Over the last several years, agriculture has stormed onto the climate agenda. And it’s about time. Policymakers, donors, and investors are seeing the wisdom of investing in soil restoration, agroecology, agroforestry, and biodiversity, among other regenerative actions. And yet, what we have learned from our African colleagues is that without simultaneously investing in healthy local markets, these investments in sustainable production are likely to fall short.

Local markets are climate resilient. Not only are these markets a good fit for smallholder farmers who practice agroecology, but they are also more equitable and accessible for women and youth. Strengthening local economic markets and smallholders’ access to them creates a mutually generative cycle of food and ecological resilience—essential to strong local incomes and livelihoods. Remember that family farms continue to feed 70 percent of the world’s population. Specialty crop export and global food trade are still only a minor part of the world’s food story.

Local markets have two distinct advantages in accelerating climate solutions; one is their proximity to consumers, decreasing the miles that food has to travel to get to market, a net savings; two is that increasing agroecological production will enhance soil fertility, capturing carbon, and decrease the use of carbon intensive inputs such as artificial fertilizers and chemical inputs. When considering the amount of food and land under climate resilient food production, the carbon reduction is significant.

Over the past five years, the Agroecology Fund, through a grants program and learning community, has been gleaning insights from African networks and farmers’ organizations about the role of territorial markets to amplify agroecology. With the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) and over a dozen farmers’ organizations, we have seen how smallholder farmers are building local economies that strengthen equitable relationships and climate resilience. Some of the key lessons we learned include:

Local consumers want local, healthy produce. There is a strong market demand for local products from agroecological farms and producers, including green leafy vegetables, fruits, grains, small livestock, and native seeds. Local manufacturing of bio-inputs including fertilizers, bio- pesticides, and inoculants is booming. These markets are large and important to local producers. Strong markets for agroecology mean that farmers are incentivized to practice climate resilient agriculture. An unpublished study of cooperatives and entrepreneurs in Senegal and Mali by Groundswell International noted that local demand for healthy foods is significant and growing. Part of a larger consumer movement led by farmers and consumers, the My Food is African campaign launched by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa has spread across the continent of Africa in national campaigns for healthy, local, and culturally relevant foods to be produced, celebrated and eaten regularly. Regional and national African leaders have taken up the cause by praising local dishes and demonstrating national pride in local foods as they recognize the costs associated with subsidizing imported staples.

Women farmers have the most to gain from local markets. African women and youth have the most to gain from investment in local markets and local entrepreneurship. Examples abound of growing healthy businesses and value-added production that rely upon women’s agricultural knowledge and practices. Climate resilience requires broad participation from the most vulnerable farmers who are rural women dependent on natural resources for their well-being. In Senegal, a cooperative of women called We Are the Solution has created a fast selling brand of bouillon mix, Sum Pak, made from locally available ingredients without chemicals or preservatives. Chefs and home cooks praise the mix which echoes village flavors and offers consumers low and no sodium lines capitalizing on doctors’ orders.

Finance can be inclusive and accessible. The missing middle is a myth. Smallholder agroecological farmers are not being supported at any level of finance. Many policymakers write convincingly about the missing middle in agribusiness. They assume that microfinance is addressing smallholder farmers’ needs and that larger investors are picking up opportunities over US$100,000. This is not true, less than 15 percent of smallholders practicing any kind of farming are accessing finance below US$100,000. Microfinance is often not being used by smallholder farmers because of high interest rates and repayment durations that do not match agricultural cycles.

Smallholder farmers engaging in agroecology need what regenerative farmers in the U.S. are requesting: low interest, long-term patient capital to engage in both transition to agroecology as well as building up aggregation, processing and marketing of their products. Financing infrastructure such as light farm machinery, storage and refrigeration in the US$2,000 to the US$20,000 range creates new opportunities. This infrastructure enables smallholders to flourish and serve local markets that increase the circulation of local, healthy food. Climate resilience requires thinking about financing the transition in different ways from traditional finance—which has exacerbated inequalities. In Uganda, the purchase of a grinding machine by Eastern and Southern Africa Small-scale Farmer Forum, Uganda (ESAFF) to produce high quality peanut butter enabled a woman’s cooperative to increase the value of their peanut crop 2.7 times. In Cameroon, Service d’Appui aux Initiatives Locales de Développement (SAILD), completed a market analysis that demonstrated the viability of replacing imported wheat flour with local tuber flours grown agroecologically. Indigenous local foods are the present and the future but require financing to play their critical role in food systems.

Local markets are diverse and flourishing. Farmers’ organizations are working alongside cooperatives, associations, entrepreneurs and local governments to develop multiple markets and channels for smallholders’ produce. This includes providing food to territorial markets as well as developing specialized markets, creating on-line digital markets through websites and apps, creating opportunities for bulk purchases and exploring regional markets. Innovative initiatives that connect communities in direct purchasing agreements between producers and purchasers that began during COVID are continuing with great success.

The Kenyan Peasants League worked to pair peri-urban communities of 100 families with direct purchases from smallholder farmers in villages to make regular purchases of food, small livestock and farm inputs directly. Cost savings from shared transportation and the absence of regional market costs enabled many groups to participate. Government procurement programs and interregional trade among African countries remain relatively under-developed strategies with great promise.

Farmers’ organizations are essential. Incubator programs reach small cohorts of farmer entrepreneurs, but community-rooted farmers’ organizations can build trust among a network of small enterprises by building associations and cooperatives to strengthen their voice and action. These cooperatives and associations, supported by representative farmer organizations and networks, have traditions and practices of rotating credit funds that are equitable and provide access to appropriate finance. By working with existing women-led farmer cooperatives, Concertation Nationale des Organisations Paysannes au Cameroun (CNOP CAM) has introduced and funded new agroecological businesses. Ongoing relationships and savings and credit programs, often managed by farmers’ organizations, enable women and smallholders to benefit from loans and technical assistance where others would overlook their potential and undervalue their existing assets, an all-too-common experience.

As policymakers and donors consider opportunities to create climate resilience through agroecology and regenerative agriculture, it is important to remember that territorial markets lie at the center of resilient food systems. We overlook investment in the public agencies that manage them, the businesses behind them, and the farmer organizations that advocate for them at our peril.

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Source: foodtank.com

Since the early 2010s corporations have acquired over 7 million hectares of land for large-scale, industrial farms in sub-Saharan Africa, with most of these projects focused on producing water-intensive crops in already water-stressed regions. While the media spotlight is often on climate change-induced droughts, little is being said about the corporate-driven water scarcity these projects are inflicting upon people across Africa. Driven by the goal of expanding export production of water-intensive crops, governments are auctioning Africa’s water resources to the highest bidder. The new rush for land on the continent to grow trees for carbon credits is making this worse.

Water plundering

Only in the last 8 years, companies have signed land deals for over 5 million hectares for water-hungry plants in Africa. Take, for example, the New York-based company African Agriculture Holdings. It planned to use massive amounts of water from the Senegal River– the main water source for Dakar and several other major cities in Senegal, to produce alfalfa for export to South Korea and the Gulf states on 25,000 ha of land within a protected wetland. The company also planned to grow alfalfa on up to 500,000 hectares in neighbouring Mauritania, one of the most water stressed countries on the planet, and to plant a million water-hungry acacia trees in Niger to generate carbon credits. While it now appears that the company is heading for financial ruin, its CEO has already announced a new venture to grow maize on over 600,000 hectares in central Africa.

Development banks, like the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the World Bank, are working with African governments to bankroll a massive rollout of new irrigation projects across the continent to facilitate more of these agribusiness investments. In Tanzania, for instance, the government and the AfDB have budgeted hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds for large-scale irrigation projects with the private sector, with a stated goal of irrigating 8.5 million hectares by 2030– which is more than today’s total irrigated land area in all of sub-Saharan Africa.

In Kenya, President Ruto has pledged nearly US$500 million for irrigation projects nationwide, including the Rwabura irrigation project in Kiambu county, the Iriari project in Embu as well as the Kanyuambora irrigation project. The Kanyuambora, like the others, will draw water from the Thuci river and irrigate 400 hectares, which will be used to farm crops such as horticultural produce.

One company that intends to profit big from this expansion of irrigation in Tanzania, Kenya and other countries in eastern and southern Africa is South Africa-based Westfalia. The company, which is particularly active in avocado production, controls 1,200 hectares in South Africa and 1,400 in Mozambique. With support from South Africa’s government-owned Industrial Development Corporation and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, Westfalia is promoting the expansion of the avocado industry in countries such as Mexico, Peru, Chile and Colombia, where avocados have already fuelled a severe water crisis. Replicating this model in other African countries promises to create a similar situation.

Africa’s experience to date with large-scale irrigation projects is dismal. Most of the projects implemented over the past decades failed or are in poor condition. And many of the so-called success cases have caused more harm than good. Consider the irrigation project in Lake Naivasha, Kenya, which triggered a boom in foreign investment in flower farms in the 1980s and 1990s that serve the European and Chinese markets. Only six farms now consume over half of the water volume used for irrigation in the lake’s basin. The impact of the flower farms range from pesticide pollution, to biodiversity loss, and hampering access to safe and clean water for local people. In return there have been few benefits, with workers toiling in gruelling and hazardous conditions for meagre wages and the companies avoiding taxes.

In Morocco fruit exports-primarily destined for European and UK markets-are driven by water hungry crops such as berries, watermelon, citrus and avocados. Between 2016 and 2021 these exports more than doubled. The biggest beneficiaries of this boom are corporations as Les Domaines Export, belonging to the country’s elite, alongside foreign companies like Surexport and Hortifrut, all backed by financial players, including pension funds and development banks. Today, Morocco has more irrigated land area than any other country in Africa, aside from Egypt.

A pastoralist from Moroto one of the most dry areas in Uganda looking after his herd. Pastoralists in this region move long distances to look for pasture and water for their herds.By Nobert Petro Kalule.

Export oriented industrial agriculture consumes 85% of the country’s water resources, intensifying the severe water stress gripping the kingdom, even as the country endures six consecutive years of drought. To cope with the crisis, the government announced the end of fruit subsidies. Yet, the measure will have little impact on large farms, since they have the financial capacity to continue with their operations, whereas small farmers will be the most affected. Other plans include investing in desalination plants. But the high energy and environmental costs make it far from a sustainable long-term solution.

On the opposite end of the continent, South Africa – one of Africa’s richest economy – has long struggled with a persistent water crisis. This is largely due to the fact that 65 percent of the country’s water resources are allocated to industrial agriculture.

Africa’s water custodians

The impact of industrial agriculture’s thirst for water is felt most acutely by African women. Already tasked with managing households, caring for families and farming for food, women and young girls are also responsible for collecting all the water needed for both their homes and farms.

As such, they bear the heavy burden of trekking long distances – sometimes multiple times a day – to collect water. It is estimated that African women collectively spend about 40 billion hours annually fetching water. As more of their water sources are diverted for use on export-oriented industrial farms, it will make it even harder for them to access the water they need for their households.

Paradoxically, those most affected by the water issues affecting the continent may also be the ones with the solutions. Rural women possess invaluable knowledge about local water sources, their usage, storage and conservation. They know, for example, ways of recycling water for washing, irrigation and livestock, like the women pastoralists of the Anuak people in Ethiopia’s Gambela region, know how and when to move their animals from wetter areas to drier ones in the rainy season, allowing local rivers to replenish and maintain its fertility.

In Kenya, Martha Waiganjo, a farmer from the dry lands of Gilgil, is one of many smallholder farmers working with the Seed Saver’s Network (SSN) to take advantage of rain water harvesting and conservation techniques as part of their agroecological practices. Through rain water harvesting, farmers like her are able to collect, store and conserve run off rain water for later use.

The run off water is stored in manually dug up dams that are lined with an anti-seepage layer of plastic commonly known as a dam liner. For Martha, her dam allows her to store close to 40,000 litres of water for her sustenance throughout the year. “[…] Water harvesting has been of great improvement on our farms, we don’t need the rain to plant. We use the water for irrigation and domestic use. The most important thing in water harvesting is that when the area is dry we use the water not only for farming but for the needs of the whole community. It is also of great importance to livestock farming.”[1]

In 2021, the UN estimated that nearly 160 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa (14% of the population) were affected by water scarcity and stress, and, with the effects of climate change now kicking in, the numbers are expected to be even higher in 2025 and beyond.

The fixation of governments, development banks and corporations on large-scale irrigation projects for industrial agriculture in Africa has to end. Water needs to instead be in the hands of the small-scale food producers who feed the continent and who are best able to develop solutions to the challenges posed by climate change.

Cover photo: Kenya 2011. Colin Crowley/Save the Children/ Creative Commons/Flickr

Original Source: Grain