I commend Ian Scoones for his excellent brief historic account of African soil fertility-related research over the last 10-20 years.

I share a kind of ‘cross-roads’ feeling on Africa, now that food price rises have caused turmoil and protectionist reflexes by rice-exporting countries. The Indian Trade Minister, at the failed WTO talks last week in Geneva put it right: ‘every country should be allowed to strive at food self-sufficiency’.

There are limits to market liberalization for agriculture.  Next, protagonists of free markets have first sealed off their markets in order to develop their agricultural markets. EU and US still do this to a large extent.  If Africa does not step up its own production, it will face a worsening terms of trade on agriculture year after year.  The sale of natural resources to China will not change this. Development has taken off everywhere in the world with a strong agriculture sector.

Africa should be allowed to develop agriculture following a model such as the Common Agricultural Policy.  As a certain size is needed in terms of area and inhabitants, the economic regions such as ECOWAS and COMESA may be suitable units.  EU, AfDB and BMGatesFound can be instrumental in helping the areas to develop their agriculture. Actually, it would fit nicely in the European Development Fund. A demand-supply analysis is needed, and the selection of regions where intensification stands the best chance of success.  Fertilizer needs and distribution networks should ideally also be organized for the economic regions as a whole to benefit from economies of scale. Microdosing efforts should be promoted at a large scale to access resource-poor farmers, and subsidies on fertilizers should be allowed (using the Malawi case as an example). The abolishment of fertilizer subsidies and the virtual ban on parastatals in the 1980s/1990s was a big mistake, somehow admitted by the World Bank in their latest World Development Report. CIMMYT for example was doing a good job with NARS in developing maize hybrids, only to find their effors frustrated by structural adjustment policies.

There is momentum now to really act: but the question Ian rightly poses is: how to act?  In my view, the following investment pays off best, taking a region such as ECOWAS as an example:

• SECTOR ANALYSIS: analyse food demand and supply for the region, map current and future population distribution; and link that to current and future agriculture areas; analyse necessary price levels to make increased production profitable
• PRODUCERS: invest strongly in organizing producer organizations/cooperatives: get farmers trained, organized, connected (mobile phones, market information); what motivates them to increase production? are remittances important, making them less anxious to produce more?
• PRODUCTS: focus on crops with a high response to fertilizers and manure; high-value crops and crops that see demand grow rapidly (e.g. soybean, oilpalm); particular attention for livestock (small ruminants)
• POPULATION: partition the region into areas of higher and lower potential, proximity to consumers, and infrastructure density and development needs
• FERTILIZERS: produce N fertilizer in the region, exploit natural P reserves, and do tests on micronutrient needs and deficiencies; recycle town wastes for compost in the peri-urban area
• POVERTY: for some harsh areas, safety nets may be needed

Less specific for soil fertility, but important as well:

• The region should be able to protect its market, at least for a number of strategic commodities
• The region should work on lowering, streamlining, and even abolishing tariffs between member states
• The countries should work harder on tax collection.

Eric Smaling,
Wageningen Agricultural University
Eric.Smaling@wur.nl