1.  The Soil Fertility Initiative.  I think it failed for several reasons.  First, it was top down led largely from the World Bank.  2.  It was even marginalized within the bank with really only one champion trying to move it forward, 3.  As far as I know there was never any new money for this – it became an approved use of World Bank country funds, but countries would have had to cut other programs, which as we know, is difficult to do in any country.  The new momentum is much broader based (institutionally) and has new money.

2.  Promoting wider adoption of soil fertility management practices.  What is written on the variability of soil constraints, even at micro scales, is very true.  It is further true that the uptake of any individual option or practice is very low with two possible exceptions:  (1) in some countries and for some higher value crops (mainly export crops) there has been high use of inputs including soil fertility management and (2) incorporation of animal manure or crop residues which are locally available by-products from other enterprises.

The overall lack of investment results from a combination of lack of incentives to invest in agriculture as a whole, lack of payoffs to the particular soil practices, or failing that, lack of credit or other resources to implement the practices.  All soil fertility management practices face some constraint in their implementation, be it cash/capital, labor, land area, irrigation/water, equipment, or other.  Because of that, their suitability to certain community and household conditions varies across the landscape, as do the soil constraints.  There is certainly no uniform technical solution, the there may be some consistent principles and approaches to follow.

So what to do?

1.  We do need better diagnoses of soil constraints because farmers truly can’t afford to be wrong about how to address their soils. They face high risks even when they are right.  Africa can’t afford too much sophistication in this, but it needs to advance from the current state of knowledge.

2.  Because of the general lack of profitability of smallholder agriculture, I just can’t see wide adoption of soil fertility practices unless there is significant public investment in the sector.  This needs to be in some of the areas mentioned – to help improve input markets, and to improve credit access by smallholder farmers.  The private sector cannot do these in Africa.  A real question is whether this is enough.  Well, it isn’t in the short run, for sure.  So I believe that smart subsidies are needed, not only for fertilizer, but to encourage the use of complementary soil fertility practices (e.g. to help support information dissemination or leguminous seed multiplication).  It seems clear from the examples we have had in recent years, that these types of investments can be very beneficial.  If they are not implemented, and agriculture production remains poor, many other costs emerge that do not enter into analysts’ equations (rising health needs, food aid, transactions costs associated with dual residence families, etc….).

3.  How to do that, what frameworks, investment strategies, partnerships, policies, institutions, etc, are needed?  Well that is not simple for sure and we do need some good ideas on that.  I am familiar with CAADP, TerrAfrica, AGRA, but haven’t really given thought to the bigger picture. Thus, I will hold off on commenting for now.

Frank M. Place, Economist
World Agroforestry Centre
f.place@cgiar.org