africa needs a green revolution

Africa’s peasants are migrating to the cities in huge numbers because it is becoming increasingly difficult to survive on their farms. Meanwhile, very few are finding productive jobs in the cities and most are getting poorer. Africa’s dependance on concessionary food import is growing and these trends can have catastrophic consequences for the continent’s poor people. Current situation in Africa bears some striking similarities in Asia in the early 1960s. Faced with worsening food shortages and slow agricultural growth, Asian governments started spending 10-15% of their total budget on agriculture each year because they realised that rapid agricultural growth was a key step along the path to industrialisation. They invested on agricultural research, irrigation, rural roads and power.  Many of these interventions were targeted to small farms, who enthusiastically adopted the new technologies and typically outperformed larger farms. These policies inspired a green revolution that helped transform Asia. Africa, in contrast, has failed to do the same. For over 40 years African governments have spent less than half the share spent in Asia, and little has been done  for agricultural development. Africa has only exploited a fraction of its irrigation potential and the density of rural roads is very low. Farmers rely almost exclusively on rain-fed farming and face exceptionally high transport and marketing costs. Instead, yields could dramatically increase if farmers had access to improved technologies and markets and if goverments provided more supportive policies for agriculture. An African green revolution would generate many productive jobs in agriculture and provide a leg up out of poverty for many. This would help creating allied industries and lowering food prices, and, finally, would prevent migration of millions of peasants off the land. Two risks, however, should be taken into account: a) the spread of green revolution agriculture may affect both agricultural biodiversity and wild biodiversity; b) the consumption of the chemicals and pesticides used to kill pests by humans in some cases may be increasing the likelihood of cancer.
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