China's farming history now misapplied in Africa
By William G Moseley
ST PAUL, Minnesota - As sub-Saharan Africa grapples with high food prices in
some regions and famine in others, many experts argue that increasing food
production through a programme of hybrid seeds and chemical inputs is the way
to go.
This approach, marketed as a "New Green Revolution" for Africa, is increasingly
supported by a triumphant telling of China's history with this method in the
1970s and 1980s. This Chinese success story is not only distorted, but it is
being misapplied in Africa.
China's Great Famine of 1958-1961 reportedly killed 36 million people. This was
a seminal moment for the country and, from that point forward, producing enough
food would be a major priority. China would subsequently increase grain
production dramatically
between 1960 and 2000, with wheat output increasing eightfold, exiling the
ghost of famine to the margins of that country's collective social imagination.
According to many Chinese and Western observers, these stunning productivity
increases were due to two factors. First, the Chinese aggressively embraced a
Green Revolution approach. They would both borrow hybrid seeds from the West
and develop their own such technologies.
Furthermore, they would massively increase nitrogen fertilizer production by
importing manufacturing technology, eventually becoming the world's largest
producer of these agricultural inputs.
Second, the Chinese adopted a series of more market-oriented reforms from the
late 1970s, allowing for the decentralization and decollectivisation of
agriculture, as well as a rise in producer prices.
Now experts from some the world's major development institutes and
organizations are arguing that sub-Saharan Africa ought to follow the Chinese
example in the realm of agricultural development. They not only suggest that
this will increase food production, but that it will build a foundation for
future industrial development.
The high cost of low prices
While a renewed focus on African agriculture is welcome (as this is an area
that has been ignored for more than 20 years), this particular telling of the
Chinese success story is distorted, and the type of agricultural development
being promoted is problematic.
While Chinese agricultural production did, indeed, increase dramatically from
1960 to 2000, it was done at great environmental and social cost. China now
faces stagnating production and declining yields, which are most likely related
to soil degradation - due to, among other factors, the overuse of nitrogen
fertilizers.
Untold is the fact that China had been seriously exploring a bio-intensive path
to increasing agricultural production up until about 1972, when it began to
gradually open up to the West. From that point forward, the Green Revolution
approach would take precedence.
Furthermore, while the agricultural reforms of the late 1970s and 1980s did
allow some peasants to produce more crops, these reforms also led to dramatic
increases in inequality in the Chinese countryside.
The current reality is that a rapidly urbanizing China is experiencing major
shifts in dietary patterns. With increasing prosperity comes increasing
consumption of meat, and a greater need for grain to feed these animals. With
stagnating grain production, China needs to find other sources of food around
the world.
Green revolution in Africa?
By pushing for a "New Green Revolution" in Africa, both China and the West are
clear winners. Many Chinese commentators view sub-Saharan Africa as
under-populated and land-rich. As such, enhancing agricultural productivity on
the continent means that it will have more food to export to China, which
increasingly needs such imports.
Moreover, the US is home to some of the world's major seed companies and
agrochemical firms. By encouraging an input-intensive approach to agriculture
dependent upon imported technology, US firms are destined to profit.
Most egregious are long-term leases of land in sub-Saharan Africa to foreign
entities (often sovereign wealth funds of Middle Eastern, North African or
Asian countries, as well as Western hedge funds) for the production of
agricultural goods for export. These deals are often "sold" to local publics as
a source of employment and as a means to bring the New Green Revolution to
sub-Saharan Africa.
The reality is that these leases (often for 50 years or more) essentially allow
other regions of the world to export their food insecurity to Africa, or for
Western investors to profit from a decade-long trend of steadily increasing
global food prices.
While China and the West benefit from this New Green Revolution strategy, it is
not clear if the same is true for small farmers and poor households in
sub-Saharan Africa.
For most food-insecure households on the continent, there are at least two
problems with this strategy. First, such an approach to farming is
energy-intensive, as most fertilizers and pesticides are petroleum-based.
Inducing poor farmers to adopt energy-intensive farming methods is
short-sighted, if not unethical, if experts know that global energy prices are
likely to rise.
Second, irrespective of energy prices, the "New Green Revolution" approach
requires farmers to purchase seeds and inputs, which means that it will be
inaccessible to the poorest of the poor, who are the most likely to suffer from
periods of hunger.
If not the New Green Revolution approach, then what? Many forms of
bio-intensive agriculture are, in fact, highly productive and much more
efficient than those of industrial agriculture.
For example, crops grown in intelligent combinations allow one plant to fix
nitrogen for another rather than relying solely on increasingly expensive,
fossil fuel-based inorganic fertilizers for these plant nutrients. Mixed
cropping strategies are also less vulnerable to insect damage and require
little to no pesticide use for a reasonable harvest.
These techniques have existed for centuries in the African context and could be
greatly enhanced by supporting participatory collaboration between local
people, African research institutes and foreign scientists.
This is not the first time that sub-Saharan Africa has been sold a set of
flawed policies based on a misreading of another region's history and
experiences. In the early 1980s, international financial institutions convinced
African nations to adopt neo-liberal economic reforms based, in part, on a
particular telling of the economic history of the newly industrialized
countries (NICs) and the Asian Tigers.
African countries were told to focus on exports as the NICs had done, and that
a free-market approach was required to reach that end. What international
advisers conveniently neglected to mention was that the export success of the
Asian Tigers was also due to generous government support and intervention (and
not the free market).
Now China is being held up as an Asian agricultural tiger for the nations of
sub-Saharan Africa to emulate. Africa's leaders ought to carefully study their
comparative world history before accepting this advice.
William G Moseley is a human-environment and development geographer. He
is a professor at Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota, US and is the
author of several books, including most recently Taking Sides: Clashing
Views on African Issues (McGraw-Hill, 2011). The views expressed in this article
are the author's own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of
al-Jazeera or IPS.
(Published under an Inter Press Service agreement with al-Jazeera.) *
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