The future for agriculture in Africa

This articles examines agricultural trends in Africa as well as suggestions to help solve the current food crisis. The article notes how agriculture is once more the most pressing problem in African development currently. With food production having unable to keep up with population increase and thus food prices having escalated too high thus leaving farm productivity at a quarter of the global average, 30% of the population malnourished and more than 200 million people chronically hungry.

The article also notes new players like the Kofi Annan-backed Alliance for an African Green Revolution backed by Rockefeller Foundation ($150 million). Agra is trying to combine science and research with the needs of agricultural business and farmers to provide the equivalent of the technological inputs that triggered Asia's transformation.

Other players like the International Assessment of Agriculture, Science and Technology who focus on an environmentally-friendly approach to agriculture propose, for example, paying small holders not to drain wetlands or clear forest.

Agricultural growth should to reduce poverty since African farming tends to be labour-intensive and raises returns to land. Moreover food output should push down the price of foods.

Factors hampering the second largest continet from being the breadbasket include enormous variation in both climate and soil conditions, underdeveloped infrastructure, markets and financial instruments, erratic governments influenced by financial orthodoxy of international institutions like the IMF that dried up state support for the kind of public agricultural research and support that ensures European farmers keep up to date with the latest developments. points out, 17 are in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The article ends by "... big farms and foreign capital really are the best short-term option".