry of Health but there were mixed thoughts on where the virus originated. Some respondents thought the pandemic was restricted to urban centres, while others understood how contagious it is.

Taking of precautions and adhering to control measures

After the first case of COVID-19 in March 2020, the government enacted restrictions on sports and games and limited social gatherings such as wedding ceremonies, funerals and religious services. However, by July 2020 (when the first round of data collection for this study started), restrictions were being relaxed. Universities were opened and other social gatherings (such as sports, concerts and large religious gathering) took place. Most of the respondents (75%) followed guidelines (hand-washing, face masks etc.) for preventing the spread of the virus.  By the second round of data collection in October 2020, the number of people who followed guidelines decreased significantly to only 36%, and the majority did not take the pandemic seriously. This decline was partly due to an announcement by the government that spread rates of COVID-19 had significantly decreased.

To avoid unnecessary movement some farmers reported that they decided to stay at home in the first round of the survey, while others bought large quantities of essential goods to limit movement. Takeaway food orders also decreased, with home-cooking becoming more popular.

However, this was not the case in the second round. While most respondents treated the pandemic seriously, there are some who believed they were immune and did not follow any guidelines.

Farmers on focus group discussion while taking precaution against COVID-19 . Credit: APRA Tanzania

The dynamics in livelihoods

Agriculture is the main economic activity in Mngeta division, with rice as the main cash crop. Following the economic slowdown, many people lost their informal jobs due slowdown of businesses and the imposed restrictions. However, farmers managed to continue with their harvesting activities, incurring lower harvesting cost due to the increased supply of labour as due to job losses in other sectors. Meanwhile, restrictions on movement within the country, including borders to other countries, caused the number of paddy-buying traders to decrease by 70%.  This led to an oversupply of harvested paddy and a decline in the price of paddy. In both Round 1 and 2, farmers’ were less able to sell their produce at local and other market channels, forcing farmers to rely on domestic demand within their local villages.

An elderly woman brought her paddy at milling machines to be milled for home consumption. Credit: APRA Tanzania

Revenue also declined due, leading to reduction in the farmers’ purchasing power, and a rise in cost of living for most. Due to the decline in farmer’s purchasing power, the majority of respondents ate less varied food, with some farmers having stopped cultivation of crops in short rainy season of 2020 (September–December) to cut production costs. Round 2 of survey highlighted concerns for the next agriculture season (planting is between November 2020–March 2021, with harvest starting in July 2021) due to not being able to afford inputs for production, even though prices remained unchanged.    

In both rounds of the survey, operations of rice milling machines were reported to have declined, and processors operated at only 30% of their capacity. The processing that was taking place was mainly reserved for the paddy sold within the villages, or home consumption in small quantities. Worker numbers in this industry were reduced, and others had their pay halved.

To cope with the effects of the pandemic some people who lost their jobs decided to join fishing activities in Mngeta River. Others started selling face masks, sanitisers, and buckets, all of which were in high demand. In the first round, some respondents reported an almost two-fold increase in their income due to selling these items, and demand was so high that some stocks vanished within two days. By Round 2, these business disappeared as their demand has gone down significantly, a situation that hurt those traders who had stocked up on these items.

Conclusion

In Mngeta division, COVID-19 not only caused negative effects, but it also caused emerging opportunities for those who lose their jobs in the first wave of the pandemic. However, it also left unanswered questions, such as where did the virus originate from? When will the pandemic come to an end? And what will be the further social-economic impacts of the pandemic as it continues to disrupt the economies globally.

Government and development partners should keep urgent priorities in enabling farmers to afford the production costs by helping them accessing the inputs and services of/for production such as fertiliser, improved seed, pesticides and tillage services. This will help to avoid the possible threats imposed on food and nutrition security due to forecasting decline in the production level of the crops as farmer’s ability to afford enhanced production inputs has declined.


Feature photo: A group of farmers taking part in an APRA focus group discussion in Luono village, during lunch break. Credit APRA Tanzania


Please note: During this time of uncertainty caused by the COVID19 pandemic, as for many at this time, some of our APRA work may well be affected but we aim to continue to post regular blogs and news updates on agricultural policy and research.

APRA present findings at webinar on the impact of COVID-19 on the rice sector

The Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) Work Stream 2 team have continued to attend events, despite the technical challenges brought by pandemic-related lockdowns.

Dawit Alemu, Ethiopia-based academic, participated on behalf of APRA at the Zoom Webinar “COVID-19 Impact and Rice Competitiveness” on 25 February 2021, organised by Coalition for African Rice Development (CARD). The webinar was designed to deliberate on (i) the impacts of COVID-19 and possible mitigation measures, and (ii) to create an opportunity for the CARD initiative and its stakeholders to have a broader picture of the impacts of COVID-19 on the rice sector development in the continent.

More than 200 participants from 40 countries from across the world engaged in the webinar, including the Minister of Rice Promotion of Côte d’Ivoire, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), AfricaRice, APRA, participants from the 32 CARD member countries, development partners, and donors.

The webinar focused on the impact of COVID-19 on the agriculture sector and rice sub-sector in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and two presentations were made followed by reflections and a question and answer session. The first presentation was on JICA’s assistance on food and nutrition with COVID-19, while the second was on APRA’s Rapid Assessments on the Impact of COVID-19 on Rice Value Chain in Africa presented by Alemu. This included an overview of APRA’s main synthesis report, as well as the round 2 country reports for Tanzania and Ethiopia.  In particular, the key timing, purpose and goals of these rapid assessments were explained to ensure timely action to address the emerging challenges related with COVID 19. Several other important issues were also discussed during these presentations, such as how regional trade can be facilitated within SSA, on systems over-reliant on international commerce, to reduce the impact of COVID-19

The sessions reflected on the need to consider specific challenges facing different countries and regions when addressing the impact of COVID-19, along with the on-going attempts  to increase competitiveness through upgrading rice value chains covering process upgrading (farming and milling), product upgrading (variety, standard, packaging), functional upgrading (vertical coordination, channel upgrading, and inter-sectoral upgrading (by-product product development).

In conclusion, it was agreed that the CARD secretariat will document the key issues identified for further discussion and the design of interventions. The APRA research outputs are expected to inform the future discussion for the design of intervention options at both country and regional levels.

Mr Tadashi Sato, JICA Vice President, emphasised the timeliness of the event during his closing remarks in order to address the challenges caused by the pandemic, and urged those attending to sustain their engagement.  

“APRA will continue its engagement activities, and inform CARD, and its member countries, on its latest research and policy findings.  Our APRA researchers also look forward to attending the next CARD general meeting, held in Abidjan next year.”

APRA researcher Dawit Alemu, speaking after the webinar

The webinar focused on many topics that will also be raised in the upcoming East Africa Rice Conference on 20-22 May, which APRA is co-convening with CARD, CABE, JICA and IRRI. For more information on this conference, click here.


Access all of the presentations from the webinar, here:

Shinjiro Amameishi, JICA. JICA’s Assistance on Food and Nutrition with COVID-19 (Increase of resilience through CARD)

Dawit Alemu, APRA. The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Rice Value Chains: Findings from Ethiopia and Tanzania.

Ernst Zippel, AfricaRice Responding to the COVID-19 crisis:CORIS rice seed delivery model.

Shuichi Asanuma, JICA. Strengthening competitiveness through better seed systems.

Matty Demont, CGIAR. Upgrading rice value chains to increase competitiveness of domestic vis à vis imported rice in Africa.


Feature photo: field workers tend CIAT’s rice plots, during the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP). Credit: ©2011CIAT.NeilPalmer

Working Paper 48: The Political Economy of Land Use and Land Cover Change in Mvurwi Area Zimbabwe, 1984–2018

Written by, Caleb Maguranyanga, Keen Marozva, Ian Scoones and Toendepi Shonhe.

An analysis of the variations in land use and land cover over the past four decades in the Mvurwi area, Mazowe district, Zimbabwe illustrates how socio-economic dynamics and natural factors combine to shape environmental change. Land use and cover changes (LULCC) were assessed using a combination of quantitative analysis (satellite imagery) of land cover and a grounded analysis of the social, economic and political factors. Explanations for the changes observed in this study highlight social, economic and political drivers that have changed over time. A simple, linear explanation of land use and land cover change is inappropriate as multiple drivers intersect, and environmental change must always be understood as co-constituted with social dynamics and political economy.

The triple drivers of rice commercialisation in Fumbisi Valley, northern Ghana (2)


Written by Joseph Awetori Yaro and Ibrahim Wahab

This blog looks at how the triple drivers of mechanisation, weedicide/herbicides and improved seeds play an integral role in rice commercialisation in northern Ghana, as found in APRA Working Paper 71. The author explores how, and why, they are so important, alongside other factors such as market demand, roads and other infrastructure, state policy, and land availability.

Part one of this series examines the rising farm sizes in the Fumbisi Valley

Mechanisation

In the last decade, there has been a substantial increase in the rental of mechanisation equipment in the northern regions of Ghana with farm sizes above 5ha benefiting the most from (Houssou et al. 2018). The major policy initiative by the state to increase local rice production and reduce the high import bill on rice led to support for mechanisation of agriculture, which involves waivers on import taxes on equipment and the supply of subsidised state-imported machinery. Imports of used has increased the stock of tractors in northern Ghana, where more durable second-hand tractors are preferred compared to new tractors brought in by politicians, which often lack available spare parts and are politically motivated.

Circular migration of tractors between the transition zone (vegetation zone of northern Ghana) and Guinea Savannah zone has made it possible for many local farmers to access tractors. Once the rainy season begins in the transition zone, most strong tractors form convoys and travel the 200(–360km journey to farm in these zones and then return with other tractors owned by transition zone farmers to northern Ghana a few weeks after to plough in the extensive farmlands. Poor farmers who cannot afford the fees of tractor services pledge a bag of farm produce (which varies depending on produce) after harvest to obtain this service.

Some decades ago, we were not cultivating the valleys. Our fathers had no extensive valley farms. They only cultivated smaller patches of rice for home consumption. It is only now that we have started commercial rice farming in the valleys. We did not have tractors at that time”.

According to an ‘Earth Priest’[i] at Uwasi
Picture of a crawler combine harvester in the Fumbisi Valley, Ghana. Credit: Charles Nyaaba /Peasant Farmers Association

Combine harvesters, consisting of crawlers and normal tyre versions, have become available, although are still not enough to meet the demands of most farmers who have to harvest at the desired moisture content for rice processors. Crawlers are mostly owned by large-scale farmers who will harvest their 200–2000ha farms before providing services to the medium and small-scale farmers.

“It is the stranger farmers who brought large farms. You need farm implements like tractors and harvesters to expand area in the valley. We do not have that kind of capital.”

An elder at the Weisi Chief’s court

Mechanisation enabled by rich stranger farmers explains the high fertility of the Fumbisi valleys. Women’s engagement and expansion of farm sizes is mainly due to mechanisation:

“When we were using the hand hoe and bullocks, farming was slow but now the tractors have hastened the land preparation process. Additionally, the cost of the tractor is GH₵80 per acre, which is not too much

Women’s Focus Group Discussion, Weisi

Improved seeds

The use of improved seeds due to increasing availability and decades of sensitisation by the state and NGOs has become a major driver of farm size increases and commercialisation. Commercialisation is being boosted by farmers’ move away from planting traditional, late maturing seeds to improved, early maturing varieties (Houssou et al. 2018) in order to meet increasing demand and the constraints posed by climate change (such as grains that can adapt to a shorter rainy season).  

Once small-scale farmers start to witness the higher productivity on the bigger farms, they are incentivised to invest in those seeds as well. However, small-scale farmers still grow both local and improved rice varieties due to their own consumption preferences. They argue that the local variety will yield even with unreliable weather, and without the application of fertilisers and insecticides. Extension agents have become conduits for the distribution of improved seeds as they manage the state programs that send seeds directly to farmers or partner input distributors to give these out for free or at a subsidised price. For example, the Planting for Food and Jobs Initiative has made rice, maize, soyabean etc. available to several thousand farmers.

Picture of a wheeled combine harvester in the Fumbisi Valley, Ghana. Credit: Charles Nyaaba /Peasant Farmers Association

Herbicides/Weedicides

One of the main yield-limiting factors in the production of rice is weed management, which grow very fast and compete with crops for available nutrients. In addition, flood waters do not recede while weeds are infesting fields. In such conditions, farmers rely on weedicides to control weeds. The popular weedicide used is under the trade name Bison. A survey by Rodenburg et al. (2019) shows that rice farmers who used weedicides to control weeds suffered reduced yield losses of about 0.4 t/ha compared to their counterparts who employed hand weeding. The same survey shows that there is increasing reliance on weedicides to control weeds with as much as 55 per cent of rice farmers using chemicals to control weeds on their farms.  This proportion increases to 82 per cent for field areas between 5-10ha and 81 per cent for fields with areas above 10ha (Houssou et al. 2018).

 “I expanded with the emergence of tractors coupled with the use of agrochemicals especially herbicides that allowed me to do zero tillage. These changes allowed me to increase my acreage. I used to cultivate 3 acres and that has increased to about 15 acres”

Medium-scale farmer, Weisi

Herbicides are the most widespread agro-chemical used by every farmer for preparation of land, although several negative effects are reported such as destruction of the micro environment, species reduction, pollution of soils and water bodies and effects on other crops downstream. The labour-saving power of herbicides and weedicides make these important determines for farm size expansion in the area.

Conclusion

The triple-drivers of Commercialisation and farm size increases discussed in the previous blog have resonated with several other districts where commercialisation of other crops is underway. However, other enabling factors include increased market demand, skills/knowledge and infrastructure. The time for commercialisation has come because all the conditioning factors seem to prevail, such as large urban centres in need of food, Chinese expansion of road infrastructure, rich urbanites continuous investments in agriculture, rural dwellers up-taking new innovations they rejected in the past and the support from politicians in making agro-inputs available through subsidies.


[i] In this area of Ghana, an ‘earth priest’ is the religious head and has claims to local land, therefore overseeing it.


Feature photo: Picture of a tractor in the Fumbisi Valley, Ghana. Credit: Charles Nyaaba /Peasant Farmers Association


References

Amanor, K. (2019) Mechanized Agriculture and Medium- Scale Farmers in Northern Ghana: A Success of Market Liberalism or a Product of a Longer History? APRA Working Paper 23, Brighton: Future Agricultures Consortium

Cabral, L. (2019) Tractors in Africa: Looking Behind the Technical Fix, APRA Working Paper 22, Brighton: Future Agricultures Consortium

Houssou, N. et al. (2018) ‘Changes in Ghanaian Farming Systems: Stagnation or a Quiet Transformation?’ Agriculture and Human Values 35.1: 41-66

Muyanga M. et al. (2019) Changing farm structure and agricultural commercialisation in Nigeria’, APRA Working Paper 26. Brighton: Future Agricultures Consortium

Rodenburg, J. et al. (2019) ‘Status quo of chemical weed control in rice in sub-Saharan Africa’, Food Security 11.1: 69-92

Shonhe, T. (2018) The Political Economy of Agricultural Commercialisation in Zimbabwe, APRA Working Paper 12, Brighton: Future Agricultures Consortium


Please note: During this time of uncertainty caused by the COVID19 pandemic, as for many at this time, some of our APRA work may well be affected but we aim to continue to post regular blogs and news updates on agricultural policy and research.

Rising farm sizes in the Fumbisi Valley of northern Ghana (1)


Written by Joseph Awetori Yaro & Ibrahim Wahab

In our new two-part series on agricultural commercialism in the Fumbisi Valley of northern Ghana, this blog reflects on the findings of APRA Working Paper 70, looking at the growing farm sizes, why rice is so popular, and details the different categories of farms. Part Two assesses the triple drivers of rice commercialisation in the area.

Blog 2 examines the triple drivers of rice commercialisation in the Fumbisi Valley.


Introduction

From the 1990s, farm size and agricultural commercialisation in the Fumbisi Valley, northern Ghana, has increased. The rise of medium- and large-scale farms is driven by both stepping-up – those who started small and are gradually increasing their farm sizes and stepping-in – those who are now coming into agriculture on a commercial basis. Chapoto et al. (2013) find that while the transition stepping-upcan take 20-30 years, with the right exposure and attitude, smallholders are able to increase their scale of production and commercialise regardless of the initial farm enterprise choice.

This transition is most effective in areas with flat topography (suitable for mechanisation) and low population. For other areas, stepping-out of farming becomes necessary for farmland consolidation which then allows commercialisation. Muyanga et al. (2019) observe two pathways to agricultural commercialisation involving a transition from small to medium-scale farms (stepping up) and the emergence of investor farmers (stepping in), with 6 per cent stepping up. Amanor (2019) argues that contemporary medium-scale farmers are not the creation of market liberalisation policies, but share many similar characteristics with the commercial farmers of the 1970s, including roots in the urban civil servant and trader classes.

Rice farming in northern Ghana

The large-scale, commercial rice production areas are the Fumbisi, Nalerigu, Nasia, Tono, Vea and Yagaba valleys, mainly low-lying communities located in the Upper East and North East Regions of Ghana. In the Builsa South District where we carried out APRA fieldwork, the most important rice valleys are Gbedembilisi and Weisi, which were both redeveloped under the Northern Rural Growth Programme (NRGP) with funds from the IFAD and African Development Bank. Collectively, these valleys are termed the Fumbisi Valleys. Gbedembilisi alone has a number of these valleys labelled as Valley 1 and Valley 2 with Valley 3, currently under state development.

Each valley is subdivided into 6-8 hectare blocks with Valley 1 alone covering an area of about 250 hectares(see picture below). Since the 1970s, commercial rice farming in the Fumbisi Valley was driven mainly by stranger farmers (investor farmers – elite and business classes), the biggest ones being absentee farmers (Konings, 1984). These commercial farmers were however heavily dependent on local peasant communities for the allocation of land suitable for large-scale commercial rice production and the supply of low cost labour. Local farmers are stepping-up and joining the lower-medium-scale farmers, whose collective production output is often higher than large-scale farmers (despite education levels not changing).  Endogenous capital – or local entrepreneurs with savings and management skills – can propel local agricultural commercialisation without conflict between locals and external investors.

“We started farming an acre of groundnuts but now we cultivate more than ten acres, so our farm sizes are increasing over the years”.

Female farmer, Weisi, August 2020.
Blocks of developed rice fields in the Gbedembilisi Valley with rice at the flowing and panicle initiation stages. Credit: Ibrahim Wahab

The different scales of farms

Women used to support their husbands while the husband cultivated 1-2 acres of commercial crop, usually groundnuts, to enable them sell and buy their personal needs. This is now a fully commercial activity for women as they cultivate rice, groundnuts and cowpea to earn substantial sums beyond their clothing and ingredients needs.

Small-scale farmers cultivate less than 10 acres, use own seeds, depend heavily on family labour, use little to no hired labour, consume most of their outputs and sell only surplus or out of necessity to the markets.

The lower medium-scale farmers cultivate between 10 to 50 acres, buy agrochemicals, use hired labour, cultivate more commercial crops as monocrops, more diversified households, rely more on hired tractors and combine harvesters, sell at both farm-gate and in the local markets. The upper medium-scale farmers cultivate between 50-100 acres. They own or hire farm machinery like tractors and crawlers, depend solely on hired labour, preferred crops are maize, rice and cowpea, sell to established value chains, are prioritised by extension agents, and represent the successful stepping-up farmers.

The large-scale farmers cultivate over 100 acres with most of them being ‘stranger’ farmers except for chiefs and successful family members in the area. Many of them own machinery, are politically connected, benefit from state programs and subsidised machinery, deal with large companies in selling their produce and constitute an important source of temporary employment for the poor farmers.

Rice is the preferred crop for these farmers in Fumbisi, with the local MP and a building materials dealer from Navrongo growing their farms to between 500 and 2000 acres. These farmers have always appeared and disappeared since independence following the introduction of state supported programs for rice farming.

Conclusion

Farm sizes will continue to rise even in the context of declining bushlands because of the difficulties faced by farmers who will exit thereby, making land available for others to use. In addition, the land tenure systems that allow the chiefs, and especially the earth priest* to allocate valleys to farmers may be abused in favour of richer farmers. Even if favouritism is not deployed to the disadvantage of the poor, their inability to invest on farms whose ownership is fluid due to the open valley tenure system will lead to others taking over these lands. Only lands whose ownership was established by families in the past are secure, while those of recent occupation due to booming rice demand are fragile.


*In this area of Ghana, an ‘earth priest’ is the religious head and has claims to local land.


Feature photo: Madam Laadi Forkinam, standing in her 13 acres maize farm in Nakpanduri. Credit: International Center for Soil Fertility (IFDC)

References

Amanor, K. (2019) Mechanized agriculture and medium-scale farmers in northern Ghana: a success of market liberalism or a product of a longer history? APRA Working Paper 23, Brighton: Future Agricultures Consortium

Chapoto, A., Mabiso, A., & Bonsu, A. (2013) ‘Agricultural commercialisation, land expansion, and homegrown large-scale farmers: Insights from Ghana’ (Vol. 1286): Intl Food Policy Res Inst.

Muyanga M. et al. (2019) Changing farm structure and agricultural commercialisation in Nigeria, APRA Working Paper 26, Brighton: Future Agricultures Consortium

Konings, P. (1984) ‘Capitalist rice farming and land allocation in Northern Ghana’, The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 16.22: 89-119

Yaro, J.A. (ed.) 2013. Rural Development in northern Ghana, New York: Nova Science publishers


Please note: During this time of uncertainty caused by the COVID19 pandemic, as for many at this time, some of our APRA work may well be affected but we aim to continue to post regular blogs and news updates on agricultural policy and research.

Medium-scale commercial farming in Zimbabwe: how has it fared since land reform?


This blog was written by Ian Scoones and first appeared on Zimbabweland.

We have a new open access paper out in the Journal of Modern African Studies – “Medium-scale commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe: The experience of A2 resettlement farms”Contrary to assertions that A2 medium-scale farms allocated during the land reform are largely occupied by ‘cronies’ and that they are unproductive and under-utilised, a more differentiated picture emerges, with important implications for policy and the wider politics of Zimbabwe’s countryside following land reform.

The paper is based on in-depth empirical studies in Mvurwi (a higher potential area to the north of Harare) and Masvingo-Gutu (in the drier south). The findings are important as they show ways forward for supporting the revival of commercial agriculture in the country.

This has been seriously hampered by lack of finance, sanctions affecting donor investments, uncertainties around the lease arrangements, poorly designed support programmes (notably the now notorious Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) mechanisation scheme and Command Agriculture) and selective capture and corruption by elites, during and after the land reform programme.

Surprising findings

The research was carried out during 2019 and involved a representative sample of 90 farms across the two sites, representing around 20% of all farms in the areas. This was a small, random sample, but the challenges of researching A2 farms are well-known to any field researcher in Zimbabwe. They are scattered over long distances, owners are often not present and because of on-going threats of audits talking to people is often challenging. In the end, we managed to speak to everyone in the sample, generating fascinating reflections from farmers, managers and workers documented in the paper.

The findings were a surprise. In the mid-2000s, we undertook research on a small group of A2 farms across Masvingo province and our conclusions were rather dismal. By-and-large, they were not occupied and if so very little was happening, except for a few individuals where external investments were driving recapitalisation of the farms. When we undertook the recent study, there was much more happening, although anecdotal evidence suggests that this has tailed off as the economy has declined further in the last year or so.

A key period in our reconstruction of the fates and fortunes of each of the farms since the early 2000s was the small window of relative stability around the time of the Government of National Unity (2009-2013) and immediately afterwards. At this time, it was possible to raise funds and invest, and markets were relatively stable and commercial agriculture was thus feasible.

Before and after this period, this has not been the case, and over the whole period the lack of financing for agriculture has been a major constraint for all farmers. Without leases being issued, as promised, farmers cannot raise bank credit with their farm as collateral, although some have used houses in town to do so.

Meanwhile, the external financing schemes have not supported production. Across our sample not that many received equipment through the RBZ mechanisation scheme in the 2000s, but as we discussed back then (p.99), and reinforced by recent BSR revelations, this proved a hopeless investment, and mostly a source of patronage-based corruption, with well-connected elites linked to the party-state and military benefitting and so appropriating public resources.

Much the same applies to the Command Agriculture scheme. Since 2016 this has been a loan/subsidy scheme supported by the party-state. In our sample, 43.7% in Mvurwi and 12.0% in Gutu-Masvingo benefited from the scheme to some extent in 2018-19. Although higher maize yields were achieved on average, it clearly was not a good use of public funds, and much of the investment was wasted, with benefits accruing mostly to the financing ‘cartels’.

Indeed, many recipients complained to us that their allocations were late or grossly insufficient, and that it is only a very few well-connected people who can jump the queue and get inputs – fertiliser, seed, fuel and so on – as part of the programme.

Patterns of accumulation and differentiation

Our data show a growing pattern of differentiation emerging between A2 farmers. The standard narrative that A2 farmers are all ‘cronies’ of the party-state and military and that the land is unutilised and unproductive does not hold up.

Yes, there are those who are beneficiaries of patronage for sure, including via Command Agriculture, but only an elite few gain the full package, and most of those who were recipients in our sample got very little, and complained bitterly.

Equally, there also some who have large areas unutilised, but this is far from the whole story. Indeed, patterns of ‘underutilisation’ are not hugely different to what was observed during the 1980s and 1990s when these farms were settled by white farmers. It all depends on the focus of production (intensive on small areas or extensive) and the type of operation (irrigated or dryland cropping or livestock, for example), as well as the nature of the land (many areas have extensive rocky areas, unsuitable for agriculture, but great for grazing). 

In terms of accumulation patterns, some have access to external finance (from jobs, diaspora investment and so on) and can make a go of it, even under very difficult circumstances. In the two sites, we have some quite successful tobacco farmers in Mvurwi and livestock farmers in Gutu-Masvingo – proper commercial farmers by any standard. Others are more aspiring, and lack the financing, while others are really struggling, farming only a small portion. Some have managed to mobilise joint ventures with former white farmers or with other investors, including Chinese firms involved in tobacco around Mvurwi, while others benefit from close relationships with tobacco contracting companies. Meanwhile, others have effectively abandoned farming or may be holding the land speculatively for future generations. Across these groups, especially the aspiring farmers, some are investing in ‘projects’ on small areas, while others have been joined by other families and are creating ‘villages’ on the farms.

Perhaps not surprisingly the patterns were very similar to what we found in our study of a former ‘purchase area’ (small-scale commercial farming area) near Masvingo – again supposedly commercial farms of a similar scale on average. Here we found very similar categories, but perhaps fewer commercial farmers than in the A2 study, in part because of lack of state support of any sort in these areas. And this was 80 years after their establishment, not just 18 as in the A2 farms we studied.

Ways forward

A more differentiated view therefore suggests ways forward for the A2 areas.

To ensure more effective, commercial use of A2 areas requires investment based on sustained financing and secure leasehold tenure. A2 farmers we talked to wanted to be independent, not reliant on state patronage, but able to get financing on time to produce successfully. Successful production can also be facilitated through land administration policy – including land audits and forms of taxation – that encourages more intensive, commercial use. But farm investment will only flow if the conditions are right, which means getting the leases issued, the contestation over land resolved through land compensation and private and public finance made available in flexible forms, and not through state schemes that are prone to corruption and patronage.

Contrary to assumptions – including our own before undertaking this latest research – A2 medium-scale farms do have future, but those with potential need investment and support, while others need to be encouraged to pass on the land they received during the land reform. The next blog will discuss the political consequences of the emerging pattern of differentiation on the A2 farms, and the implications for policy.


Feature photo credit: Ian Scoones.

Added challenges for the rice sector in Ethiopia caused by COVID-19


Written by Dawit Alemu and Abebaw Assaye


This blog uses new APRA research to explain how COVID-19 has increased the pressure on the Ethiopian rice sector.  The authors provide details the APRA study, the impact on rice production, before examining the decline in household rice production and looking at the way forward for the industry.

Read more on the Impact of COVID-19 on Food Systems and Rural Livelihoods in Ethiopia in the Round One and Round Two APRA country reports.

Read the full APRA synthesis report on the Rapid Assessment of the Impact of COVID-19 on Food Systems and Rural Livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa, here.

Background

Like other African countries, rice has become one of the most important commodities for domestic production and consumption in Ethiopia. The increase in domestic consumption has surpassed the increase in domestic production, thereby forcing the country to import rice. It is estimated that the level of self-sufficiency has declined from about 70 per cent in 2008 to 24 per cent in 2019, creating a burden on the meagre foreign currency reserves (see APRA Working Paper 44 to understand the emerging importance of rice as a strategic crop in Ethiopia).

While different initiatives have been implemented to boost domestic rice production including public investment in rice research and training, public extension services, membership in Coalition for African Rice Development (CARD) initiative, and promoting commercial rice production, the outbreak of COVID-19 has created more challenges for domestic production, marketing and rice imports, creating considerable challenge to keep rice supplies well-stocked for consumers. This will disrupt the performance of the rice value chain influencing the opportunities rice offer as business for the different actors of the value chain and also the food and nutritional security status of rice consumers.

Youth volunteers take to the streets to mobilise against COVID 19 in Ethiopia. Credit: UNICEF Ethiopia

APRA Study

The APRA Ethiopia team assessed how COVID-19 has affected the rice value chains in Ethiopia based on surveys conducted in June-July and October, 2020, with a third round planned for February, 2021.

The impact of COVID-19 on the rice value chain originates from (i) the public restrictive measures implemented by the Government (via the State of Emergency declared from March-August 2020) and local authorities, which were related with the movement of people and goods; control of food prices and other goods; and a reduction of public services, (ii) the type and extent of responses in the commercial behaviours of the different actors of the rice value chain, and (iii) overall global trends in response to the challenges .

The results indicate that nearly all rice farmers reported that they are aware of COVID-19 along with the preventive measures such as social distancing and wearing of facemasks but very few abide by such measures. Many households reported reduced movements within and outside of villages due to the restrictions, which has resulted in certain changes in roles among household members, such as care and farm responsibilities.

Impact on rice production

Though there was limited impact on rice production activities due to farmers not fully abiding to COVID-19 restrictions, there was a considerable decrease in the availability of agricultural inputs with significant increase in input prices. There is shift in the commercial behaviour of actors of the rice value chain due to the mobility restrictions and import challenges linked with the export ban by major exporting countries mainly India and Pakistan and to some extent Vietnam, and increasing prices of paddy and milled rice. These have resulted in concerns about food nutrition and insecurity among many farmers.

Parpoiled rice on display in Wereta, Ethiopia. Credit: Abebaw Assaye

Decline in household rice consumption

There is also decline in rice consumption both in terms of frequency and volume of consumption in urban context. Comparing the changes observed in Addis Ababa in August 2019 with August 2020, about 21 per cent of respondents stopped consumption and almost the same proportion of respondents began consuming rice. The frequency of rice consumption per week has declined on average of 1.11 days per week to 0.88 days per week for each household. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, 79 per cent of households had either stopped or reduced the volume of rice consumed.

Way forward

Given the declining trend in rice self-sufficiency over the last 10 years, the emerging challenges related with COVID-19 both for the domestic production and rice import, boosting domestic production and productivity of rice alongside enhancing the value chain performance are crucial. This demands the implementation of different interventions to boost domestic rice production and productivity along with market regulatory measures.

Specifically, enhancing the adoption of rice-related technologies (improved varieties, pre-harvest, harvest and post-harvest technologies, and application of recommended agronomic practices), expansion of rice production through improved access to irrigations, modernisation of rice processing industry, and improving an enabling policy environment for increased investment in rice sector.


Feature photo: Rice producers and processors display their rice products in Wereta, Ethiopia.


Please note: During this time of uncertainty caused by the COVID19 pandemic, as for many at this time, some of our APRA work may well be affected but we aim to continue to post regular blogs and news updates on agricultural policy and research.

Impact of COVID-19 on food systems and rural livelihoods in south-western Ghana


Written by Louis Hodey & Fred Dzanku

This blog highlights the findings of a recent study that seeks to estimate the impact of COVID-19 on food systems and livelihoods in south-western Ghana and provides insights based on household-level and key informant data gathered in the first and second rounds of three expected surveys.

This blog is linked to APRA Round One and Round Two country reports on the Impact of COVID-19 on Food Systems and Rural Livelihoods in Ghana.

Read the full APRA synthesis report on the Rapid Assessment of the Impact of COVID-19 on Food Systems and Rural Livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa, here.


Background

Beyond its severe impact on public health, the COVID-19 crisis appears to be affecting broader spheres of life. Evidence is gradually emerging on the impact of the crisis on food systems and rural livelihoods worldwide. The first (R1) and the second round (R2) APRA surveys involved 110 households and 107 households respectively in the Mpohor and Ahanta West districts of Ghana’s Western region. Additionally, five key informant interviews were conducted in each round. The study communities are Akatanchie, Ahountemo, Hotopo, Manso and Adum-Dominase. The R1 survey was conducted in June/July 2020, and the R2 survey was in October/November 2020. The final round (R3) of the survey is scheduled for mid-February 2021.

Key findings

Our findings show that one of the immediate responses of farmers to the announcement of COVID-19 restrictions in the country was a decline in their participation in farm and off-farm economic activities. This however improved between R1 and R2 surveys, following the easing of most COVID-19 restrictions by the government.

Next, though farmers’ access to output markets improved marginally since R1, access to farm inputs such as seeds, fertilisers, as well as extension and advisory services remain highly constrained by increasing input prices, COVID-19 movement restrictions, and severe financial difficulties caused by the COVID-19 crisis. In one of our key informant interviews, a community leader in Ahountemo indicated that:

“The markets are relatively better since the last interview. Unlike the lockdown period, activities are back to normal. People can work now and have some money to help them meet their basic needs.”

Community leader in Ahountemo

This decline in access to farm inputs is likely to affect crop yields and subsequently, farm incomes, with potentially dire implications for households’ food security and well-being.

Further, we find that though the closure of many informal markets in key urban and peri-urban areas to avoid crowding has initially disrupted food supply systems in R1, the output market situation has improved considerably in R2, thanks to the easing of such restrictions over the period.

Fruits displayed for sales at the Night Market, University of Ghana, Legon. Credit: Louis Hodey

Households generally reported spikes in the cost of living, suggesting declining living conditions in the area, although the severity has eased marginally between R1 and R2 surveys. Decrying the price hikes, a community leader in Manso has this to say:

“The only food that is now in short supply is cassava. But the prices have really increased. We buy them at twice the prices we used to buy.”

Community leader in Manso

Indeed, Figure 1 shows that more than a half of respondents observed increased cost of living following the COVID-19 crisis, though this observation slightly declined between R1 and R2 surveys.

Figure 1: Changes to cost of living

Subsequently, our findings point to a precarious food insecurity situation among households in the study area. This appears to be fuelled by increasing costs of living amidst financial hardships imposed by the COVID-19 crisis. Indeed, though the availability of food supplies has generally improved between R1 and R2 surveys, price hikes persist for certain important food items.

Quite markedly, we find that the COVID-19 alleviation support received by households from government and other local sources have considerably declined between the two rounds of survey.

Figure 2: Sources of COVID-19 assistance received.

Speaking in relation to the declining support, a male community leader in Manso, one of the study communities made the following passionate appeal during a key informant interview:

“We are still appealing to the government to come to our aid and help us with some form of financial assistance to lessen our hardship.”

Male community leader in Manso
Vendor displayed her wares at Night Market, University of Ghana, Legon. Credit: Louis Hodey

Conclusions and the way forward

In summary, our key findings so far point to increasing costs of living resulting from rising food prices and declining income levels. This has further heightened the food insecurity situation of farmers in the study area. Amidst these difficulties, COVID-19 alleviation support for farmers in our study area is reported to be waning. How would these vulnerable farmers cope with these conditions going forward? According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO, 2020), safeguarding the lives and livelihoods of the most vulnerable people is important to mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on vulnerable households in the short term. Therefore, efforts geared at building the resilience of food systems and improving livelihoods by targeting the worst affected groups such as smallholder farmers is critical to safeguarding the sustenance of the most vulnerable in Ghana.Indeed, improving farmers’ access to key agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertiliser, and other farm inputs would be critical to this end. Most importantly, the role of government and non-governmental organisations would be crucial in providing the required production and livelihood supports to smallholders.


Feature photo: One of APRA Ghana enumerators in an interview session prior to the COVID-19 crisis in Ghana. Credit: Louis Hodey


Please note: During this time of uncertainty caused by the COVID19 pandemic, as for many at this time, some of our APRA work may well be affected but we aim to continue to post regular blogs and news updates on agricultural policy and research.

COVID-19 preventative measures disrupt small-scale farmer production, marketing and livelihoods in Zambia


Written by Chrispin Matenga and Munguzwe Hichaambwa

This blog highlights how COVID-19 preventative measures have affected small-scale farmers surrounding the Mkushi farm block in Zambia, focusing particularly how such measures have disrupted production, marketing and livelihoods. The authors then look at how the government and cooperating partners can help to make life easier.

Read more on the Impact of COVID-19 on Food Systems and Rural Livelihoods in Zambia in the Round One APRA country report.

Read the full APRA synthesis report on the Rapid Assessment of the Impact of COVID-19 on Food Systems and Rural Livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa, here.


Background

Zambia announced its first ‘imported’ COVID-19 case on 18 March 2020. As with other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the Zambian promptly responded by imposing lockdown measures on 20 March 2020, but this was largely limited to issuing regulations and public health guidelines, and enforcement of partial restrictions.

On 13 March 2020, the Zambian government enacted Statutory Instrument Number 22 of 2020 to aid the enforcement of control measures. The first measures imposed by government involved the closure learning institutions, places of worship, gyms, bars, night clubs and restaurants were to serve food on a takeaway basis. Public health guidelines, such as wearing of masks in public and on public transportation, keeping social distance of 1 metre, avoiding handshakes, avoiding overcrowding during important social events such as funerals, kitchen parties (traditional gathering of women before weddings) and weddings. Social events were restricted to no more than 50 attendees.

Some restrictions were lifted on 8 May 2020 that included the opening of schools for students in final examination years, opening of restaurants and gyms but with strict adherence to public health measures.

APRA Study

To assess the impact of COVID-19 on local food systems and livelihoods, the APRA Study used mixed methods involving a quantitative survey involving 115 small-scale farming households and qualitative interviews with key informants from five communities surrounding the Mkushi farm block* in the Central Province of Zambia between 30 September and 6 November 2020.

Cross-border trade

As a landlocked country with eight borders, Zambia is particularly vulnerable to the pandemic. Thus, a mandatory 14-day quarantine period and testing for truck drivers entering the country was introduced as cases escalated. This, along with measures introduced by Zambia’s neighbour and main supplier of imports, South Africa, disrupted cross-border movement and transportation which had a knock-on effect on the supply chain for important commodities including agricultural inputs and markets crucial to business, as well as, smallholder producers.

The measures undertaken by the government had certain impacts on different sectors (e.g. agriculture, tourism, mining, service sector etc.), as well as spatial effects – or differential effects on the urban and peri-urban on one hand, and rural areas on the other.

Apart from grains, the small-scale farmers currently produce the largest proportion of the country’s vegetables, such as tomatoes, that are sold in regional markets and in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

Labourers threshing maize grain at a farm in Mkushi farm block. Photo credit Cyriaque Hakizimana

Impact of lockdown restrictions

The effects of social restrictions and partial lockdown measures include:

  1. Decrease in participation in farming activities by communities;
  2. Decrease in availability of labour and access to all markets, but an increase in the cost of farm labour and transportation of farm produce;
  3. Less availability of key foods such as milk and milk products, fish, eggs, meat, grains and nuts, but an increase in food prices compromising household food and nutrition security.
  4. Reduced movements within and outside the communities, and fewer traders visiting villages to purchase produce.

The escalation of COVID-19 cases during the period June/July coincided with the period of harvesting the annual grains like maize and other crops by small-scale farmers. The farmers reported staying at home for extended periods, while at the same time they were scared of hiring outside labour, fearing contamination. For many farmers, their produce were destroyed in the field and after harvesting, particularly the perishable vegetables and other horticultural products, and some farmers would wait for longer periods to transport their produce to markets.

Interviews indicated that key agricultural services, including agricultural extension services to farmers, contractual arrangements between traders and farmers for main cash crops ( maize and tomatoes and to a lesser extent beans, cassava sorghum and finger millet), and availability of farm inputs had decreased due to Covid-19. Farmers were, thus, unable to benefit from these services, negatively affecting their productivity.

Disrupted cross-border movement and transportation led to uncertainty in future supplies of inputs like fertilisers, agro-chemicals and stock-feed, resulting in price hikes. Worse, movement restrictions meant that farmers could no longer access their usual more lucrative markets in the border areas of Kasumbalesa with Congo DR and Nakonde with Tanzania, thus, denying them the high incomes they earned from these markets before the pandemic.

Farmers were challenged by low prices offered by local markets for their produce, and escalating prices for farming inputs. Therefore, the livelihoods of small-scale farmers were negatively impacted as they reported inability to purchase adequate food from the shops, therefore compromising their food and nutrition security.

Way forward

In spite of the challenges faced small-scale farmers, donors and government have focused efforts have focused their efforts on helping urban dwellers through various economic stimulus packages and emergency cash assistance programmes, leaving out small-scale farmers (who have no access to the programmes) that produce over 90 per cent of food production in the country.

Based on the above research findings, we recommend that government and cooperating partners should consider creating a COVID-19 agricultural stimulus package that centres on the challenges faced by small-scale farmers, rather than the traditional and more generic Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP). FISP targets vulnerable but viable small-scale farmers, thus leaving out the poorest small-scale farmers, and has largely focused on giving input in form of fertiliser and maize seed. The programme does not include other crops in horticulture/vegetables, meaning many more farmers are ineligible.


* A farm block is a large agricultural area where backbone infrastructure such as feeder roads, electricity, water for irrigation and domestic uses, and communication facilities are provided by Government to stimulate sustainable partnerships with private sector investors.


Feature photo: Labourers threshing maize grain at a farm in Mkushi farm block. Photo credit: Cyriaque Hakizimana.


Please note: During this time of uncertainty caused by the COVID19 pandemic, as for many at this time, some of our APRA work may well be affected but we aim to continue to post regular blogs and news updates on agricultural policy and research.