AGRA President Delivers Keynote address at 2nd World Agroforestry Congress

Achieving African Food Security in an Era of Climate Change

Keynote Address delivered by
Dr Namanga Ngongi
President, AGRA, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa

2nd World Congress on Agro-forestry
25 August 2009, Nairobi Kenya

Honourable Ministers, Dr. Akim Steiner, Director General of The UN Office of Nairobi and Executive Director of UNEP, Dr. Dennis Garrity, Director General of ICRAF, Excellencies, Heads of Agencies, Farmer leaders, Partners from civil society, Ladies and gentlemen:

I would like to thank the World Agro-forestry Centre for convening this conference on agro-forestry and global land use, and for its commitment to achieving food security and addressing climate change in Africa. I would also like to thank the conference cosponsors, the United Nations Environment Programme which is guiding a global transition to a sustainable future, and the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences of the University of Florida.

This is indeed an impressive gathering, and it is a great honor to address this congress on behalf of AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. The Chairman of our Board, Mr. Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, extends his warm regards. He has long championed issues of poverty reduction, food security, and climate change which are central to the development of Africa.

Today, as we speak one-in-three Africans is hungry, 75 percent of Africa’s farmlands are degraded, and deforestation is taking place at four times the global average, destroying 1 percent of our forests every year.

Africa’s Agricultural Transformation and Climate Change

Agriculture is Africa’s lifeline. Three-quarters of our people farm and roughly 30-50 percent of our GDP comes from agriculture. Smallholder farmers, the majority women, produce most of Africa’s food, and do so with minimal resources and little support. Without even the basic necessities of good seed and healthy soil, African agriculture has fallen far behind that of every other continent and our yields have remained at one-quarter the global average.

To transform subsistence farming into a viable commercial activity smallholder farmers need good seeds, appropriate fertilizers, improved land and water management; access to markets, extension, information, financing, storage, transport; and policies that provide them with comprehensive support.

The task may look daunting but it can be done. Indeed this reminds me of articles in newspapers I read in the 1960s that described India as a basket case. There was no reason to assist India, they said, because it was like pouring water in a basket. The writers did not count on scientists like Dr. Swaminathan, who together with thousands of Indian scientists, administrators, politicians and the private sector succeeded in triggering and sustaining a green revolution in India and all of Asia. It is a pleasure to see him here at this conference. The task in Africa is doable. The inspiration from India is very helpful but Africa needs a uniquely African Green Revolution, one that is based on smallholder farmers; that respects the multiple agro-ecologies of Africa and its many staple food crops; that works for comprehensive change across the agricultural value chain, and that does so while protecting the environment in the context of climate change.

An African Green Revolution must help smallholders prepare for unprecedented challenges climate change will bring. Production shocks from floods and drought will increase risks faced by farmers. Climate change in Africa will unleash unforeseen social and environmental costs.

Centuries of increasing fossil fuel consumption in developed countries gave rise to climate change. Although Africa has 14 percent of the world’s people, the continent accounts for mere 2.3 percent of fossil fuel consumption. While Africa did not cause climate change, we now bear its brunt. The continent is thus paying for the sins of others! Scientists predict that by 2020, yields of some of our staple food crops could fall by half.

Smallholder farmers, who depend almost entirely on rain-fed farming, will be most vulnerable of all. They must be able to adapt to the impacts of climate change, from higher temperatures to changes in crop disease and pest outbreaks, and increased stress on agro-ecosystems that are already degraded. Adaptation will require technological and policy innovations, coupled with new farming systems.

ICRAF studies have shown that agro-forestry alone could remove 50 billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere over the next 50 years, meeting about a third of the world’s total carbon reduction challenge, while at the same time generating additional food, income, building materials, fodder, fuel, and soil nitrogen.

Consider that three-quarters of Africa’s farmlands are already degraded. This degradation, along with a lack of good quality seeds, poses the major constraint to raising farm yields. Improved soil fertility, combined with good seeds, will dramatically increase farm productivity, food security and also decrease pressure on forests and reduce deforestation.

Although they may not know it, smallholder farmers across Africa have already begun the work of mitigation through a variety of means, including through rebuilding the soil, increased tree planting and reduced tillage. Indeed, the very diversity of smallholder farms is a hedge against climate change. Much more can and must be done, intentionally and strategically. But for African agriculture to reach its huge mitigation potential, these efforts have to count in the global arena.

Africa Must Count in the Global Carbon Market

As of today, such African efforts are neither accounted for nor encouraged by global mechanisms set up to control greenhouse gas emissions, such as the Clean Development Mechanism, or CDM. The CDM has set up a global carbon exchange for industry which, in effect, excludes Africa, agriculture and especially Africa’s smallholder farmers. As of June 2009, Africa hosted just 1.8 percent of the CDM’s 1650 projects in 55 countries around the world.

For the CDM to work for Africa, it must encourage farm practices that reduce carbon emissions and enhance carbon sequestration, including practices such as minimum tillage, improved crop rotations, agro-forestry and the restoration of degraded lands. In addition, global mechanisms must account for the prevention of deforestation, achieved through improving the productivity of existing farmland, community forest management, and sustainable use of natural forest products.

In order to count in global carbon markets, carbon stored in farmers fields must be measured, quantified and converted into tradable units. As the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has pointed out, the basic technologies exist. What we need are practical and affordable techniques to accurately determine the extent to which soil carbon sequestration reduces CO2 in the atmosphere given different combinations of crops, agro-ecologies and management practices.

The rules for engagement in the US$65 billion global carbon market must change. And for that to happen, Africa’s smallholder farmers must be represented in December when the parties to the Kyoto Protocol meet to reshape global climate policies.

Agriculture is Africa’s connection to global climate change, and climate change will increasingly define its constraints and opportunities. To achieve the objective of a food secure and prosperous continent, we must therefore redouble our efforts to achieve an African Green Revolution and food security, while weaving adaptation and mitigation measures into its very fabric. This includes greater emphasis and support to agro-forestry.

AGRA’S APPROACH TO ACHIEVING AN AFRICAN GREEN REVOLUTION

To achieve a food secure and prosperous Africa, AGRA’s approach is comprehensive, focused and constantly innovative.

AGRA’s approach is comprehensive in that our integrated programs in seeds, soils, market access, policy and partnerships and innovative finance work to trigger changes across the agricultural value chain. Many of our programs also strengthen agricultural education and strive to involve and train youth. While many projects and partnerships implicitly address climate change adaptation, extension, and water use, upcoming work will be more targeted in doing so.

Since AGRA’s launch in 2006, its programs and partnerships have begun to catalyze the kind of change that is needed.

AGRA’s Soil Health Program is working to revitalize 6.3 million hectares of degraded farmland over 10 years. Improved soil fertility, through inorganic and organic fertilizers and fertilizer trees is pivotal to raising yield and enhancing the sustainability of Africa’s smallholder farming system. Without such measures, farmlands are subject to massive depletion and erosion and farmers are driven to cut down forests in search of more fertile land. Such unsustainable farming practices make agriculture Africa’s biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. We can and must turn this around.

Working with Columbia University’s Earth Institute and CIAT, AGRA co-launched a continent-wide African Soil Information System, to improve how Africa’s soils are evaluated, mapped, monitored and managed. It will provide African farmers with knowledge of how best to restore soil health—and thereby sequester carbon—through environmentally sustainable land management practices.

Meanwhile, large-scale farmland restoration is already underway. One example can be found in the Sahel (Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger) where scientists and farmers are scaling up the use of fertilizer micro dosing, a technique that uses small amount of fertilizer to nourish dry-land crops like millet. Through AGRA’s partnership with ICRISAT, micro dosing will reach some 300,000 small-scale farmers, boosting their yields and replenishing their soils.

As mentioned earlier, AGRA recognizes the potential of agro-forestry to provide rural communities, especially smallholder farmers with various services. These include increased soil fertility, fuel wood, fodder, medicinal products and fruits. They also have important biodiversity and ecological functions at both farm and landscape levels.

We must, therefore, use every opportunity to increase tree planting and conservation on farms. AGRA is committed to doing this through its Soil Health Program, in which agro-forestry technologies are part of the integrated soil fertility management practices that form the thrust of the program’s strategy. AGRA will thus be scaling up the good work that ICRAF and others have pioneered.

Projects that are being funded include fertilizer trees that contribute to soil fertility improvement through the process of biological nitrogen fixation.. This includes trees that provide soil erosion control as hedges on sloping lands but at the same can be managed to provide stakes for crops such as climbing beans. . Several projects are in the pipeline to promote trees like this that also provide fodder for farmers’ livestock.

In the southern Africa region, several projects will integrate the use of indigenous fertilizing trees such as Faidherbia (Acacia) albida as intercrops into maize-based production system. We are planning to do the same in the Sahel region where the tree is also used by farmers in Mali, Niger, Senegal and Burkina Faso.

The integration of trees into farming systems offers additional benefits of conservation agriculture and carbon sequestration. However, for conservation agriculture to be attractive to farmers, it must be productive. This means use of fertilizers and improved seeds are essential as complements to organic inputs including fertilizer trees.

In addition, every effort must be made to link farmers better to markets. Without these two essential interventions, conservation agriculture is unlikely to take hold. To be attractive to farmers, minimum tillage must offer corresponding agronomic and economic benefits.

AGRA is keen on promoting conservation agriculture along the strategies I have just described. It has the potential to buffer the production systems and make them less vulnerable to droughts, which are increasingly a reality of our agriculture in Africa.

Promoting conservation agriculture that is productive, diverse in the range of crops and trees it includes, and in addition linking farmers better to markets is one way to help African smallholder farmers simultaneously adapt to and help mitigate climate change.

Africa’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program, known as CAADP, has set a goal of reaching 2.0 million smallholder farmers with conservation agriculture that includes agro-forestry by 2012. AGRA will contribute to reaching this goal through its programs, and in particular the Soil Health Program that aims at reaching 4.1 million farms with integrated soil fertility management by that time.

It is time to bring proven agro-forestry technologies to scale as part of an integrated approach to improving the productivity and sustainability of smallholder farming. We are committed to supporting some of the adaptive research needed in the different countries and ecologies where AGRA is supporting large scale projects. We look forward to working closely with ICRAF and other partners in this effort.

This Soil Health work directly complements AGRA’s efforts to transform Africa’s Seeds Systems. AGRA’s PASS program takes a value-chain approach to improving farmers’ access to the good seeds they desperately need. PASS has funded approximately 40 high-impact crop breeding programs around the continent, provided start-up capital for the establishment or expansion of 30 African seed enterprises, and enrolled over 100 M.Sc. and Ph.D.-level students in crop breeding training—and 30 percent of M.Sc. students and 20 percent of Ph.D. students are women. We aim to recruit more female students, until they comprise at least half of those enrolled.

AGRA’s seeds work has contributed to the release of 68 locally adapted, high-yielding varieties of staple crops like cassava, bean, sorghum, and maize. Many of these are drought resistant; others have improved resistance to a host of diseases that are likely to be made worse by climate change. Breeding of such resilient varieties is a crucial tool for adaptation to climate change. Most of the newly released varieties have used CGIAR germplasm. In addition AGRA will partner with appropriate institutions in complementing efforts towards building adequate capacity in biodiversity conservation for use in the region to preserve the invaluable genetic resources for food and agriculture and agro-forestry, which need urgent attention and is crucial in adapting to the imminent threats of climate change.

Once good seed is available, it must get into farmer’s hands. And to help speed this process, AGRA supports important policy initiatives and builds national networks of rural agro-dealers, which now span 11 countries. Village-level agro-dealers are uniquely situated to reach millions of farmers with seed, fertilizers, and other farm inputs, and knowledge of their safe use.

Many of these agro-dealers, as well as smallholder farmers, are benefiting from AGRA’s work in innovative financing. AGRA has thus far partnered with several donors and used “loan guarantee funds” totaling $17 million to leverage $160 million in more affordable loans from local commercial banks. These loans go to smallholder farmers, agro-dealers and other agricultural enterprises. We aim to leverage at least $4 billion in financing for smallholder farmers and investments along the agricultural value chain over the next 5 to 7 years.

AGRA works with African governments to encourage comprehensive policy support for smallholder farmers. We cannot afford to have transformative technologies sitting unused on shelves. Policy and institutional innovations must ensure that new agricultural technologies reach millions of farmers.

To be comprehensive, policies must support women farmers, who are the backbone of most African economies, especially the agriculture sector. Policies must ensure women’s land security, and enhance their access to financing, extension services and education. In addition, comprehensive policy support means strengthening farmers’ associations and civil society organizations to benefit smallholder farmers; helping farmers adapt to and mitigate climate change; and promoting trade to expand local and regional markets.

Market Access is crucial. Once farmers increase their yield and produce surplus, they should be able to market their produce. AGRA is improving farmers’ access to market information and training them in market function. For example, through our support to Technoserve, 12,000 banana growers in Uganda—more than one-third of them women—have increased their farm gate prices by 30 percent, simply through using the power of market knowledge.

Projects are underway to increase grain storage and warehouse receipt systems for farmers and to open up opportunities to add value through agro-processing.

Technological innovation is critical to improving market access. Many of Africa’s staple crops, such as cassava and bananas, are bulky, perishable and cannot be traded without significant processing. Uganda, for example, is the 2nd largest producer of bananas in the world, but 75th in terms of exports. The country loses over $150 million annually from banana spoilage.
Other projects are strengthening farmers’ organizations so that smallholders can negotiate prices and contracts from a position of strength. And, by aggregating into larger units, smallholder farmers will also gain the scale they need to participate in regional and global carbon markets.

These, then are some of the main components of an integrated, comprehensive approach to transforming smallholder agriculture: improved soils, good seeds, access to markets and enabling policies. All are important, and must work together seamlessly to drive results. But, lest we get overwhelmed by the scale of the work ahead, AGRA also advocates a focused approach.

FILLING AFRICA’S BREADBASKETS

AGRA’s work is focused in that we aim to assemble a critical mass of resources in places that have the best chances of successes – the breadbasket regions of Africa. These areas have relatively good rains, soils and infrastructure, and many smallholder farmers. With smart planning, they can change from being areas of chronic food insecurity to breadbaskets full of Africa’s staple crops.

One example is Tanzania. The Minister of Agriculture Steven Wasira recently reported that smallholder farmers in the Southern Highlands, one of the country’s breadbaskets, produced a record maize harvest in 2008/2009. This was critical to ensuring food security in a year of serious drought in a large part of the country.

The Minister attributed this success in part to Tanzania’s partnership with AGRA, whose integrated programs are increasing the availability of fertilizers and good seeds, unlocking affordable credit for farming, and opening new markets for smallholder farmers. Meanwhile, the World Bank has joined ranks with the Tanzanian government on a $160 million initiative to expand the provision of affordable farm inputs to farmers. That is a welcome investment.

Another key to breadbasket development is determining what sets of investments will best unlock their potential. We need well-designed investments all across the value chain. Take northern Ghana: the country’s 400,000 hectares of lowland rice yield only 0.5 tons/ha. This can be changed – and speedily too. Introducing new crop varieties and improved soil and water management practices could raise these yields to at least 3 tons/ha. This will transform Ghana into a net exporter of rice, and free up $500 million now spent annually on rice imports.

AGRA’s approach also rewards innovative and spreads success wherever possible. Beyond breadbaskets, we work to boost farm incomes across even wider and more challenging environments.

One example is not far from here, in western Kenya’s Kakamega District. Its high soil acidity limits crop yields by more than 30 percent, and drives deforestation of the nearby Kakamega Forest. Now, a new partnership has been put together to enable farmers access lime, fertilizers, and knowledge on how to use conservation agriculture techniques to sustainably increase their yields. The approach is being scaled up to reach 50,000 farmers in the region. To do so, AGRA and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute in Kakamega are bringing together researchers, farmers, bank loan officers, agro-dealers, fertilizer companies, government agencies and civil society organizations in a true value-chain approach.

In this, and all our work, partnerships are crucial. AGRA partners with African governments, farmers’ groups, the private sector, the CGIAR and the broader scientific community, civil society and international organizations. We support the framework established by CAADP, through which African governments have committed to allocate 10 percent of their national budgets to agriculture, aiming for six percent annual growth in the sector.

Only with strong and resilient partnerships will Africa achieve its Green Revolution and will Africa’s smallholder farmers be able to adapt to climate change.

The challenge now is how to go to scale and going to scale needs partners working together. Implementing the type of comprehensive changes necessary will require massive investments in infrastructure in Africa. Our continent today has lower density of critical agricultural support infrastructures than Asia had in the 1950s. And the negative consequences are staggering. It costs $3,000 to transport a container from Mombasa to Kigali next door; twice the cost of shipping it from Mombasa to Singapore or Malaysia.

Poor infrastructure severely limits farmers’ marketing opportunities and leads to high farm gate prices for fertilizers and other valuable farming inputs. Partnerships are essential to infrastructure development. And, whenever possible, such projects should promote industries and production practices that use low carbon technologies, including alternative energy sources which Africa has in abundance such as solar and geothermal sources.

Considerable investments are needed, and needed now, to transform African agriculture into a highly productive, efficient, competitive and sustainable system. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) estimates that Africa will need $32-39 billion annually to achieve an agricultural transformation – not including the full costs of infrastructure or climate change adaptation.

But, while this may sound large, it is achievable. If African governments meet their agreed allocation of 10% of national budgets to agriculture under CAADP, at least $20 billion will become available from domestic budgets. Already many of them have begun to do so. At the same time, increased investments by the global community, including bilateral and multilateral partners, foundations, and others, should make up much of the remaining shortfall.

In a positive sign of change, last month, the G8, the world’s wealthiest countries, committed to mobilizing at least US$20 billion over the next three years for sustainable agriculture development. The US administration, which spearheaded the proposal, committed to US3.5 billion -- a major change in US development assistance policy. After decades of neglect, it is heartening to see a global re-prioritization of agriculture, by both international partners and African governments.

More than any other sector, agriculture serves as an engine of economic growth in Africa. If we build this engine efficiently and quickly we will give Africa the greatest advantage it can possibly have – a food secure people, and increased personal and national incomes to invest in smart sustainable development, including in climate change mitigation and adaptation measures.

Smallholder farmers may be small, but they can be efficient and sustainable. An African Green Revolution that rapidly and sustainably increases the productivity and profitability of their farms will lay the basis for African food security and prosperity, and it will contribute to a more food secure and environmentally sustainable world.

Thank you.

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About the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)
AGRA is a dynamic partnership working across the African continent to help millions of small-scale farmers and their families lift themselves out of poverty and hunger. AGRA programmes develop practical solutions to significantly boost farm productivity and incomes for the poor while safeguarding the environment. AGRA advocates for policies that support its work across all key aspects of the African agricultural value chain ­from seeds, soil health and water to markets and agricultural education.

AGRA's Board of Directors is chaired by Kofi A Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations. Dr Namanga Ngongi, former Deputy Executive Director of the World Food Programme, is AGRA's president. With support from The Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK's Department for International Development and other donors, AGRA works across sub-Saharan Africa and maintains offices in Nairobi, Kenya, and Accra, Ghana.