{"id":21879,"date":"2015-06-29T05:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tested-neuron.flywheelsites.com\/?p=21879"},"modified":"2019-10-17T16:02:58","modified_gmt":"2019-10-17T22:02:58","slug":"energizing-the-green-revolution-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unreasonablegroup.com\/articles\/energizing-the-green-revolution-in-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Energizing the Green Revolution in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the summer of 2005<\/strong>, Andrew Youn, an M.B.A. student at Northwestern University\u2019s Kellogg School of Management, was traveling in western Kenya when he met two women, farmers who were living profoundly different lives.<\/p>\n

Both were working small plots of land, but one was producing a yield of two tons of maize per acre \u2014 better than Kenya\u2019s national average \u2014 while the other was producing one quarter that amount. The difference meant the world. One family had enough to eat during the \u201chunger season<\/a>\u201d \u2014 the months before the late-summer harvest. The other didn\u2019t. One family had decent housing and clothing and the children were healthy. The second family was living a meager existence, Youn recalled. \u201cShe had lost a child and it was unlikely that her four remaining children would be able to complete high school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the billion people today who are living in extreme poverty\u2014subsisting on less than $1.25 a day\u2014one-fourth are smallholder farmers in Africa.<\/i> Tweet This Quote<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The difference? One woman was doing what many farmers around the world had been doing since the Green Revolution began in the 1960s \u2014 using improved hybrid crop varieties and fertilizer and incorporating planting techniques proven to boost food production. As Tina Rosenberg has reported<\/a>, the Green Revolution transformed agricultural practices across Asia and Latin America \u2014 doubling world food production from 1960 to 1990 and saving countless lives \u2014 but, for a variety of reasons, it has not yet taken hold across Africa. Among the billion people today who are living in extreme poverty<\/a> \u2014 subsisting on less than $1.25 a day \u2014 one-fourth are smallholder farmers in Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the fight against global poverty, there are very few hugely powerful leverage points,\u201d says Youn. \u201cThe majority of the world\u2019s poor people are farmers; they share one profession, and we figured out how to make that profession way more productive 50 years ago. There is a common solution that could substantially improve their productivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The African Green Revolution is emerging<\/i> Tweet This Quote<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since his visit to Kenya, Youn has been obsessed with making that solution widely available in Africa. In 2006, he co-founded a nonprofit organization, One Acre Fund, with offices around East Africa, to assist smallholder farmers; today, the organization has a staff of 2,500 who deliver farming inputs, training and market assistance to 280,000 families in rural Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania, with a plan to be serving a million families by 2020.<\/p>\n

This work is part of a historic shift. \u201cThe African Green Revolution is emerging<\/a>,\u201d said Pedro Sanchez, director of the Agriculture and Food Security Center at Columbia University\u2019s Earth Institute. \u201cIn the last 10 years, yields of cereal grains like maize have increased by about 50 percent from 1 to 1.5 tons per hectare, but they\u2019re still pretty miserable.\u201d (In Asia and Latin America, yields are 3 tons per hectare.) \u201cBut it will happen,\u201d Sanchez adds. \u201cMany African countries are serious about this. The main barrier has been access to improved varieties of crops and fertilizers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"One

One Acre Fund field officer Caroline Atieno demonstrates how farmers can use a stick to space rows for planting in Kakamega, Kenya.Credit Hailey Tucker<\/p><\/div>\n

Sanchez points to promising signs, including the spread across Africa of companies that specialize in improving seed varieties, joint efforts by governments and fertilizer manufacturers to reduce costs, fertilizer subsidies (notably in Malawi) and government loan programs, and the emergence of agro-dealers<\/a>, mom-and-pop shops that sell agricultural supplies. \u201cWe have helped set up 25,000 agro-dealerships in 13 countries,\u201d said Agnes Kalibata, a former minister of agriculture and animal resources for Rwanda who is now president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, or AGRA. \u201cWe need to create a value proposition around smallholder farmers for the private sector and the area that needs to be strengthened is the last mile solution. We need institutions like the One Acre Fund to reach farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Africa, agriculture is different from what you\u2019d find in Asia. Most farmers are women, who face greater barriers than men in accessing land, finance and technology. Africa\u2019s soils are more degraded<\/a>, requiring more careful management. Africa\u2019s population, already suffering from high malnutrition, is expected to double by 2050. African farmers will need greater access to drought-tolerant crops<\/a> to contend with climate changes. And, of course, we know far more today than in the 1960s about the environmental costs of intensive farming with nonorganic chemicals.<\/p>\n

Business people need solid data to justify investments in new markets, and policy makers and philanthropists need to know what works to alleviate hunger.<\/i> Tweet This Quote<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In theory, as smallholder farmers increase productivity, demand for quality farm inputs should increase and markets should emerge to serve the need. One Acre Fund reports<\/a> that the families it served in 2014 experienced average income gains for the activities it supports ranging from 25 to 99 percent. In Kenya, the gain translated to an additional $170 per year, which families typically used to pay school fees, buy food and make new business investments. In 2013, One Acre Fund began a major effort to overhaul its monitoring work<\/a> so it would have a clear understanding of its impact.<\/p>\n

This is important because business people need solid data to justify investments in new markets, and policy makers and philanthropists need to know what works to alleviate hunger. It\u2019s also important to have organizations like One Acre Fund that work to develop new markets before they are widely seen as viable. They help figure out the delivery systems, show how to aggregate small-scale producers, and demonstrate demand. In the field of microfinance, social-purpose organizations like the Grameen Bank and Accion International spent decades demonstrating the viability of banking with the poor; they worked with foundations, governments, nongovernmental organizations and businesses that now provide access to credit to 200 million people.<\/p>\n

Groups like One Acre Fund play a similar role today. The organization is particularly well designed to partner with<\/a> private and public sector organizations to stimulate an African Green Revolution friendly to smallholder farmers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re solving a really hard problem,\u201d said Marshall Burke, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth System Science at Stanford University. \u201cThere are millions of smallholder farmers spread out across Africa, with very poor infrastructure in areas where markets don\u2019t function very well, and they\u2019re providing them with timely and regular access to high quality inputs.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to distributing inputs, One Acre Fund provides credit to purchase them, along with bi-weekly trainings, so that farmers can learn how to maximize their productivity. \u201cThe question of how to use the right fertilizer and apply it in the right amounts and at the right times is very important,\u201d said Sanchez. \u201cMany small farmers used to use fertilizer 20 or 30 years ago before the Washington Consensus<\/a> in the 1980s took away subsidies. Farmers have forgotten that.\u201d<\/p>\n

One Acre Fund systematically tries to assess its own effectiveness<\/a>. \u201cI think one of their defining features is they\u2019re very scientifically inclined,\u201d said Christopher Barrett, a professor of applied economics and agriculture at Cornell University. \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly complicated to determine which of the 15 to 20 things is most immediately restrictive\u201d to farmers, he said. \u201cThe only way to find that out is to continuously talk with them and to continuously evaluate the work as you go on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continuous experimentation leads to important insights. For instance, the One Acre Fund promotes \u201cmicro-dosing\u201d of fertilizer. It turns out it\u2019s helpful to provide farmers with something as simple as a customized scoop to help them deliver the right amount to supply nutrients while minimizing the risks of soil or environmental degradation.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not always obvious why you get good harvests<\/i> Tweet This Quote<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Similarly, the organization finds it crucial to regularly remind farmers about the importance of weeding, plant spacing, composting, crop rotation and proper drying. \u201cIt\u2019s not always obvious why you get good harvests,\u201d said Youn. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of boring details that we have a passion for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the work is about reducing risk. One Acre Fund sells food-safe insecticide dust and sealed bags to reduce spoilage<\/a>, solar lamps to reduce the need to burn kerosene (a major health hazard<\/a>) and crop insurance against excess rain or drought. \u201cWe are now the largest retailer of crop insurance to smallholder farmers in Africa,\u201d said Youn. \u201cWe work with farmers across enough rainfall zones that we have payouts every year.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of the work hinges on quality training. One Acre Fund field officers are usually farmers themselves, and are each responsible for training 200 others. Meetings are held at the farms of volunteer group leaders. \u201cThe most important thing in a training is that each and every person participates,\u201d said Oliver Simiyu, One Acre Fund\u2019s field director for the Kimilili district, in western Kenya. He oversees services to 7,200 farmers. \u201cWhen I was a field officer, I was only to be contributing 20 percent of the content of the training,\u201d he said. \u201cThe rest should be feedback, role play, giving kudos to those who have done well, sharing ideas for upward feedback, quizzing for understanding, so we know where to repeat or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Low productivity creates a trap.<\/i> Tweet This Quote<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A lot of the staff members\u2019 commitment to the work appears to stem from their own experiences. Pauline Wanjala, a senior field director who oversees One Acre Fund\u2019s work serving 18,000 farmers in the Lugari and Kimilili districts in western Kenya, said: \u201cI used to farm maize on half an acre of land and the most I could get was three bags. After my first season, I harvested 12 bags.\u201d (Each bag could hold 90 kilograms). She used the profits to expand her house from two to six rooms. She now supports her three children, as well as two brothers and her mother. \u201cIf it were not for One Acre Fund, my children might not be in school,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese farmers are not like U.S. farmers,\u201d said Barrett, from Cornell. \u201cTheir own health and the health of their families is closely bound up with their agricultural production<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Low productivity creates a trap. It\u2019s during the seasons of greatest rainfall that people need to work hardest on their farms, noted Barrett. But that\u2019s also when diseases spike and people are insufficiently nourished. Without a surplus, farmers and their families are highly vulnerable<\/a>. A one-time health shock can send a family cascading into deep poverty, as Anirudh Krishna illustrates in his book, \u201cOne Illness Away<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fifty million farm families in Africa could benefit.<\/i> Tweet This Quote<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another problem farmers face is selling low and buying high<\/a>. When farmers are strapped for cash, they often have to sell their crops immediately after harvest, when prices are lowest, and buy food later in the year when prices have risen. Marshall Burke, from Stanford, is experimenting with assistance from the One Acre Fund to establish whether well-timed microloans can help smallholder farmers increase profits by letting them sell at more favorable times. During the first year, the loans produced a 20 percent return on investment, said Burke, and preliminary second-year results appear even more promising. If this project proves profitable for farmers, One Acre Fund is in a position to rapidly scale it up.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have this amazing fact where most of the world\u2019s poor people are farmers and they have this basic food production system in their back yard,\u201d said Youn. \u201cThe agricultural innovations were invented decades ago. What we need is to distribute them in a form that is useful to people. Right now, the biggest challenge for us is how insignificant our scale is. Fifty million farm families in Africa could benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

This post first appeared on the New York Times\u00a0Fixes blog<\/a>. Join Fixes on Facebook<\/a> and follow updates on Twitter<\/a>. To receive e-mail alerts for Fixes columns, sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among the billion people today subsisting on less than $1.25 a day, 1\/4 are smallholder farmers in Africa\u2014agricultural innovations need to be distributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":21884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1537,1914,476],"tags":[326,1421,2068],"class_list":["post-21879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa","category-agriculture","category-article","tag-africa","tag-david-bornstein","tag-green-revolution"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEnergizing the Green Revolution in Africa<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Among the billion people today subsisting on less than $1.25 a day, 1\/4 are smallholder farmers in Africa\u2014agricultural innovations need to be distributed.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, 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