{"id":2214,"date":"2019-08-31T16:34:05","date_gmt":"2019-08-31T15:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsm.prolerat.org\/?p=2214"},"modified":"2019-08-31T16:34:05","modified_gmt":"2019-08-31T15:34:05","slug":"africa-can-it-help-feed-us-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/africa-can-it-help-feed-us-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa: Can it help feed us all?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Africa\u2019s Potential Bread Basket<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018It is people who make the world: the bush has wounds and scars.\u2019<\/em> \u2013 a Malawian proverb<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Global\n food security is one of the most serious concerns of our time. The \nglobal food system is at the root of many environmental and health \ncrises. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humans have made the African savanna their home since the dawn of time and have greatly affected the environment. People\n in pre-colonial Africa were engaged in hunting and gathering, \nagriculture, mining and simple manufacturing. Agriculture involved most \npeople and there were many different systems of agricultural production \nin pre-colonial Africa, to suit the variety of conditions the people \nfaced. Without modern machinery and modern inputs such as fertilisers \nand pesticides they were not, however, able to transform nature on a \nlarge scale and were to a large extent at the mercy of the land and the \nweather. Intensive agriculture makes it possible for populations to \ngrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today,\n Africa does not grow enough food to feed its own population and African\n countries have tended to satisfy their increasing demand through \nexpensive imports from the global market. The agriculture sector in many\n African countries is in a perilous state. It\u2019s a situation that results\n in discontent and unrest. It is stating the obvious that the solution \nto the food crisis in Africa is for Africa to grow more food. Africa \ndoes in fact have the ability to grow enough food not only to feed \nitself, but also to help feed the rest of the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Africa\n is host to 60 percent of the world\u2019s uncultivated arable land, yet \ncurrently spends tens of billions of dollars per year on importing food.\n This figure is projected to shoot up to US$110 billion by 2025. Africa \nis importing what it could actually be producing. African countries \nexport raw goods outside the continent to be processed into consumer \nproducts imported back into Africa for purchase. In essence, Africa is \nexporting jobs outside the continent, and contributing to Africa\u2019s \npoverty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n African Guinea Savannah is one of the largest underused agricultural \nland reserves in the world with less than 10 percent used to produce \ncrops. An area twice as large as that planted to wheat worldwide \u2013 a \nswathe of land with potential fertility that runs from the coasts of \nGuinea, Sierra Leone and Senegal eastwards to the Ethiopian border, then\n veers southeast to cover parts of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and the Congo\n before spreading across the continent over large areas of Angola, \nZambia, Malawi, Mozambique and western Madagascar. Population\n figures are hard to come by when looking at the savanna, ranging from \ntwo to over 100 people per square mile and roughly 45 percent live in \nurban centres.
\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n Guinea Savannah zone covers about 600 million hectares, of which about \n400 million hectares could be used for crop agriculture. Currently, less\n than 10 percent of this area is being cultivated. This region has the \npotential to feed Africa and send produce elsewhere. It features a warm \ntropical climate with 800\u20131,200 millimeters of rainfall annually, \nallowing for a growing period of 150\u2013210 days. The variable annual \nrainfall and poor soil quality make this a challenging agro-ecological \nenvironment. It supports three main farming systems: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(a) the root crop farming system; (b) the mixed cereal-root crop farming system; and (c) the maize mixed farming system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All\n have potential for increasing agricultural production. The zone is one \nof the major under-used resources in Africa. It accounts for about \none-third of the land area in Sub-Saharan Africa and underpins the \nlivelihoods of more than one-quarter of all African farmers. Maize is \nthe most important cereal in most African countries and also serves as a\n staple food source for some 200 million people in the developing \ncountries. People have farmed grains in this area for centuries. One \ncould try to enhance productivity through increasing use of manure to \nbetter fertilize their fields. Or to be mixing creatively different \ncrops together that complement one another, so mixing legumes with \ngrains, for instance \u2014 the legumes fix nitrogen and increase grain \nproductivity. But one that is not so dependent on fossil fuel inputs \nfrom outside of the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the African Development Bank: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018There is therefore absolutely no reason for Africa to be a food-importing region. Africa has huge potential in agriculture, but, as Dr. Borlaug used to say, nobody eats potential\u2026 Unlocking that potential must start with the savannas of Africa.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There\n is indeed no \u2018absolute reason\u2019 why Africa couldn\u2019t produce enough food \nto feed its inhabitants, but there is a practical one: capitalism and \nits production for profit instead of to meet people\u2019s need for food (and\n everything else).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However,\n there is a cautionary note. When land is cleared and cultivated, carbon\n dioxide is released into the atmosphere from the soil, and the plants, \nshrubs and trees that grow there. The more densely the land is packed \nwith vegetation, the more carbon is released when it is cleared. \nNevertheless, if even a small fraction is turned into farm-land \u2013 some \n16 million hectares \u2013 is transformed, it could set Africa up to decrease\n dependence on food from elsewhere, feed itself and contribute to \nfeeding the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research\n scientists are studying groundwater resources in order to understand \nthe renewability of the source and how people can use it sustainably \ntowards a green revolution in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We\n don\u2019t want to repeat some of the mistakes during the green revolution \nthat has taken place in Asia, where people opted to use groundwater, \nthen groundwater was overused and we ended up with a problem of \nsustainability,\u2019 said Richard Taylor, the principal investigator and a \nprofessor of Hydrogeology at University College London. Scientists are \nlearning how and when different major aquifers recharge, how they \nrespond to different climatic shocks and extremes, and they are already \nlooking for appropriate ways of boosting groundwater recharge for more \nsustainability. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using\n the Guinea Savannah predominantly for agriculture will inevitably, as \nall agriculture does, bring some environmental costs, but agriculture \ncan also benefit the environment. This ecosystem is delicate and it \nneeds to be kept in balance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People\n attribute Africa\u2019s problem to overpopulation yet most parts of Africa \nare not densely populated at all with much lower density rates than many\n states in America. Yet there are those in the ecological movement who \ntend to focus on the population issue and concentrate on family \nplanning. Hunger is not Africa\u2019s inescapable destiny and it can be \neliminated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\n is no such thing as benevolent capitalism. Socialists know that under \ncapitalism attempts to change the way food is produced so as to fill the\n empty bellies of Africans will be thwarted by the international trading\n system and foiled by the national ruling class. But this land is our \nland and should be used to feed the people and not the greed of \nshareholders in Wall Street, the City of London or Shanghai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\n is required is the democratic self-empowerment of the workers to \nreplace the exploitative global economic system of capitalism by \nsocialism so as to be in a position to genuinely satisfy the food needs \nof the people. This is no fantasy but a practical, revolutionary \nproposition to live in a world without waste, want or war, and in which \neach person benefits from sharing in the fruits of the Earth. Hunger is not Africa\u2019s inescapable destiny but it can only be eliminated by ending the capitalist system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALJO<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa\u2019s Potential Bread Basket \u2018It is people who make the world: the bush has wounds and scars.\u2019 \u2013 a Malawian proverb Global food security is one of the most serious concerns of our time. The global food system is at the root of many environmental and health crises. Humans have made the African savanna their…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}