Adviezen voor Afrikaanse landbouw Breman en Van der Weijden overgenomen door FAO-OECD

Sustainable intensification of agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has become the world’s most food insecure region and is increasingly dependent on imported food to feed its growing population. The risk this brings has become obvious since the start of the Russian aggression against Ukraine when fertilizer and food prices spiked. The 2023 Africa Food Summit in Senegal agreed that the continent should and can feed itself. SSA is food insecure because of limited agricultural development combined with a generally low natural production potential for crops. The average crop yield is only 1,250 kg/ha of cereal equivalencies compared to the global average of 4,100 kg/ha. However, the potential yields in the region are 2 to 6 times higher, depending on the region and crops concerned.

Sustainable intensification: the way forward?
Agricultural policies are required that create an enabling environment for farmers to invest in their existing land instead of clearing forest and rangeland. The potential yield increases from sustainable intensification can have multiple benefits, including increased food security and sovereignty, economic development, reversal of soil depletion, and reduced pressure on land, nature, and the climate. Supporting African countries in an agricultural intensification that triggers socio-economic development can also be a cost-effective way of reducing illegal immigration into Europe by addressing two root causes: poverty and conflict.

To intensify agriculture in a sustainable way, several key conditions must be met:

• Raise the volume and quality of both food and feed production. African crop production being much more severely limited by poor soils than by low rainfall, increasing fertilizer use is a much more effective and cheaper first step in agricultural intensification than irrigation (footnote 3). Fertilizers must be used as part of integrated soil fertility management, combined with soil amendments (e.g., organic matter, lime) for improving and maintaining soil health, improved seeds, and crop protection products. In the region, an average 20 kg/ha of fertilizer is currently being used, way below the global use of 140 kg/ha. In countries below the 20 kg/ha, the annual production per capita is 250 kg of cereal equivalencies, just enough to cover the energy requirement; in countries above the 20 kg/ha 400 kg/capita is produced. The reasons for the underapplication of fertilizer are not simply high prices and limited farmers experience, but also lack of improved seeds and of crop protection products as well as low farmgate crop prices. Besides quality extension services, well-functioning transparent input and output markets are required. In one-fifth of the countries such developments are well underway and can serve as examples.


• Promote livestock production. Large areas of the region – mainly desert borders and highlands where rainfall and temperatures limit crop yields - are ideal for ruminant production. In the Sahel, the traditional nomadic system even used to produce up to 8 times more protein per square km than ranching under similar conditions in the USA and Australia. However, nomadic ruminant husbandry is losing more and more of its grazing land to arable farmers as the cropping area expands, driven by population growth. In addition, arable farmers increasingly keep livestock as capital and for manure production and animal traction, instead of maximizing the production of animal proteins. Improving food production as described above, goes hand in hand with increasing availability and quality of feed. As the required external inputs usually have better cost/benefit ratios in arable farming than in animal husbandry, one opportunity for increasing livestock productivity can be found in mixed farming systems. In typical livestock regions an opportunity is ranching, improving the animal diet with feed concentrates produced in neighboring arable regions. In this way, the current competition for land – a root cause of clashes between livestock and arable farmers - can be turned into collaboration.


• Invest in infrastructure for growth. The road and rail network as well as storage infrastructure have long remained underdeveloped in SSA due to low population densities and lack of public and private sector investment. This has limited agricultural as well wider socio-economic development. A key policy option is therefore to improve transport and infrastructure, invest in storage facilities such as refrigeration to reduce the often-high food losses, and develop input and output markets including value chains. For farmers, this provides strong incentive to raise their production. After all, the best incentive for higher productivity is the market.


• Level the playing field. The competitiveness of agriculture in SSA being low, countries should be allowed to impose temporary boarder measures (tariffs or quotas) on staples while being supported in their intensification process. Such policies are necessary until the largely infant agri-food industry in the region becomes mature and can compete on the world market. This also levels the playing field in world agriculture, given the subsidies farmers are still receiving in North America, Europe, and many Asian countries.