Organics 'best for Africa’s poor'
Green Futures
Published on Friday February 13, 2009
A UN survey has found increased yields and income among organic farmers in Africa. Chris Alden reports.
Organic farming can help reduce food insecurity in Africa, according to a major UN survey of organic farming initiatives – and is “ideally suited” to smallholders and marginalised farmers who are at risk of poverty.
The survey for UNCTAD, the UN’s Conference on Trade and Development, studied 15 examples of organic and near-organic agriculture in east Africa – and found that yields increased after conversion to sustainable farming in 12 of them, and farmers’ incomes increased in 13.
It calls into question widely held assumptions about the supposed inferiority of organics in ensuring food security for the developing world.
Sophia Twarog, the UNCTAD economist who oversaw the study, said: “Farmers might be in a low-productivity situation, but if they get some knowledge about how to build up soil fertility, they can increase productivity pretty quickly.”
Organic techniques help soils retain water and become more fertile – and that allows farmers to grow crops even in marginal conditions, thus increasing food security, researchers said.
They concluded that organic and near-organic agricultural methods and technologies are suited to poor, marginalised smallholder farmers in Africa, because they “require minimal or no external inputs, use locally and naturally available materials to produce high-quality products, and encourage a whole systemic approach to farming that is more diverse and resistant to stress”.
The study covered 1.6 million farmers from seven countries, working on 1.4 million hectares of land.
Researchers based at the Manor House Agricultural Centre at Kitale, Kenya, found that some farmers’ yields doubled after they adopted composting and “double digging” – an organic method of improving deep soil – and used natural methods of pest control, such as planting sunflowers to attract the predators of crop pests.
Demand for organic products in developed countries is an added incentive. Farmers of organic cotton in Uganda commanded a 20% premium on export prices, the research found. Overall, organic exports from Uganda have increased from $6 million in 2005 to an estimated $15 million for 2008, Twarog said.
But one key area that remained, she added, was to help develop local markets for organic food, to reduce reliance on exports. While there is a small but growing organic market in east Africa, she said, the supply and the demand hadn’t found each other yet. “We need to get marketing people on board and to get them interested.”
The study lent support to Indian environmental activist Vandana Shiva’s recent call for countries to respond to the financial crisis by rebuilding diverse agriculture at a local level. She said it was a mistake to rely on industrial farming to feed the world
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