Are Some Development Experts "Full of Fertilizer"?

This is very Rodrikian. It's also Sachsian:

Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts, by Celia W. Dugger, NY Times: Malawi hovered for years at the brink of famine. After a disastrous corn harvest in 2005, almost five million of its 13 million people needed emergency food aid.

But this year..., It is selling more corn to the World Food Program of the United Nations than any other country in southern Africa and is exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to Zimbabwe. In Malawi itself, the prevalence of acute child hunger has fallen sharply. ...

Farmers explain Malawi’s extraordinary turnaround ... with one word: fertilizer.

Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached.

Stung by the humiliation of pleading for charity, he led the way to reinstating and deepening fertilizer subsidies despite a skeptical reception from the United States and Britain. Malawi’s soil, like that across sub-Saharan Africa, is gravely depleted, and many, if not most, of its farmers are too poor to afford fertilizer at market prices. ...

Patrick Kabambe, the senior civil servant in the Agriculture Ministry, said the president told his advisers, “Our people are poor because they lack the resources to use the soil and the water we have.”

The country’s successful use of subsidies is contributing to a broader reappraisal of the crucial role of agriculture in alleviating poverty in Africa and the pivotal importance of public investments in the basics of a farm economy: fertilizer, improved seed, farmer education, credit and agricultural research. ...

Malawi’s leaders have long favored fertilizer subsidies, but they reluctantly acceded to donor prescriptions, often shaped by foreign-aid fashions in Washington, that featured a faith in private markets and an antipathy to government intervention.

In the 1980s and again in the 1990s, the World Bank pushed Malawi to eliminate fertilizer subsidies entirely. Its theory both times was that Malawi’s farmers should shift to growing cash crops for export and use the foreign exchange earnings to import food...

In a withering evaluation of the World Bank’s record on African agriculture, the bank’s own internal watchdog concluded in October not only that the removal of subsidies had led to exorbitant fertilizer prices in African countries, but that the bank itself had often failed to recognize that improving Africa’s declining soil quality was essential to lifting food production.

“The donors took away the role of the government and the disasters mounted,” said Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist...

Here in Malawi, deep fertilizer subsidies and lesser ones for seed, abetted by good rains, helped farmers produce record-breaking corn harvests in 2006 and 2007, according to government crop estimates. ...

“The rest of the world is fed because of the use of good seed and inorganic fertilizer, full stop,” said Stephen Carr, who has lived in Malawi since 1989, when he retired as the World Bank’s principal agriculturalist in sub-Saharan Africa. “This technology has not been used in most of Africa. The only way you can help farmers gain access to it is to give it away free or subsidize it heavily.”

“The government has taken the bull by the horns and done what farmers wanted,” he said. Some economists have questioned whether Malawi’s 2007 bumper harvest should be credited to good rains or subsidies, but an independent evaluation, financed by the United States and Britain, found that the subsidy program accounted for a large share of this year’s increase in corn production.

The harvest also helped the poor by lowering food prices and increasing wages for farm workers. Researchers at Imperial College London and Michigan State University concluded in their preliminary report that a well-run subsidy program in a sensibly managed economy “has the potential to drive growth forward out of the poverty trap in which many Malawians and the Malawian economy are currently caught.” ...

Comments

[anne]

I am thoroughly convinced that development infrastructure must include and often emphasize agriculture, not mass agriculture as in Mexico but agriculture in general. For just this reason, I am reluctant to criticize the heritage of agricultural subsidies here though I would prefer the subsidy mix be changed and that there be less emphasis on subsidizing large agriculture.

The healthier farm families are in developing Africa, the more fluid, the less chaotic, will be the movement to urban communities.

[anne]

Also:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/18/world/africa/18malawi.html

August 18, 2007

Chinese Entrepreneurs in Africa Flourish Where Others Faltered
By HOWARD W. FRENCH and LYDIA POLGREEN

LILONGWE, Malawi — When Yang Jie left home at 18, he was doing what people from China's hardscrabble Fujian Province have done for generations: emigrating in search of a better living overseas.

What set him apart was his destination. Instead of the traditional adopted homelands like the United States and Europe, where Fujian people have settled by the hundreds of thousands, he chose this small, landlocked country in southern Africa.

"Before I left China," said Mr. Yang, now 25, "I thought Africa was all one big desert." So he figured that ice cream would be in high demand, and with money pooled from relatives and friends, he created his own factory at the edge of Lilongwe, Malawi's capital. The climate is in fact subtropical, but that has not stopped his ice cream company from becoming the country's biggest.

Stories like this have become legion across Africa in the past five years or so, as hundreds of thousands of Chinese have discovered the continent, setting off to do business in a part of the world that had been terra incognita. The Xinhua News Agency recently estimated that at least 750,000 Chinese were working or living for extended periods on the continent, a reflection of deepening economic ties between China and Africa that reached $55 billion in trade in 2006, compared with less than $10 million a generation earlier.

Even when Mr. Yang arrived here in 2001, he said, he could go weeks without encountering another traveler from his homeland. But as surely as his investments in the country have prospered, he said, an increasingly large community of Chinese migrants has taken root, and now runs everything from small factories to health care clinics and trading companies.

During the previous wave of Chinese interest in Africa in the 1960s and '70s, an era of radical socialism and proclaimed third-world solidarity, European and American companies held sway over economies in most of the continent. Here and there, though, the Chinese made their presence felt, often in drably dressed, state-run work brigades that built stadiums, railroads and highways, crushing rocks and doing other labor by hand....

[Mark Thoma]

I thought the distribution method at the local level was interesting - left up to local authorities, or so it seems from the article. I couldn't figure out if this is a feature or a bug, it depends on local corruption, etc., and I don't know much about that, but the story they did tell suggests the priorities that were followed for ditribution of the subsidy:

Villagers in Chembe gathered one recent morning under the spreading arms of a kachere tree to decide who most needed fertilizer coupons as the planting season loomed. They had only enough for 19 of the village’s 53 families.

“Ladies and gentlemen, should we start with the elderly or the orphans?” asked Samuel Dama, a representative of the Chembe clan.

Men led the assembly, but women sitting on the ground at their feet called out almost all the names of the neediest, gesturing to families rearing children orphaned by AIDS or caring for toothless elders.

There were more poor families than there were coupons, so grumbling began among those who knew they would have to watch over the coming year as their neighbors’ fertilized corn fields turned deep green.

Sensing the rising resentment, the village chief, Zaudeni Mapila, rose. Barefoot and dressed in dusty jeans and a royal blue jacket, he acted out a silly pantomime of husbands stuffing their pants with corn to sell on the sly for money to get drunk at the beer hall. The women howled with laughter. The tension fled.

He closed with a reminder he hoped would dampen any jealousy.

“I don’t want anyone to complain,” he said. “It’s not me who chose. It’s you.”

[John Morrison]

It has been said that democratic countries don't have famines. I believe that the prior policy was an example of famine caused by choices imposed on a people from above or outside.

[hari]

For too long----IBRD/IMF worked against subsidized agricultural development - by introducing market mechanism.

Zambia was once not only a global supplier of copper but also self-sufficient in agriculture. It's neither today...

From last three decades T/A experience, we can say developing agricultural sector, including the essential supply of fertilizers, cannot be provided without official subsidy.

EU/US agri-sector is still highly subsidized and creates serious negotiations constraint in Doha negotiations.

When developing countries insist on subsidizing their fertilizer industry, they run into a lot of so-called foreign expert arguments why it won't work, etc.

In the long run, if food production is to be adequately supplied at the local level, it will have to be subsidized and officially sanctioned by donars also.

The OECD donars cannot propagate contradictory policies abroad compaed to their own domestic agri-subsidies.

[anne]

Additionally, what will be needed through Africa is crop insurance. Weather conditions seem to be increasingly variable or threatening, but even in the best of circumstances farming is fraught with risk and to the extent insurance is possible sustained agricultural productivity increases should be possible after subsidies. The idea is to use developed country protections of agriculture for those developing. China learned this several decades back.

[Mark Thoma]

Yes - last night, before I sort of fell asleep at my computer, I had written the following as a start to commenting on this post:

In a well-developed economy, the financial institutions would likely exist that would allow farmers to borrow enough to purchase fertilizer, seed, equipment, etc., then repay the loan once the crop is harvested, or, in the case of equipment, over even longer time periods. The variations in crop yields and prices from year to year can be smoothed with crop insurance and through other means such as locking in prices through futures markets.

But all of the needed markets and institutions to support farmers and entrepreneurs do not suddenly appear, they must be built up through time in conjunction with the economy's development. Construction of these institutions is an important long-run development goal, but until they are in place, what do you do? Market solutions don't seem to work for precisely this reason, i.e. becasue the structure to support well-functioning markets is not yet in place.

But I never quite finished it...

[Jean]

I cannot fault the fertilizer subsidies, people need to eat. But, many of my fellow gardeners know the green revolution is a sham in the long run. Chemical fertilizers do not 'improve the soil', they give the plants what they need without giving the soil what it needs. What is needed are practices which nourish the soil, and with assistance that can happen...eventually the soil will become almost totally sterile, chemical fertilizers kill the soil micro-organisms that give the plants life. We are seeing it here, our commercial veggies are being found to have fewer nutrients and antioxidants than organic. I hope they come to this view, for the long run.

[anne]

Mark Thoma:

"I thought the distribution method at the local level was interesting - left up to local authorities, or so it seems from the article."

Notice the express inclusion of women and the calling out of families to be subsidized by women, then the complaints and the gender specific illustration of Zaudeni Mapila that stemmed the complaints. We often learn of an important sense of community responsibility in southern Africa that rural women are indicative of and can be well relied on. Similarly in southern Asia.

[anne]

Conservation rightfully matters....

http://www.irinnews.org/PrintReport.aspx?ReportId=74478

September 25, 2007

Cutting Edge Farming Methods Boost Production
By IRIN

JOHANNESBURG

Conservation agriculture aims to achieve sustainable and profitable agriculture.

The basics:

Minimal soil disturbance - Farmers either use a method called basin tillage in which they dig basins that capture water and plant nutrients or they use an ox-pulled plough-like "ripper". They can also use hand planters. The ripper opens just a very small furrow in the soil's surface instead of upturning an entire field which increases moisture loss and erosion.

Exact timing for planting and effective weeding - Generally, farmers are taught to dig their basins, fertilise them with manure or manufactured fertilizer, allow the first rains to fall and collect in the basin's soils and then plant. This is a shift from the conventional methods of rushing to plant when the rains begin.

Ground cover - Instead of burning off the previous year's crop residues, farmers are encouraged to keep the soil covered which preserves moisture and serves as a mulch that enriches the soil while decreasing presence of weeds.

Crop rotation and inter-cropping - Mixing and rotating crops even within one field so that one year's maize patch will be legumes the next. Other plants can be grown in between the maize rows to provide additional ground cover.

[anne]

Mark Thoma pointed here as well....

http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=8526909C-E7F2-99DF-3A3D0C8917766EDA

August 20, 2007

Feeding the Hungry and Sick: Fish Farming Boosts Nutrition in Rural Malawi

By digging small ponds on farms in Malawi, researchers cut malnutrition in children in half—and provide a nutritional boost to families struggling with HIV/AIDS

Malawi is a landlocked country in southeastern Africa, primarily known for its tobacco. At least 90 percent of the more than 12 million Malawians are farmers, typically with small spreads of less than one hectare (roughly 2.5 acres). At least one in five adult Malawians are infected with HIV/AIDS, often rendering them incapable of heavy farm work. Researchers discovered, though, that they could boost the farmers' health—and double their income—by simply digging a 200 square-meter (about 2,000-square-foot) pond on the property and stocking it with fish.

Over the past five years, ecologist Daniel Jamu of the WorldFish Center and his colleagues in Malawi dug such ponds for 1,200 households. By stocking them with tilapias—a native African species that thrives in fish farms—they reduced childhood malnutrition in the region from 45 to 15 percent....

[donna]

I'm with Jean -- They need to teach proper soil management instead of giving fertilizer subsidies. Chemicals will work for a while, but eventually they will destroy the soil. Organic farming rebuilds the soil and is sustainable.
And that way all the farmers can do better and not just the ones that get the fertilizer.

[robertdfeinman]

I thought the lesson to be learned from the story was that eliminating the middlemen (especially from industrialized states) was the reason for the success.

Farmers should shift to growing cash crops for export and use the foreign exchange earnings to import food...

First, they grow crops they don't need, but are wanted by more developed countries, second they import what they do need making them dependent on outside suppliers. Both steps involve middlemen, who usually turn out to be multinationals.

We see the same thing in the US, the farmers get the smallest part of the income from the sale of their commodities. The largest share goes to the middlemen like Conagra or ADM followed by food processors and supermarkets. Why should anyone want to follow this market design?

Wasn't there an example just this week of tomato pickers being screwed by the bigger buyers?

Are those who promote the "free market" really driven by ideology or do they just see new opportunities to make money on the backs of poor?

[Paul G. Brown]

Jean & Donna -

It's a bit more complex than that.

Farmers have always used fertilizers and irrigation. Agricultural practice leads inevitably to declining soil quality; measured as the volume and complexity of the biological material in the soil. Go back to the early days in the fertile crescent, the Nile or the Yellow River, and you'll find farmers replenishing their fields, fallowing them and so forth.

The modern innovation is chiefly more potent sources of nitrates, which require significant capital investment in plant and equipment to produce.

In the absence of any kind of fertilizer, and given the fact that these soils are supporting so many more people than at any time in the region's history, you've got degradation. Once that starts you need to "dig your way out of a hole". As Marc points out these farmers lack access to capital to buy what they need.

But the problem is that you can't abandon modern agricultural practice. There are so many more people now, and for all the long term risks, a return to peasant farming practices will lead to famine. See Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

Micheal Pollan's _Omnivore's_Dilemna_ has a lot of interesting stuff contrasting industrial agricultural practices and the alternatives.

[Bruce Wilder]

It is idiocracy to base a political formula on subsidy=good or subsidy=bad.

The history of agriculture in the United States, and I suspect in Europe, has been one of institution-building, as Mark Thoma's unfinished introductory comment hints. Too much of libertarian politics is based on obscuring the details of how carefully and assiduously markets must be managed and nurtured, for those markets to work well.

As we have witnessed recently in the U.S. financial markets for mortgages and mortgage-backed securities, just a few years of accelerating neglect can leave markets spinning completely out of control, with catastrophic consequences. Of course, the libertarians would rather take the meterological view of the economy than accept responsibility for the consequences of their own stupidity and fecklessness.

Democratic government is simply another form of collective action -- large groups of people organizing for their own improvement. If no individual can afford fertilizer, but the collective can afford to buy fertilizer for some, then that can become a sensible path toward dynamic improvement.

There's no prize for an efficient equilibrium, which leaves everyone poor; the prizes go to investing in disequilibria that lead to better lives.

Of course, government can also be a vehicle by which a small group dominates and exploits a larger group. Even a nominally democratic government can become a vehicle by which a majority oppresses and exploits a minority.

Subsidy can be the policy of the evil, the stupid or the good. Good policy is often subtle in its design and effects, and a good policy is rarely static in its effects and consequences; policy must adapt, both to the changes in circumstances it itself engineers and to its own inevitable entropy and corruption.

The history of agricultural subsidies in the United States is an interesting one, but one, which can only be understood against an analytical appreciation of the various ways in which agricultural markets tend to break down. The Great Depression is usually treated as a financial event that commenced with the Great Crash of 1929, precipitated and aggravated by deflationary policies of the Federal Reserve. But, there's a whole other story of the Great Depression, which says that it started in the mid-1920's as vast parts of the farming sector fell into a terrible trap, taking much of rural America with it, and finally sucking the whole country into an economic vortex. The farm subsidy programs of the New Deal addressed those problems, stabilizing farm income and facilitating the more or less orderly exit of resources from the farm sector, while also permitting continued and increased investment in advancing technology and methods.

In the Nixon Administration, Earl Butz modified these obsolescent programs to favor the corporate agriculture of ADM and Cargill, and, not incidentally, the corn syrup, which has made America obese.

I don't much object, in principle, to analytical abstraction, even if someone calls it, reductionism. Analysis and abstraction, at its best, develops our understanding of what is essential. But, too many economists, some with reprehensible ideological committments, use abstraction to obscure distinctions instead of to enhance them. And, the result is the idiocracy or subsidy=bad.

[Random African]

Teaching proper soil management ?

They've been knowing about set-aside, fallowing and crop rotation. The issue is that population is increasing and the demand too. they need fertilizers to keep up. especially with the very weak soil they have outside of the Great Lakes area.

As far as Risk Insurance, I don't know how usefull that would be. Droughts are cyclical in Southern, Eastern and Western Africa (and there's none in central africa). So permanent infrastructural and technological changes can circumvene that.. You know, irrigation, resistant crops etc.. the interesting question would be: why isnt that being done ?

[Random African]

speaking of government intervention and subsidies, Morill Act ? Hatch Act ?

wouldn't similar policies be more useful ?

[hari]

Bruce - your point is well taken and you're right it takes a lot of time - sometimes generations - to build up a self-sustaining agri-sector.

My point was, as Marc pointed out with his intervention, he was already thinking along similiar lines - how to use our thinking-brains to tackle the fertilizer or any other production problem on the site or on the ground.

Foreign experts under T/A are invariably selected for a given purpose - to actually promote what's generally the accepted throughput for the project. I'm of course simplyfying it a bit - but it all boils down to a BIAS - which ends up providing export outlets to OECD fertilizer producers also.

Africa can be self-sufficient in agri-food production at a remarkable level of sustanability...the problem is it'll take a long term commitment and capacity building at grossroots level to achieve it.

China (under its centralized party directive system) has proved it can be done. India is still trying to succeed with its democratic tradition.

There's just now...a lot of traffic between Africa and China for this particular reason. China has committed a lot of grant-aid-funds to get things started and established. It's a fantastic propaganda win for China!

IMF/IBRD failed Africa with our great foreign cadre of experts. Because the experts were invariably tied to aid donors....

[Bruce Webb]

With all respect to the concept of sustainable agriculture, you have to admit that after decades of effectively industrialized agriculture that Indiana and Iowa still produce huge amounts of corn. The negative long terms cited for Malawi would seem just that, long term. If I had a baby with AIDS or was caring for an elderly parent I suspect I would look at a well meaning westerner who suggest trading crop yield for a 'tread gently on the earth' policy as if they had just landed from Mars. Lets get people fed and vaccinated. If you really want to take on Monsanto then great, do it right here in the US. Insisting that people in dire poverty in Africa simply go Green while living in a country that on balance is not Green at all is just another version of American exceptionalism.

[James Killus]

I would prefer it if people did not simply use a word like "chemical" and contrast it with another word like "organic" and then paste a simplistic narrative onto the matter.

Volcanic soils are often very fertile, for example, and they are so because of the weathering of volcanic rocks that are high in phosphate, potassium and other nutrients. It doesn't really matter whether or not a soil gets these nutrients from local rocks or rocks brought from a great distance.

What does matter is the local soil ecology, whether there is significant leaching of minerals from unprotected soils, farming practices and so forth. Besides, criticizing a policy that saves people from starving this year because it doesn't automatically save them from starving next year is a bit fey.

"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."--Terry Pratchett

[anne]

Though I know so little of soil geography, I know the United Nations and World Bank are worried about what has been declining soil-agricultural productivity in Africa and is sponsoring in-Africa research programs for several years on ways ranging to modifying soil useage techniques to seed development.

Kofi Annan worked hard for a focus on African agriculture that would try to new perspectives, and I have been seeing and hearing local reports that are considerably encouraging. Reports ranging from Rwanda to Kenya to Tanzania and here is Malawi.

[anne]

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/12/ending-famine-s.html

Brad DeLong:

"Alas, Celia Dugger doesn't tell us (a) how large Malawi's fertilizer subsidies are, or (b) who pays for them. So it's very hard to assess what is going on."

Mark Thoma:

A few quick notes from the article:

"Last year, roughly half the country’s farming families received coupons that entitled them to buy two 110-pound bags of fertilizer, enough to nourish an acre of land, for around $15 — about a third the market price. The government also gave them coupons for enough seed to plant less than half an acre."

...

"The Department for International Development in Britain contributed $8 million to the subsidy program last year. Bernabé Sánchez, an economist with the agency in Malawi, estimated the extra corn produced because of the $74 million subsidy was worth $120 million to $140 million.

" 'It was really a good economic investment,' he said.

"The United States, which has shipped $147 million worth of American food to Malawi as emergency relief since 2002, but only $53 million to help Malawi grow its own food, has not provided any financial support for the subsidy program, except for helping pay for the evaluation of it."

[anne]

More definition of the program is needed, and I am cautious over reticence of America in appreciating the program, as though we alone are allowed to subsidize agricultural production, while the World Bank is pleased but already wondering when subsidies will not gone. So, caution is called for but my guess is that Malawi will not be easily swayed having found success.

[Bob]

"…But the problem is that you can't abandon modern agricultural practice. There are so many more people now…."

This means you have to bring population size and food production into alignment under conditions of agricultural practice that permit sustainability and a reasonable quality of life.

[anne]

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/12/ending-famine-s.html

Robert Waldmann:

It seems to me that the total cost was stated

"The Department for International Development in Britain contributed $8 million to the subsidy program last year. Bernabé Sánchez, an economist with the agency in Malawi, estimated the extra corn produced because of the $74 million subsidy was worth $120 million to $140 million."

It also seems that most of the money was Malawian. The US did not contribute and the World Bank opposes subsidies.

Now the article stresses that there were good rains, so the high return is clearly a high very risky return. However, it seems that farmers could repay loans by giving a share of their crops after harvest in exchange for the fertilizer.

That would make the program relief of a liquidity constraint, not a give away. Also note that you can't drink fertilizer (seems money to alcohol is a big problem there).

We know that the market system is not good at lending small amounts to poor people. A public program with access to uhm public means of collection of debts, could solve eliminate an inefficiency.

[anne]

Robert Waldmann further supports Mark Thoma's reading adding what I had preferred not to think, that the World Bank offers no evidence of having supported the subsidies. I am disappointed, but Waldmann's reading seems preferable to my hope.

[anne]

"But Alan Eastham, the American ambassador to Malawi, said in a recent interview that the subsidy program had worked 'pretty well,' though it displaced some commercial fertilizer sales.

" 'The plain fact is that Malawi got lucky last year,' he said. 'They got fertilizer out while it was needed. The lucky part was that they got the rains.'

"And the World Bank now sometimes supports the temporary use of subsidies aimed at the poor and carried out in a way that fosters private markets.

"Here in Malawi, bank officials say they generally support Malawi’s policy, though they criticize the government for not having a strategy to eventually end the subsidies, question whether its 2007 corn production estimates are inflated and say there is still a lot of room for improvement in how the subsidy is carried out.

" 'The issue is, let’s do a better job of it,' said David Rohrbach, a senior agricultural economist at the bank."

This is not the response I want to hear from America or the World Bank. We have a lunatic's foreign policy intrasigency, and the Bank must reflect that, but there have to be other aid sources and we help in highlighting the issue.

[Random African]

"Kofi Annan worked hard for a focus on African agriculture that would try to new perspectives, and I have been seeing and hearing local reports that are considerably encouraging. Reports ranging from Rwanda to Kenya to Tanzania and here is Malawi."

yeah, but except for Rwanda who has one of the richets soils on earth and has very iteresting policies, many of those stories aren't necessarily sustained. people celebrate good harvests as proof of the success of a policy but the proof would be more relevant if it was a good harvest in a bad year (drought+locust).
but like i said, all those countries are still incredibly vulnerable to recurring externalities and resolving that should be a priority.

[Mike Huben]

Jean and Donna: tropical soils don't behave the same way temperate soils do. "Building up the soil with organic matter" may not work in the tropics and subtropics: breakdown of organic matter in those soils can be far more rapid.

[James Killus]

Technically, Malawi is largely sub-tropical, though there are regions that receive in excess of 100 inches a year (in the highland areas), but the lowlands average around 30 inches or rain a year, which makes it susceptible to drought. This level of rainfall will not cause tropics level leaching, so organic matter in the soil can serve as for nutrient storage, unlike true tropical zones.

Nevertheless, good farming practices are good farming practices; on of the advantages of a well run government subsidy program is that it can serve as a conduit for information about best practice. Whether or not it is used for that purpose depends in part on whose interests are being served, eh?

[Robinia]

Precisely, James Killus. Agree with Random African that the right agricultural development regime to promote must, in reality, be suited to the particular conditions of soil and climate (and culture, I'd add) in a particular country. The donors are very often at fault for trying to use cookie-cutter approaches that are, at base, most interested in selling donor countries' agricultural implements and inputs, and developing cheap sources of luxury ag crops (coffee, cut flowers, out-of-season produce) for developed nations, rather than feeding local people through local efforts. Agree also with Random African that the Hatch or Morrill acts are a better model to emmulate than the Earl Butz-era ag subsidies of the US.

As far as the issue of organic or sustainable ag methods vs industrialized ag models: it has been disproven that the full-fledged industrial-ag model is most productive of food crop yields over even relatively short long-term periods (50 years) when compared to organic system best practices under US conditions (soils less fragile than most of Africa). Fallacy to believe otherwise, left over from "green revolution" hype-- most people "know" the wrong thing on this. But, this system in Malawi is not the full-scale industrial model-- the addition of a modest amount of chemical fertilizer will not bring on all the soil degradation and negative externalities (soil compaction, water pollution, dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, etc.) that are associated with subsidized corn-growing in the US. The small farm scale, conservation ploughing techniques, and eschewing (or not being able to afford) pesticide use mitigate against the worst effects of industrialized ag systems on the US model.

As per Bruce Wilder's post, this seems to be an example of locally-determined collective action, in keeping with local needs as currently presenting. Researchers and extension efforts grounded in the complexities of the local situation (back to the appropriateness of Morrill and Hatch act-like programs) can catalyze this kind of thing... very interesting what Anne wrote about the potential of fish ponds, for instance. Microlending institution development (and, yeah, any village cheif knows to give the money to the women, 'cuz the men will just drink it up) has a role here, too. And risk mitigation consistent with local conditions (might be crop insurance, might be irrigation infrastructure, might be seed-grain banks...).

Bruce Webb misses it entirely regarding the difference between Africa and Illinois and Indianna-- the same rate of topsoil loss that is accepted as just part of doing business in the American Midwest (where agriculture has been practiced for only a couple of centuries) would make most African places (where intensive agriculture has been practiced for Millennia) sterile deserts.

[bakho]

Crops take nutrients from the soil. When those crops are harvested and shipped off site, the nutrients go with them. Fertilization is required to replace those nutrients, especially if large quantities of food (nutrients) are shipped off site to cities. There has to be some method to return nutrients to the soils or they will be depleted. Soil erosion in the Midwest US is still too high but has been much reduced by conservation tillage (no-till) practices.

Fertilization is an easy way to increase agricultural productivity without making other major cultural changes. A problem in poor countries with too little worker training is finding jobs for those whose labor is freed by increased agricultural productivity.

It is myth that the old farming practices in the US were better than modern practices. Many of the "old" techniques led to massive soil erosion, nutrient depletion, destruction of watersheds and wetlands and massive environmental damage. The "old" practices gave us the "Dust Bowl". That amount of damage is no longer acceptable practice.

[Robinia]

Nobody I know suggests a return to Dust Bowl agriculture. But, there is not just one modern agricultural approach. Part of the fallacy involved in maintaining the supremacy of the industrial agriculture regime is suggesting that sustainable agricultural methods are a rejection of modernity. Nothing could be further from the case-- they are an incorporation of more science-- particularly more ecolological and soil science-- into farming methods. And, it is unequivocally true that modern sustainable agriculture practices can and do result in higher yields than "conventional" agriculture approaches. Which is not even to consider the coming massive run-up in the price of petroleum-based inputs, and without considering any external ecological services benefit of sustainable systems due to less greenhouse gas emmission.

Read about this USDA-funded research at: http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/science/home.html

Just because it is good for Cargill does NOT mean it is good for the US.... or the world. If we are talking world hunger, we'd best be sure that we are listening to real science, not company propaganda or "bought science."

[bakho]

Subsistence farming is just that- subsistence. High income requires high productivity per person. If production is limited by farm size, then income will also be limited because production is too low. Moderate sized farms in the US are only viable because most of those farmers have a source of off-farm income or an operation that adds value by processing the raw commodity. Small plot farming has to produce a high value cash crop or be only a supplement to real income. This is why farmers in Afghanistan grow opium poppies. Small plot farming that produces small amounts of low value commodities cannot generate enough income. The economics are not there.

Alleviating poverty requires moving many workers from low productivity jobs (such as small plot, labor intensive agriculture) to jobs with higher productivity. It is this economics that has led to the increased size of farms in the US. Production per farmer increases because the amount of land managed by one farmer increases. There is a reason why fewer people live today in some parts of the Great Plains of the US than lived there 200 years ago.

A focus on small plot farming can not work as economic development in any country, even developing ones. The productivity from small plot farms alone will never be high enough to generate non-poverty income. Fertilizer subsidy works because it increases productivity.

Current modern agricultural methods are much more sustainable than methods used in the past. The system continues to improve especially since emphasis has shifted from primary focus on yield to include more environmental stewardship. Improvements are continually being made in agricultural practices with respect to environmental stewardship and sustainability. Adoption has been and will probably continue to be gradual and continuous. Most farmers are cautious and slow to adopt until new methodology is proven. There is always a time lag in transferring agricultural practices from small scale research plots to larger scales. New problems are typically encountered because because different factors scale according to different functions.

Sustainability is a goal, not a method. There is not one type of agriculture that is called "conventional agriculture" and another type that is called "sustainable". A goal is to get US conventional agriculture to become more sustainable. There is no "conspiracy" to keep new methods out. Lysenko does not work for Cargill.

[Paul G. Brown]

Robinia -

Yeah. I'm familiar with the evidence supporting the conclusion that 'sustainable' agricultural practices produce higher yields than 'industrial'. But it's not just a case of yield per acre. It's also an economic question of capital return.

Now - you can argue that sustainable practices are 'better' at factoring in the real costs of agriculture. Which might be true. Trouble is, that's necessary, but not sufficient, to make the transition.

[James Killus]

I remember seeing a study quite a while ago that showed Amish farms having a higher per acre profitability than corporate agribusiness farms. Amish methods trade a slightly lower per acre productivity (and a notably higher labor input) for a much lower capital cost and external expense burden.

Of course, corporate interests have strong interests in pushing their methods upon the entire world; the Amish just want to (mostly) be left alone. I suspect that the same might be said of the farmers in Malawi. Isn't it interesting how "laissez faire" always translates to letting large and powerful organizations meddle in the affairs of smaller and weaker ones? One might almost think that much of economic and political ideology is merely a subterfuge.

[Random African]

Of course the amish have more profitability since they make higher-end products consumed by the few people who can afford those. But high end agriculture is not what feeds the world, it's the cheap industrial stuff. And Malawi really aims for that: feeding its population. And those farmers themselves think chemical fertilizers are a good way to achieve that, just like they would buy tractors if they could afford them.
But of course, that wouldn't fit in one's luddite fantasies.

[MrK]

Jean,

" We are seeing it here, our commercial veggies are being found to have fewer nutrients and antioxidants than organic. I hope they come to this view, for the long run. "

You are completely correct. We need to have organic commercial African agriculture.

There is more than enough land to compensate any lower productivity per hectare - which is the charge levied against organic agriculture.

However, agriculture that is sustainable, that is driven by the people themselves instead of agribusiness corporations, is the way to.

James Killus,

" One might almost think that much of economic and political ideology is merely a subterfuge. "

It is. If you go behind the headlines in Zimbabwe, you see that the MDC is an organisation of former white landowners and political opportunists from the ZANU-PF, who want to destroy the government and replace it with western corporations. This is why they get so much support from the UK and US.

I am finding it harder to believe that people whose interest is profits, can have any real ideology other than getting money and power. The MDC are neoliberal through and through.

The problem with neoliberalism is that after withdrawing government services, there are no measures in place to prevent 'market failure', which is the absence of any services provided by either government or business. Not everything the government does now can be done profitably by business - if that business even exists in the first place, and in Africa, there is a huge absence of a private sector. The eventual automatic creation of which is another neoliberal 'act of faith'.

And in the context of neocolonialism, the destruction of African governments in the name of neoliberal ideology ('privatisation') and the destruction of African governments to undermine them both to set a bad example and prevent their support for liberation movements by Apartheid South African and Rhodesia under Ian Smith, don't look so different. In fact, they are championed by many of the same people.

(In the MDC, Roy Bennet was a former member of the Selous Scouts, David Coltart was as police officer in the BSAP, etc. Tony Blair's government is full of former rhodesians, like David Millibrand. And now Tiny Rowland's LonRho [London-Rhodesia] has set up a $100 million fund called LonZim, which will buy up the Zimbabwean state assets that the MDC will 'privatise').