Subsistence agriculture
Tewolde B. G. Egzi
While the world plunges into crises,
subsistence farming in Africa holds the key to sustainable agriculture
production, not only for the region but also other parts of the world.
I am from Africa, and you also came from Africa, albeit generations
before me. I bring you all masses of love from your original mother,
Africa.
It is usual for the young, especially in Europe, to look at the old,
including their parents, as if they are past it; as if they are ready to
be buried and forgotten. Therefore, it is not surprising to me that
other continents think of Mother Africa as hopeless and view Africans as
permanently hungry.
Yes, there are hungry people in Africa. But there are also hungry
people in Europe, and in every other continent, for that matter. And,
yes, the proportion of hungry people is probably the greatest in Africa,
but I want to tell you why.
Boost cultivation to solve food crisis |
Africa is where all humans came from. Therefore, Africa is the
continent that has fed humanity the longest. Our lore regarding food and
feeding is massive in Africa.
Nevertheless, thanks to the centuries of colonial and neocolonial
plunder of resources and people, Africa is the least populated of
continents. So Africa, of all continents, has the greatest potential to
feed her resident people. Why, then, does the image of hunger in Africa
persist?
To answer this question, I want to take you back to the 1950s when
the industrialisation of agriculture started in the violently dominant
countries of Europe and then America. The industrialisation of
agriculture requires, among other things, a high population density.
This is because of its need for both a large market and a well developed
transportation and marketing infrastructure.
The low population density of Africa meant that, because of its less
well-developed transportation and marketing infrastructure, small
quantities of subsidised food ‘dumped’ on Africa by Europe and America
easily disabled its internal small food markets. Africa’s non-mechanised
agriculture thus remained at a subsistence level and never developed
intensive agricultural production.
Now, the industrial agriculture of Europe and America, and recently
that of Asia, is increasingly in crisis.
It is polluting the land, the water and the air such that
agricultural land is degrading fast, water is becoming unsafe for humans
and for most of other forms of life, and polluted air is trapping the
sun’s radiation to the extent that the whole biosphere is warming up.
Global food production risks failing to adapt to the changing climate.
This risk is growing in spite of the lure of ‘quick fixes’ for all
agricultural problems claimed by genetic engineers. Fossil fuels, on
which the industrial culture, including industrial agriculture, depends,
are running out.
The rich banks of Europe and America are collapsing and governments
have had to buy up some of their assets. The agreements of the World
Trade Organization, which encouraged the dumping of subsidised foods in
Africa’s urban centres, now, hold little authority. Indeed, negotiations
on these agreements have been stuck since the Ministerial Conference in
Seattle failed in 1999.
I would not be surprised if the World Trade Organization were now to
simply fade away.
But we must, all the time, have food to subsist on, and the
subsistence farming of Africa is now the most intact of all agricultural
systems precisely because industrial agriculture has bypassed it.
So, the more-or-less intact African subsistence agriculture can
become a reference point from which to base sustainable global food
production, whilst ensuring it is compatible with the health of the
entire biosphere.
For a start, subsidised food dumping in Africa must cease. The
dependence it creates by destabilising Indigenous agriculture is the
main reason why the proportion of hungry people in Africa is now so
high. But it will take only a few growing seasons for the rurally intact
subsistence food production systems in Africa to fill in the gap created
by the cessation of food dumping.
A new form of sustainable agricultural intensification is already
taking place in Africa. This started in four local communities in the
badly degraded north-eastern highlands of Ethiopia. Members of each
local community met and analysed their environmental and agricultural
problems. They then developed their bylaws to determine what each
community would do, and elected their own leadership to oversee the
implementation.
They built terraces and bunds to prevent soil erosion; they
restricted their animals to specific areas and fed them crop residues so
as to allow grass, shrubs and trees to maximise growth in the rainy
season, and vegetation cover improved dramatically in just one rainy
season. They could then harvest the grass and add hay to the crop
residues to feed their animals sufficiently.
The increased availability of animal dung and biomass waste made it
possible for them to make and apply compost on their respective fields.
Soil fertility improved and so did crop harvests. Rainwater percolated
through he improved soil structure and began recharging the water table
more fully.
Springs and streams began to flow again and strengthen, allowing
irrigation in the dry season, which increased food production further.
Trees that had disappeared owing to land degradation began returning in
subsequent rainy seasons. Farmers enriched the resurgent tree cover with
the species of their choice, usually fruit trees and leguminous trees
for both fodder and soil enrichment.
Starting from just these four communities, the practice is now
expanding throughout Ethiopia. In November 2008, the African Union
organised a conference in Addis Ababa, preceded by field visits, to
extend these innovative and sustainable practices to the rest of Eastern
and Southern Africa.
Of course, I am not implying that the corporations that have plunged
the world into unsustainability will simply give up. They will not, but
Africa’s subsistence agriculture could be the basis for the much needed
intensification of sustainable food production, not only in Africa, but
throughout the world.
The time has come to learn from the wisdom and practical knowledge of
the people whose continent gave birth to humanity. We will then be able
to incorporate the globally resynthesised industrial culture of its most
impetuous species, Homo sapiens, into a more healthy form of development
that will sustain life robustly to the end of time.
- Third World Network Features
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