Organic innovation in African agriculture

The green revolution was a disaster in Africa for three reasons: water was a major limiting factor, most crop research was on rice and wheat, while maize is the staple for much of Africa; the inputs recommended (hybrid seed,... [ view full abstract ]

The green revolution was a disaster in Africa for three reasons: water was a major limiting factor, most crop research was on rice and wheat, while maize is the staple for much of Africa; the inputs recommended (hybrid seed, chemical fertiliser, pesticides and irrigation) were simply not available, or were too expensive to be justified in the context of high-risk rainfed agriculture. Two approaches have been advocated to assist with African food insecurity: one is the new green revolution, with its Millenium Villages Project (AGRA-MVP); the other is the Export Programme for Organic Products from Africa (EPOPA).  Five years of implementation of these two approaches were compared in terms of financial and human capital invested, numbers of farm families reached and costs per farm per year.  The investment in both money and people for the EPOPA project was a fraction of that invested in AGRA-MVP, more than twice as many farmers were reached and the cost per farm for AGRA-MVP was estimated to be US$120 per year, while EPOPA spent $2 per farm per year.  AGRA deployed one doctoral-level and four masters-level scientists for each village cluster, while EPOPA had only three professional staff running the programme.  We concluded that both approaches had merit, and that EPOPA should learn from the greater focus on infrastructure development adopted by AGRA and the grander scale of intervention, while AGRA could learn about institution building, market linkages, capacity building for farmer training and use of locally available natural resources.

Keywords: Organic agriculture; capacity-building; institution building; farmer market linkages.