Humanitarian Alternatives
Green Revolution initiatives in Africa promise “sustainable intensification”, productivity improvements to grow more food on the same land. In fact, according to Timothy A. Wise, donors to such initiatives need to reconsider such investments and instead promote agroecology and other low-input forms of diverse crop production.
Private philanthropies and bilateral donors have claimed for nearly two decades that the solutions to Africa’s persistent food insecurity lie in agricultural development schemes that promote “sustainable intensification”, raising productivity on existing croplands. Their promotion of commercial seeds, synthetic fertilisers and other chemical inputs through donor initiatives such as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) have been underwritten by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and bilateral donors from the United States (US), the United Kingdom and Germany among others.
That strategy has failed to produce results, as both independent[1] and donor-sponsored evaluations[2] have shown. As I will document, not only has productivity lagged in supported crops such as maize and rice, it has declined for other key staples such as millet and sorghum. Food insecurity has increased by 50%. Evidence shows that the incentives for supported crops have significantly increased land devoted to those crops rather than increasing productivity on existing lands, causing unsustainable extensification rather than the promised sustainable intensification.
A significant share of global agriculture’s contribution to climate change comes from “land-use change”, a neutral expression for the often-destructive expansion of agriculture onto new land. That sort of “extensification” of agriculture can have serious environmental consequences – deforestation, soil erosion, unsustainable water use, etc. Those in turn have important implications for climate change, as a recent United Nations (UN) report highlighted. Land-use changes due to agricultural expansion increase carbon emissions from land clearing, eliminate carbon-dioxide-absorbing plants such as rainforests and prairies and generate greenhouse gases with modern farming methods. According to the UN, they account for about 30% of agriculture-related emissions.[3]
A simplistic neo-Malthusian perspective attributes extensification to growing populations exerting pressure on scarce natural resources. An equally simplistic response is the Green Revolution for Africa.
(read the full article at Humanitarian Alternatives)