First, an interview with Roy Steiner at the Gates Foundation about the African green revolution. Roy helped arrange funding for Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency, where I used to work, and I was impressed by the breadth of his knowledge and experience. He makes the point that using modern technology in agriculture is much more controversial in Europe and North America than in most of Africa, where it seems unfair to deny technologies to farmers that have been shown to work elsewhere. Indeed, if we want to prevent large-scale land grabs, we need to help smallholder farmers access modern technology so they can compete with the commercial investors.
Second, a report on a study that suggests inorganic fertilizer can double cocoa yields in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. Cocoa trees live for 25-30 years, but without fertilizer, their yields start to decline after 10-15 years, increasing the risk that farmers will abandon their trees and clear forest to plant new ones, which gives them a one-of boost in yields from the virgin soil. If cocoa farmers have access to fertilizer, on the other hand, they can extend the lifetime of their existing farms and use the rest of their land for something else – growing food, for instance, or preserving the forest for hunting and cultural/ritual use. Far from being environmentally destructive, therefore, measured fertilizer use could be beneficial to both farmers and the forest.
Third, a new report from Dalberg Development Advisors on smallholder agricultural finance. They estimate the global demand for this kind of finance at $450 billion, while smallholder-focused financial institutions have disbursed only around $350 million – less than 0.1% of the demand. However, this is almost certainly an underestimate of the supply of agricultural finance. It would be useful to attempt an estimate of the total loans made by government-linked agricultural banks and cooperatives, who have two advantages over the private sector: they can access cheap loans from international financial institutions, and they can draw on deep knowledge of their clients from town chiefs, electoral rolls and. Their disadvantage is that it is often harder for them to collect repayments, especially at election time. Still, I feel it would be a mistake to ignore the contribution they make: in Ethiopia, only commercial farmers were able to use commercial banks, while smallholders relied on cooperatives and state-linked microfinance banks.
