“POVERTY in developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, can be eradicated-not just alleviated but eradicated-by enhancing the productivity of smallholder agriculture.”So says Barbara van Koppen, a senior researcher at the International Water Management Institute (Africa Regional Office) of Pretoria, South Africa in relation to the contribution of agriculture to economic development.
She equates agriculture to an engine that brings forth economic growth. “In such a case, agricultural growth serves as an engine for overall economic growth,” she says in her paper titled ‘Water Management for Poverty Eradication’.
It is published in an edition of the Institute’s journal ‘Issues in Water Management’, a compilation of essays by lead scientists in water management and agriculture.
She says this win-win scenario of poverty eradication through agricultural and overall growth has been successful throughout history, and continues to be valid today justifying the need to invest in agriculture especially proper water management.
“(This) provides a strong justification for investing in further water development for small-scale agriculture…improved water control increases yields and cropping intensities, reduces the risk of crop failure and prevents soil erosion,” she explains.
Koppen reckons the fact that this path of poverty eradication has been clouded by misconceptions in many countries in which more attention is paid to other sectors than agriculture on ground that the former contribute more to their development.
She identifies the belief that an engine for economic growth lies outside agriculture as a major fallacy that prevents clear insight as far as the contribution of agricultural growth to poverty eradication is concerned.
Under this notion, she says, it is assumed that off-farm enterprises, industries, trade, and services are regarded as the more important sectors.
However, human history proves that this assumption is wrong. Past economic growth in high-income countries, and the recent growth in the Asian Tigers (such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, or parts of China) were typically preceded by, and based upon, agricultural growth.
“Therefore, as economists have pointed out for a number of decades, agriculture is the actual engine of growth,” she says.
The scientist says that higher farm productivity enhances producers’ own incomes, in cash and in kind, and creates demand for agricultural labour.
Growth is multiplied in three ways; first, through backward linkages with an agricultural input supply, second, through forward linkages with agro-processing industries, transportation and trade and third, through consumer linkages when enhanced rural prosperity leads to new demands for goods and services from rural and urban providers.
Moreover, production of export crops brings in foreign exchange while, last but not least, the availability of food at relatively low prices enables a growing labour force (employed in expanding secondary and tertiary sectors) to feed itself at modest wage rates.
“Agriculture is a dynamic engine of growth and an important contributor to welfare in later stages of economic development,” Koppen emphasizes as she enlists oil or mineral-based economies as a few exceptions in which agriculture may lag behind.
Sad enough many developing countries especially in Africa, whose economies are neither mineral nor oil-based, have neglected the agricultural sector forcing the largest portion of their populations to swim in abject poverty with no hope of coming-out.
African farmers lack access to good seed, affordable and timely fertilisers, and finance services and besides, the infrastructure that could support agricultural production is also in a dilapidated state.
Some 95 percent of African agriculture is still dependent on rains, and farmers lose an average of 40 percent of their crops after harvest, according to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
African agriculture has virtually failed to pull out from abject poverty millions of farmers in the continent and the situation is worsening almost by day with agriculture being reduced into nothing other than a typical guess work.
Recently the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who heads AGRA, noted that there had been 30 years of silent hunger in Africa, whereby farmers exported food in the late 1960s but now only produced a quarter of the world average per acre.
Though many factors contribute to this state of affairs, poor or lack of investment in the sector plays a big role.
Many countries except a few like South Africa and Egypt pay little or no attention to the sector despite it being their economies’ mainstay employing more than 80 percent of their population.
Sometime in August this year, a Member of Parliament, Kingunge Ngombale-Mwiru, while discussing the proposed budget for the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Cooperatives urged the government to give agriculture its due respect bearing in mind its contribution to the economy.
According to him, agriculture is the second most important sector after education in bringing about sound economic change and improving people’s lives.
“It gives us food. It employs 80 percent of our people and it’s the source of raw materials for our industries. But still it’s the sector that seems to be neglected,” the legislator pointed out.
Tanzania’s agriculture has been suffocated by poor investment forcing farmers to continue relying on crude tools such as hand hoes and rain-fed agriculture which greatly limit their productivity.
This is despite the fact that Tanzania is ranked third next to Sudan and Ethiopia in terms of livestock population in the whole of Africa, having about 40 million animals that could be used in boosting our agriculture.
The country, which is also richly endowed with many big water bodies, still relies on rain-fed agriculture for over 90 percent.
Recently, the Minister for Water and Irrigation, Prof. Mark Mwandosya told the parliament in Dodoma that out of the 29.4 million hectares suitable for irrigation farming in the country, it is only 289,245 hectares that are under that kind of farming so far.
Small scale farming which is dominant in the country, has totally failed to fully utilize the large land resource available.
The 2001 Agricultural Sector Development Strategy says that out of the 44 million hectares classified as suitable for agriculture, only 10.1 million hectares or just 23 percent are under cultivation.
This means that much of arable land in the country is still lying uselessly idle.
A report by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security titled ‘Agricultural Mechanisation in Tanzania’ of 2005 acknowledges that improvement in the agricultural sector is paramount in poverty reduction.
“Commercialising smallholder agriculture and accelerating its growth rate is essential in increasing agricultural production as a means of pulling the majority of the rural poor out of abject poverty,” it says.
The report, which was prepared by one R. M. Shetto of the ministry’s Irrigation and Technical Services Division, adds that given the generally abundant land resource, efforts to increase agricultural production should include both technologies to expand utilized land area and intensification of the existing cultivated areas.
“This may be achieved through mechanisation and adoption of other improved technologies such as improved seed, use of fertilizers, agro-processing and accessibility to markets,” it further adds.
It explains that agricultural mechanisation includes three main power sources i.e. human, animal and mechanical.
“Under the tropical heat, a healthy adult using a hand hoe can work about 0.5 hectare per season thus limiting the area under cultivation to 2 hectares only for an average family of four adults,” the report reads in part adding:
“On the other hand, a family owning a pair of draught animals can manage 5-8 hectares per season while a 60-70 horse power tractor can manage more than 80 hectares in a season.”
Thus, it says, mechanisation enhances human capacity, leading to intensification and increased productivity as a result of timely planting, weeding, harvesting, post harvesting handling and accessibility to markets.
It therefore has the potential to turn idle land into productive one for national economic growth, food self-sufficiency, industrial growth and employment, leading to poverty reduction, if not eradication.
“Tanzania needs to mount a long-term effort to develop a modern agriculture, mechanisation playing a leading role,” it concludes.
Heavy investment could be made possible though government subsidies and formation of strong farmers’ cooperatives or SACCOs that would enable farmers purchase things like tractors and also encouraging financial institutions to support agriculture.
It is important to appreciate the current government’s determination in improving the sector which has led to the budgetary allocation to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Cooperatives to rise from Tshs. 379 billion in the previous year to Tshs. 460 billion this financial year (an increase of 21 percent).
But it is worth noting that much is still to be desired for the sector to improve and boost the country’s economy and people’s lives.
In countries like UK, US and Chine, to mention but a few, it is agriculture which laid foundation for their industrial revolutions and general economic development where they are today and todate, they still heavily support their agricultural sectors.
With all these in mind, it is obvious that there is no any other better option that could bring about prosperity to all Tanzanians than agriculture and it’s upon the government to prioritize improvement of the sector if it’s really committed in kicking poverty out of the country.
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