Feeding the world: How Africa’s traditional agricultural practices are critical for the future – TRT World

The Challenge of Feeding a Growing Population: The Role of Sustainable Agriculture

By Peter Asare-Nuamah

The world’s population has experienced exponential growth since the first industrial revolution.

By 1950, the world population stood at 2.5 billion. In November 2022, the global population reached 8 billion, and it is projected to increase to about 9.7 billion by 2050 and 10.4 billion by mid-2080s.

The most rapid population growth is experienced in developing regions of the world, particularly in Africa.

With a total population of 283 million in 1960, Africa’s current population is 1.5 billion and projections show that the continent will experience the fastest growth rate, doubling its current population to about 2.5 billion by 2050.

In fact, between 2022 and 2050, more than half of the world’s rising population growth is anticipated to take place in Africa.

Rising global population, particularly in Africa, comes with its own complex challenges. The need to feed the growing population has become one of the key priorities of global development agenda, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 2).

It is estimated that current agriculture and food systems’ production capacity have to be doubled by 2050 if we have to effectively and sustainably feed the global population.

Governments across the globe together with their development partners and research institutions are increasingly in search of solutions capable of addressing rising food insecurity.

Already, the majority of the world’s population, particularly in Africa and other developing regions, are experiencing severe food insecurity and nutrition-related challenges.

Thus, the majority of the global food insecure, diet deficient, and malnutrition population live in Africa and Asia, where population growth remains high.

Feeding the current and future population is therefore an urgent priority and requires transformation in agricultural systems and practices.

Governments across the African continent and their development partners have implemented programs and interventions aimed at addressing rising food insecurity and its associated nutrition and poverty challenges.

For instance, in Kenya, the Food Systems Resilience Program, which forms part of the Government of Kenya’s Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA), aims at building resilience in the agricultural sector and ensuring food security.

Similarly, in Rwanda and 5 other African countries, the Voice for Change Partnership (V4CP) Program prioritizes the development, adoption, and implementation of inclusive policies and regulations on production and consumption of diverse and nutritious food, improved coordination of agriculture, food security, and nutrition actors, and increased accessibility and use of fortified crops or products.

The government of Ghana’s flagship Planting for Food and Job (PFJ) program addresses the challenges faced by smallholder farmers in responding to climate change through access to emerging and sustainable agricultural best practices, markets, improved seeds, and other agricultural inputs.

This enhances resilient agricultural systems, improving yields, productivity, and income, thereby tackling rising poverty among the rural poor.

Specific to child malnutrition, the school feeding program of the Ghanaian government complements nutritional intake of children by prioritizing increased access to nutritious food to school children in poor and at-risk communities.

There are equally regional-based programs that target agricultural transformation in Africa.

Some examples include the African Union’s Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), improved seed programs championed by both national and regional bodies, such as the Eastern Africa Grain Council.

Notwithstanding, the impacts of climate change and extremes, such as floods, droughts, pests, and diseases invasion among others, pose severe threats to global food systems, with smallholder agricultural systems being highly vulnerable.

Also, land degradation and low soil fertility are exacerbated by climate change with their concomitant effects visible in smallholder agricultural systems in Africa.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) projects that over 90% of the global arable soils will be lost to degradation by 2050. Addressing these complex challenges is essential for achieving transformation in global food systems.

Is Large Scale Industrial Agriculture the Solution?

Since the 1970s, development trajectories in developed economies have shifted towards a preference for large scale industrial agricultural production systems that have been promoted as a panacea to addressing agriculture and food systems challenges.

Indeed, large scale industrial agriculture has the potential to increase total productivity and yields by focusing on high-yielding monoculture crops, such as maize.

By increasing the overall productivity and yields per hectare, large scale industrial agriculture contributes directly or indirectly to food availability on the market.

Nevertheless, large scale industrial agricultural practices come with their own negative consequences and trade-offs that have become increasingly visible in global sustainability discourses.

For instance, given their preference for large scale agrochemical applications, industrial agriculture has been reported to contribute to excessive leaching and pollution of water bodies and underground water, and increase carbon emissions especially for nitrogen-based agrochemicals.

Also, the continuous application of chemical fertilizers without replenishing the soil leads to nutrient mining, which contributes to hidden hunger.

The health implications of large-scale industrial agriculture, such as food poisoning (e.g., salmonella) and exposure to toxins, have been well highlighted.

The adoption of genetically modified organisms, which is championed by large scale industrial agriculture organizations as the emerging solution, has also been contested in different contexts due to the differences in national laws and regulations.

The Crucial Role of Smallholder Farmers and Traditional Agricultural Practices

Large scale industrial agricultural practices, particularly agrochemical application and monoculture cultivation, have influenced and shaped global farming systems, as even smallholder farmers are increasingly adopting such practices in response to climate change.

Given the negative environmental footprint of such practices amidst the urgent global priority to promote environmental sustainability in agriculture, it is crucial to highlight how smallholder farmers serve as the cornerstone in promoting sustainable agriculture.

Classically, smallholder agricultural practices have been the foundation of global agriculture and food systems for centuries.

Practices, such as planting and/or maintaining trees on farms, concurrent planting of multiple but diverse nutrients requiring crops (crop diversification), crop rotation, cover cropping, mulching, shifting cultivation, fallowing, applying animal manure and crop residues (compost), have been inherent in traditional and smallholder farming systems.

These traditional practices are increasingly being highlighted as robust approaches to agricultural and food systems transformation.

They are ascribed to increase soil fertility, improve microorganisms’ activities, strengthen water hold capacity of soils, and reduce erosion and degradation, which cumulatively contribute to increased agricultural productivity, nutritious and high-quality yields.

The long-term effects of these practices are that they increase soil carbon sequestration, providing the double benefits of reducing carbon emissions and improving crops’ uptake of soil nutrients, thereby sustaining productivity.

Thus, agriculture and food systems transformation require healthy soils which smallholder agricultural practices can strategically offer.

Policies and Incentives

While smallholder agriculture has the promising potential to address both food security and environmental challenges, the benefits associated with smallholder agricultural practices take time to accrue, which often compel farmers to seek for quicker beneficial approaches, such as agrochemical application.

Hence, scaling up sustainable agricultural practices among smallholder farmers requires investment commitments from governments, the donor community, and development organizations.

In the United States, conscious efforts are made by federal and state governments to provide incentives and crop insurance for farmers engaged in the so-called regenerative agricultural practices that are typical of traditional agriculture practices that have been practiced for centuries in Africa.

Providing smallholder African farmers with incentives to offset the waiting period to accrue the benefits from traditional agricultural practices can significantly boost farmers’ willingness to adopt/continue such practices and minimize agrochemical application.

It is imperative to give prominence to and integrate traditional agricultural practices that have the potential to rejuvenate soil health and ecosystem services into national agricultural policies and regulations including extension services and extension education.

This will contribute to strengthening mass education and awareness about the essential benefits associated with traditional agricultural practices, which are often overlooked.

Similarly, market interventions are imperative if we have to sustain smallholder agriculture. Ecologically-produced food is essential for states’ interventions targeting health and nutrition, such as the school feeding programs for school children in rural communities.

To sustain such interventions and promote eco-friendly agriculture, there is the need to establish off-taker agreements with farmers engaged in eco-friendly agriculture, thereby giving them access to ready markets.

Again, improving mass education and awareness among the populace on the social (e.g., health and nutritional) and environmental benefits of consuming sustainably produced farm products from smallholder agriculture can increase demand on the market and boost production among farmers.

In effect, smallholder agriculture can be strategically positioned as the game changer for food security and environmental sustainability if appropriate support and conducive environments are created for the sector and smallholder farmers engaged in the sector.

The author, Dr. Peter Asare-Nuamah, is a Lecturer at the School of Sustainable Development, University of Environment and Sustainable Development, Ghana, and a Senior Researcher at the Center for Development Research, University of Bonn, Germany.

SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?

• SDG 2: Zero Hunger
• SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being
• SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
• SDG 13: Climate Action
• SDG 15: Life on Land

2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?

• SDG 2.1: By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round.
• SDG 2.3: By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment.
• SDG 2.4: By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality.
• SDG 12.3: By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses.
• SDG 13.1: Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries.
• SDG 15.3: By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world.

3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?

• Indicator 2.1.1: Prevalence of undernourishment
• Indicator 2.3.1: Volume of production per labour unit by classes of farming/pastoral/forestry enterprise size
• Indicator 2.4.1: Proportion of agricultural area under productive and sustainable agriculture
• Indicator 12.3.1: Food loss index
• Indicator 13.1.1: Number of deaths, missing persons and directly affected persons attributed to disasters per 100,000 population
• Indicator 15.3.1: Proportion of land that is degraded over total land area

SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

Source: trt.global