POVERTY AND AGRICULTURE
The very widespread, and deeply entrenched poverty of the region is especially severe in rural areas, where sustenance for the majority comes derives from chronically low and volatile income based on agricultural production - whether for subsistence or for market - and where alternatives are few. The low and volatile incomes lead to food insecurity and vulnerability to internal and external shocks. The primary shock is drought within an already dry climatic regime. The outlook for those in both rural and urban areas who rely on agriculture for livelihood and/or for food is further threatened by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Growth of the national economies is having only modest impact on poverty. The non-farming sectors provide off-farm incomes and critical remittances from migrant workers, but are not significantly reducing dependence on agriculture for employment and income - some 7.7 million more people are now dependent on agriculture than a decade ago. Without significant prospects for movement into other sectors with higher income-earning potential, the sole option for alleviating or reducing poverty for large numbers of rural people is to increase the output of farming. There is some scope (for example, in Angola, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe) to develop land for new settlement, but where this is not practical, improvement in living standards must come mainly from increased production from the land now in use.
There has been little overall change in the production of major staples over the past three of four decades, with their supply, broadly, keeping pace with population. Yields vary greatly, between years and between countries. Recent changes in area and output of major cash crops have been more pronounced than those for food crops. Cash crop yields vary substantially between years although less than for food crops. It is apparent, however, that the incentives and opportunities for cash production are leading these crops in a quite different direction to that of the food staples.
Farmers do not always select enterprises most suited to the natural and economic environments. There appears to have been little change in how farmers use available resource. Crop and livestock yields are generally not increasing and the mix of crops changing very slowly. Very high proportions of cropped area used for staple food prevention. While these staples have apparent advantages of easy preparation and high palatability, they have a high production risk in fragile environments.
NATURAL RESOURCES AND FARMING SYSTEMS: LIMITS OF SOIL FERTILITY AND SOIL MOISTURE
Of the 14 major farming systems of Sub-Saharan Africa, 11 occur in one or more of the ten selected SADC countries and six are most important: (i) highland temperate mixed, covering most of Lesotho and nearby South Africa and the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe; (ii) cereal-root crop mixed, predominant in the dry sub-humid zone of Angola, Zambia and Mozambique at relatively low altitudes; (iii) maize mixed, the most important and predominant in the dry sub-humid zone of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi at relatively high altitude; (iv) smallholder within large commercial areas, typical for the former homelands in South Africa and also occurring across the border in southern Namibia and Botswana; (v) agro-pastoral millet/sorghum, over large areas in the dry sub-humid zones of Angola and Zambia and the semi-arid zones of Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe; and (vi) pastoral, especially in the semi-arid zones of Botswana, Namibia and Angola, is characterized by extensive cattle rearing.
Most soils in Southern Africa are inherently low in major crop nutrients (particularly N and P) and many micro nutrients (e.g. Zn, S and Mg). More than half of the region has sandy or coarse, gravely soils with low capacity to retain nutrients and hold moisture. Acid (“infertile”) soils occur in areas with higher rainfall in Mozambique and Zambia. Low use of mineral fertilizer and burning or grazing of crop residues in smallholder agriculture is gradually depleting some essential plant nutrients.
While total seasonal rainfall is usually more than sufficient to grow an annual crop in all but the arid zone, only part of the precipitation is available for crop growth: (i) much of the rainfall comes in high-intensity storms and the soil is unable to absorb it all; (ii) rain falls in summer, when temperatures are the highest and some evaporates before being used by the crop; (iii) midseason dry spells are common; and (iv) poor cultivation practices have caused a deterioration of the infiltration rate, permeability and retention capacity of the soils. These factors commonly result in moisture stress and reduced crop yields.
Runoff is generally ‘flashy’ responding to high intensity rainfall events. The Rift lakes and extensive areas of wetlands on the higher erosion surfaces offer significant volumes of storage and attenuate and diffuse the otherwise flashy hydrographs from upstream catchments. Baseflow recession in the region is very marked with river flows declining to fractions of wet season volumes as soon as the dry season commences and then tailing off to minimal baseflows as the dry season extends.
The recharge of shallow groundwater circulation on the saprolite soils developed over the Basement Complex is also significant. The deeper horizons on the higher elevation (older) erosion surfaces store significant volumes of groundwater but with low transmissivities. This groundwater is slowly released during the dry season, sustaining dambos and upland springs and seeps. The deeper groundwater circulation associated with carbonate rocks, for example in the Copper Belt, offer highly transmissive aquifers that are exploited for large scale commercial irrigation, as in Zambia.
IMPROVING WATER CONTROL FOR AGRICULTURE
The key to successful water management for agricultural production in the region is water storage, the main means of which are: (i) as moisture in the crop root zone; (ii) as groundwater in shallow, annually recharged aquifers; and (iii) in natural or artificial reservoirs or tanks, especially those formed by dams, The great majority of cropping in the region is and is likely to remain, rainfed even though there is scope for more irrigation. Storing soil moisture in the crop root zone is thus probably the most important of the three means. The basic ways of improving the amount of soil moisture available to crops, which have been well known and practised for centuries, are closely linked to soil fertility management techniques. The present situation in the ten countries is mixed, with some farming systems more advanced than others. Some 70-85% of rainfall in water-scarce farming systems is “lost” from cropped fields through run-off, deep infiltration, evaporation and use by weeds and failed crops. Water harvesting technology has been proved able to reduce these losses, increase crop yields and ensure domestic water.
Irrigated areas, while constituting only a small proportion of the sub-region’s cultivated area, are important for production of high value cash. Most irrigation systems are reported to be poorly managed with only a fraction of the design command under operation.. The available estimates of irrigation potential appear to indicate considerable potential for further irrigation development - of the order of ten million hectares. This is, however, misleading because the available information does not indicate the probable unit cost and general economic merit of the ‘potential. Without at least reconnaissance level studies of most of the sites and preferably full feasibility level work, no valid conclusion can be reached about the quantitative potential for economically attractive, financially viable and technically sustainable irrigation development can be reached. There is some scope for expansion of use of groundwater for irrigation, especially in the limited areas where it is available at shallow depths and accessible by small dug wells.
Two important points need to be stressed. First the range of options in water control is broad, from low intensity, extensive initiatives in soil moisture conservation to high intensity, concentrated investments in conventional hydraulic control. Second, each management solution has its own attendant risk and cost. The costs of conventional irrigation in Africa are notoriously high, not only in procurement of hardware, but also in the application of management.
There is, nevertheless, scope to raise incomes and reduce vulnerability to climate through improved water control. It is therefore important to put investment in water control in a measured context. First the rain-fed systems need to be stabilised to confirm the production of staple foods.
It is only then that the contribution from more expensive irrigation can be judged. Complete resolution of the problem of low and unreliable farm production will require conducive policy formulation, institutional behaviour and investment beyond the farm, in addition to investment and improved management within the farm..
THE POLICY ENVIRONMENT
Farmers are confronted by many interacting factors which limit their capacity and motivation to raise productivity. The natural resource and climatic conditions and the wide economic and policy frameworks all interact to create the conditions in which farmers operate. Even maintaining, productivity depends on how farmers manage their businesses, which they do in four main areas - selection of enterprises, husbandry of crops and livestock, investment to raise productive capacity and marketing.
A range of economic and policy factors which apply beyond the farm strongly affect farmers’ motivation and capacity for change and how they tailor their investments and operations. The business environment is determined largely by the rate and nature of economic growth and by the policy stances of government, which are heavily inter-related. There has been much progress in policy reform in most of the ten countries in recent years - especially in reducing macro-economic imbalances, taking on commitment to and encouraging the private sector and reducing the “crowding-out” behaviour of parastatals. While such reforms have greatly improved the overall investment climate, there remain significant obstacles to improving farm productivity within the sector-specific policy frameworks
A SUBREGIONAL STRATEGY
Increased productivity of water and thus of land, depends on its better use which, in turn, requires three groups of actors to play effective roles: (i) farmers must improve the use of other resources to complement better water use: (ii) those concerned with marketing, in its broad form, must facilitate the best use of products from farms; and (iii) governments must create a framework which allows and encourages the other actors to play their roles.
To address rural poverty in the region, a primary objective must be higher productivity of land and water. Achievement of the full potential for increased productivity depends on attention to two both those factors which apply directly to farmers on their farms and should be addressed there and those which apply (directly or indirectly) beyond the farm and must be addressed in that sphere. A strategy to address these factors consists of two thrusts.
The first thrust needs to be directed to farmers and farmer groups to pursue the objective of productive and profitable farm operations by (i) improving farm management; and (ii) improving the delivery of water serves. The three categories of water control cited the NEPAD CAADP ‘pillar’ in land management and water control provide suitable targets.
The second thrust needs to address factors which apply mostly away from the farmers and their farms and which act against the creation of effective sets of incentives, with the objective of expanding economic opportunities for farmers. The focus of the tactics - to upgrade the economic and business frameworks - would be on role players beyond the physical boundaries of farms, whose activities affect farmers directly but “distantly”, such as government regulatory agencies and private concerns in marketing.
