April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

‘How can a green revolution be achieved in Africa?’ After more than a year
of study, the expert panel, commissioned by then UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan, replied as follows: ‘no single technological bullet is available
for radically improving African agriculture.’ African agriculture will require
numerous ‘rainbow evolutions’ across the diverse African farming systems,
‘rather than a single Green Revolution.’[1]
By 2007, however, Annan agreed to be executive director of the Alliance
for a Green Revolution for Africa (AGRA), funded by the Bill & Melinda
Gates and Rockefeller Foundations. AGRA proposes exactly the kind of
agriculture the panel of agricultural experts (from South Africa, Nigeria,
Uganda, Morocco, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, China and more) rejected:
Monoculture of one or two crops with the goal of increasing yields through
the high use of fossil fuels, chemicals (fertilisers, pesticides) and
biotechnology (patented genetically modified seeds). AGRA finances
agricultural research and lobbies across the globe (e.g., January in Davos)
to extend outdated 20th century industrial agriculture to the African
continent.
Current crises in global agriculture affect the African continent the most,
from agrofuels replacing food to market failures and privatisation of living
organisms. Because of their place in the international division of labour
(including South Africa) as primary commodity exporters, with little or no
value-added processing, African economies remain vulnerable to the
vagaries of both weather and markets.
Given these dire situations, how could Africa possibly offer alternatives to
the dominant industrial agriculture of ‘green revolutions’? After briefly
summarising the various threats of the global agricultural crises to African
food security, this article analyses African alternatives, focusing on their
approach to farmers' rights and an initiative to award and disseminate
African innovations.
GLOBAL AGRICULTURAL CRISES – THE VIEW FROM AFRICA
AGROFUELS
As the demand for agrofuels seems to be insatiable, global corporations
are noticing Africa for its extensive land masses, while not seeing the
hungry. Calling Africa the ‘green OPEC’, they assert that 15 countries in
Africa have a total combined land area greater than all of India ‘available’
for agrofuel production, not bothering to explain what ‘available land’
means in the context of a food deficit continent.[2]
Europe and the USA have set ‘green’ targets for agrofuel consumption that
they cannot fulfill using their own land. The agrofuel ‘craze’ therefore
very much depends on global corporations’ taking command of land in
South countries in order to grow agrofuel crops.
To further the problem, the amount of plant material needed is massive.
Lester Brown offers the comparison that the amount of grain required to
fill the 90-litre petrol tank of a 4 × 4 vehicle once with maize ethanol
could feed one person for a year. The grain it takes to fill the tank every
two weeks over a year would feed 26 people.[3]
The extent of African land coveted by investors, therefore, expands to
tens millions of hectares, involving 20 countries.[4] No matter how the
land is allocated – from leasing to contract farming – its use will be
overwhelmingly for foreign consumption. Such major tracts of land
designated to meet foreigners' energy or food needs signals, once again,
the expatriation of African lands.