• Report shows money flowing to Africa’s agricultural development sector is mainly reinforcing damaging industrial models.
• Official says most governments still favour ‘green revolution’ approaches, with the belief that chemical-intensive, large-scale is the only way to produce sufficient food.
Image: /AGATHA NGOTHO
Experts have called for a radical shift in agricultural funding models to incorporate organic farming.
A new report shows that only a small fraction of agricultural research funding coming to Kenya and other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa is being used to support agroecology.
The report released on Wednesday by Biovision International, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems and the UK-based Institute of Development Studies, shows that money flowing to Africa’s agricultural development sector is mainly reinforcing damaging industrial models.
Biovision president Hans Herren said most governments, both in developing and developed countries, still favour ‘green revolution’ approaches, with the belief that chemical-intensive, large-scale industrial agriculture is the only way to produce sufficient food.
Herren warned that these approaches have failed ecosystems, farming communities, and an entire continent.
“With the compound challenges of climate change, pressure on land and water, food-induced health problems and pandemics such as Covid-19, we need change now. And this starts with money flowing into agroecology,” Herren said.
About 30 per cent of farms around the world have redesigned their production systems around agroecological principles, the report read.
“More than 70 per cent of projects carried out by Kenyan research institutes were focused on industrial agriculture with only 13 per cent of projects being agro-ecological. Another 13 per cent of funding is used to replace synthetic inputs with organic alternatives,” the report showed.
Currently, the top donors for Kenya are the US government, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the EU, Germany, the World Bank’s International Development Association and Japan. At Sh29.1 billion per year, Kenya’s investment in public agricultural research is the third highest in Africa.
The report found that support for agroecology is now growing across the agri-development community, particularly in light of climate change, but this has not yet translated into a meaningful shift in funding flows.
IPES-Food co-chairperson Olivia Yambi said there is a need to change funding flows and unequal power relations.
“It’s clear that in Africa as elsewhere, vested interests are propping up agricultural practices based on an obsession with technological fixes that are damaging soils and livelihoods and creating a dependency on the world’s biggest agribusinesses. Agroecology offers a way out of that vicious cycle,” she said.
She said with unsustainable forms of intensification driving negative social and environmental impacts in Africa, and the Covid-19 pandemic revealing major vulnerabilities in food supply chains, there is a need for a radical shift in agri-development priorities and the money flows behind them.
“Funding for agricultural research, education and extension through official development assistance has more or less stagnated over the last 10 years. It stands at only 14 per cent of agricultural aid in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2017,” Yambi said.
The report indicated that though countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia attract a significant amount of bilateral and multilateral agricultural aid, the resources received for agricultural research are mainly used for industrial agriculture with very limited resources going to agroecology.
Edited by R.Wamochie