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FARMING SYSTEMS OF THE AFRICAN SAVANNA A Continent in Crisis > |
ID: 31002Added: 2003-06-02 14:23Modified: 2004-10-31 17:03Refreshed: 2010-03-14 06:02 
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Document(s) 1 of 17
Africa is perhaps the continent that is changing most rapidly at present. With the exception of Ethiopia and Liberia, all the other 43 countries of tropical Africa have achieved independence during the last 30 years. (As defined here, tropical Africa includes all the countries of sub-Saharan Africa and its associated islands except South Africa, which is mainly outside the tropics. See Appendix A.) These young states encompass an enormous diversity of environmental, economic, social, and political conditions. They contain some 800 different ethnic and linguistic groups making up a total population of over 500 million people. The net rate of population increase in sub-Saharan Africa is now one of the highest the world has ever known, 3.2% per year (Harrison 1987, p. 20). Also, Africa is the only continent where population growth rates are still rising, as the rates started to decline in Asia and Latin America in the 1960s (Fig. 1). If the present increase rate of 3.2% per year in sub-Saharan Africa continues, the population will double in 22 years, quadruple in 44 years, and increase eightfold in 66 years. This explosive increase in Africa's population is sure to continue well into the 21st century (Fig. 2). However, population densities in many African countries are still generally low, with fewer than 40 people/km², despite the highest increase rate in the world. In Asia, densities are much higher, ranging up to 600 people/km², with heavily populated areas exceeding 1000. Food ProductionIt is well known that, since the late 1960s, food production in Africa has failed to keep up with the growth of population. In 1983–85 and again in 1991–92, drought and famine brought Africa to the world's attention. In 1984–85 in Ethiopia, almost eight million people were affected, and many died. After consuming all their scanty food reserves, farmers were forced to sell their sheep, goats, donkeys, cows, and then even their draft oxen and plows at rock-bottom prices to buy food, while the price of grain soared. Then people ate the seed that they had reserved for planting, and finally left their homes on a desperate trek to some refugee camp where food-aid handouts might or might not be available. However, Ethiopia was not the only country affected. Harrison (1987, p. 18) summed up the situation.In March 1985, the peak of the crisis, it was estimated that 30 million people were hit by the drought. Ten million of them were forced to abandon their homes in search of food. Up to 24 countries were simultaneously affected, in a vast scythe stretching from Mauritania across the Sahel to Somalia, down East Africa to Mozambique, and back across to the west coast in Angola.Although more normal rains in the following years allowed many people to resume their usual lives, the underlying problems that had been brought to a head by the drought did not go away. Even though total food production increased slightly, this was not sufficient to keep pace with population growth, so that long-term food production per person continued to fall. The statistics indicate that at least 33 out of 38 tropical African countries underwent this decline in food production; in 7 of them, production per capita had decreased more than 20% since 1970. Harrison (1987, p. 21) concluded: Economic mismanagement, prolonged drought, and warfare played a part in these cases — but only in intensifying a general trend. Even in the most favoured regions of Africa, food production per person fell by 8% between 1969–71 and 1981–82. Whereas Latin America and Asia have become almost self-sufficient in cereals, Africa has grown more and more dependent on imports and food aid. Back in 1963 she grew no less than 96% of her cereal requirements. 1985, the year the drought broke, saw Africa's biggest cereal harvest ever, yet it met only 78% of her much-expanded needs.In 1991/92, both northern and southern Africa were again affected by drought and famine. Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan were the worst-hit countries in the north, with civil wars in Somalia and Sudan impeding the supply of food aid, so that many people died. In southern Africa, Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and even South Africa were all affected to varying degrees and all these countries had to import large quantities of food, or receive food aid for people in the worst-affected areas. Although the accuracy of the national statistics on food production that are quoted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and others may be questioned, there is no doubt that malnutrition and poverty are widespread and increasing. The statistics indicate that millions are suffering from severe malnutrition. Malnourished people are particularly susceptible to the many diseases and parasites that are prevalent in Africa. Children, being the most vulnerable, suffer most — one of every eight dies from a combination of disease and malnutrition before its fifth birthday, and many more are physically and mentally impaired (UNICEF 1983). No one who has money ever needs to go hungry, however, so hunger is itself a symptom of a deeper problem — poverty. PovertyIt is well known that many of the world's poorest countries are in Africa. The World Bank (1995, table 1) reported that, in 1993, no fewer than 30 African countries had average annual incomes per person below US $700 (gross national product [GNP] per capita — see Appendix A). In 12 of these countries, incomes per person actually declined over the period 1987 to 1993, in some cases to less than 50% of their 1987 levels. The overall continent-wide average income per person was US $330. The 10 poorest countries are shown in Table 1.
Other than these 30 countries, 5 middle-income countries had an overall average income per capita of US $1426. Only Gabon and Mauritius exceeded US $3000. These figures can be compared with an average GNP per capita of $23 090 in the high-income economies. McNamara (1985, p. 3) and the World Bank (1981, 1984, 1989, 1995) have documented recent trends in GNP per capita in Africa. Until about 1970, GNP per person increased steadily at a low average rate of about 1.4% per year, then the increase slowed in most countries in the 1970s, and a rapid decline, averaging 3.6% per year, took place from 1980–84, continuing in many countries into the 1990s. At the same time, the costs of food imports in current dollars rose sevenfold from US $1.9 billion in 1970 to US $12.4 billion in 1985. Although some food imports were provided on concessionary terms as food aid, most had to be paid for at prevailing world prices using scarce foreign exchange. At the same time, prices of other imports were rising. The steep oil price rises in 1973 and again in 1979 added to foreign exchange costs, and drove up local prices. McNamara (1985, p. 4) commented as follows. Why are Africa's economic growth rates falling? Some would say that the continent's present problems are the result of external economic conditions that it has neither caused nor could change. And to a degree that is, of course, true. Despite its differences and relative remoteness from the more industrialized areas of the world, the continent has not been able to escape the turbulence of the international economic environment of recent years: the persistent recessions; the severe decline in commodity prices; increasing protectionism (which has been particularly damaging to two of Africa's major exports, sugar and livestock); the high real interest rates; and the decreasing net capital flows. All of this is the price of living in an interdependent world. Distance no longer isolates Africa, or virtually anywhere else, from major international economic currents. But it is not true that Africa is simply the hapless victim of impersonal economic forces over which it has no control. Other regions, facing similar outside forces, have suffered far less. Africa's present difficulties have not been imposed on it exclusively from the external environment. Like all newly developing societies, the countries of sub-Saharan Africa have had to wrestle with their own internal economic distortions, and they have made their own share of mistakes. There have been: inadequate trade and pricing policies, especially in agriculture; overvalued exchange rates that discriminate against exports; mounting fiscal deficits, and a variety of burdensome government interventions and controls on the production process. Such policies, by and large, have pervaded sub-Saharan Africa for decades. They have exacted the inevitable penalties: an erosion of productivity, pragmatism, and entrepreneurial energy. And that, inevitably, has translated into sluggish economic growth. Traditional Farming SystemsMost of the people of Africa depend directly on the land for their living. Although Africa's cities are growing at 5.3% per year, the fastest rate in the world, 71% of the people still lived in the rural areas in 1980. Nearly all these people depended for their livelihood on smallholdings of less than 10 ha (Harrison 1987, p. 23).In the past, most of Africa was not densely populated, so cultivators were able to use the land extensively. They could choose the most fertile land, grow their crops for a few years and, when the soil fertility and crop yields declined, move to more fertile land. These farming systems, often described as "shifting cultivation" or "slash and burn" systems, were able to provide sufficient food and other products to satisfy the cultivators' needs in most seasons while maintaining soil fertility over the long term. Therefore, they were sustainable farming systems in those conditions. Decline in Soil FertilityAs the population in a particular area increased, more of the land had to be cultivated for longer periods to satisfy the peoples' needs. The danger came when the number of people depending on a particular area of land (the population pressure) became too great for the carrying capacity of that land using existing technology. The considerable evidence that this is happening in many parts of the continent is examined in later chapters. This phenomenon is not new, nor is it confined to Africa. For example, Bennett (1939), who had an immense effect on the huge problem of soil exhaustion and erosion in the United States in the 1930s, has described the same process occurring down the ages and throughout the world.Breakdown of Traditional Farming SystemsMy aim here is to consider the possibility that the critical problem in Africa is that although smallholder farming systems are changing and adapting to increasing population pressures, in most areas they are not changing fast enough. The cultivator's response to declining soil fertility often appears to be to attempt to enlarge the cultivated area, even though a shortage of fallow land may mean that the fallow period must be shortened. The result is that soil fertility is further reduced and the vegetative cover on the soil surface is degraded, allowing erosion to accelerate so that soil fertility declines progressively and erosion damage increases. Destruction of forests or woodlands is often part of this process, which is unsustainable. Eventually, the soil productivity may decline to a low level, or even to near zero.If this happens, the cultivator may try to respond in a number of ways: first, by changing the cropping system to increase the proportion of crops such as cassava that tolerate low soil fertility. If this fails to produce the necessary subsistence food, eventually the traditional shifting cultivator's path may be followed and the worn-out land abandoned and more fertile land elsewhere selected. Alternatively, if the cultivator cannot find more fertile land, the farming practices may be intensified by increasing the use of manures and fertilizers, by growing additional crops on the same land, and practicing simple soil conservation and other techniques that conserve and build up soil fertility. At present, the main responses of most cultivators seem to lie in the former directions, and the rate of change toward intensification appears to be too slow to provide the needs of the increasing populations. My hypothesis is that this is the most crucial problem for the future of Africa. It is considered in more detail, together with some approaches to possible solutions, in later chapters. The African SavannaI have selected the savanna zone for closer examination because it is widely considered to be the zone at greatest risk of declining agricultural production at present, and parts of it have been severely affected by drought and food shortages in recent years. At the same time, the parts of the savanna that receive adequate rain have an enormous potential for the expansion of rainfed agricultural production (Higgins et al. 1982).Book OutlinePart I of this book, in addition to this introduction, outlines the physical environment of Africa (Chapter 2) and reviews some characteristics of African farming systems (Chapter 3). Part II describes the African savanna and the bioclimatic approach adopted (Chapter 4). It then discusses selected farming systems of the Arid Savanna Zone (Chapter 5), the Subarid Savanna Zone (Chapter 6), the Subhumid Savanna Zone (Chapter 7), and the Humid Savanna Zone (Chapter 8). Part III gives the conclusions of the study in four chapters: the Physical Environment (Chapter 9), Farming Systems (Chapter 10), Agricultural Research (Chapter 11), and Future Prospects (Chapter 11). Document(s) 1 of 17
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