Does modern technology have the edge over old technology?If there is one problem which cuts across political boundaries in West Africa it is the issue of perennial food shortages aggravated by seasonal droughts, bush fires and ravages of pests.
Reputable international bodies frequently put out analyses on the general agricultural and food situations of the Third World in which detailed suggestions are made as to how the problem would be ameliorated if not completely solved. Somehow, through the combination of age-old practices and socio-economic factors which are deeply rooted in our colonial past many West African countries are still labouring under the yoke of having to import the bulk of their foods, with the result that national budgets are heavily weighed down with hard-earned foreign exchange allocation to food.
Not surprisingly, countries with weak economies have been feeling the pinch more seriously while others which boast of adequate resources have had to seriously rethink their import programmes. This anomaly is evident in other countries right across the West Coast of Africa where there now appears to be a recognition of the need to re-examine agricultural policies in an effort to tilt the balance towards food production.
It is instructive that in countries like LIberia and Sierra Leone where rice is a staple diet a tiny percentage of the cereal is produced while in Ghana and Nigeria rice production targets have never been realised. Yam and Cassava. have had uncertain yields due to factors which would be discussed later. While the reasons for this state of affairs are varied, politicians often tend to look behind them to apportion blame - some quite appropriate but, to say the least, out of the way. Mr Ato Austin, Secretary for Labour and Social Welfare in the Peoples National Defence Council (PNDC), (then Secretary for Information), explaining the shortage of flour and the dependence of Ghanaians on bread and other imported foods. Sometime last year said it was part of the imperialist economic strategy aimed at perpetua- ting the centre-periphery relationship that imported wheat flour became one of the main Ghanaian diets instead of a locally produced cereal.
He urged Ghanaians to change their taste for foreign foods and be self- reliant. Within weeks, the local papers reported that bakers had produced very tasteful bread from corn flour. Efforts in other areas began to flood in - beer brewers pledged to grow their own hops and malt, bakers acquired farms to grow local wheat. Even hoteliers got into the act to establish farming and fishing ventures to feed their guests.
The Secretary definitely has a point which needs not be overstretched; the self-reliant efforts of the local food producers is certainly commendable. However, ample evidence exists to prove that this simplistic approach to a rather serious problem only blurs the edges of the problem and dissipates efforts. The perennial food shortage in Ghana, in- deed West Africa, needs to be tackled from a more realistic angle than the rhetorics which people have been treated to in the last ten years.
Take Ghana, for instance, it may be recalled that the Acheampong regime's economic cornerstone in the seventies was the famous "Operation Feed Yourself and Industries" campaign which. sought to make agricultural food and industrial raw materials sufficiency a fact. What happened is now history from which previous governments and regimes have learnt nothing. To name a few, the initial enthusiastic public response soon deteriorated into slogan shouting by officials. Compilation of impressive cultivated acreages in time revealed that they only existed in the minds of corrupt officials who were diverting funds meant for agriculture. Vagaries of the weather, absence of inputs, bottlenecks in marketing of produce and lack of coordination were contributory factors to the collapse of the campaign.
That there had been inherent problems in the planning of policies of this nature is evident in the persistence of food problems which is manifested in most developing countries. In a paper entitled, "A case for peasant-based Strategies," (Geneva May 1979) by A. Pearson, he notes that "very few of the predominantly agricultural countries have been able to formulate and put into practice consistent and distinctive agricultural and food policies reflecting the broad national interest."
"Frequently enough, economic measures for different sections of the economy are inconsistent and even contradictory in relation to one another and to declared government develop- ment objectives. Policies are adopted without taking into account resource limitations in other sectors (emphasis mine) of the economy while policies in other sectors frequently ignore the restraints on the expansion of agricultural production and the obstacles to the rapid reforming of agricultural institutions..... In most of the countries there was no really effective national agricultural development planning".
Strategy
The most painful aspect of all this is that countries which could have used their fiscal and natural resources to boost agricultural production have not been able to do so. Before independence in 1960, Nigeria, like all West African countries, was a predominantly agricultural country dependent on export of cash crops for foreign earnings. Oil contributed less than 8 percent to national revenue and about 90 percent of the 56 million population was engaged in agriculture. "Unlike the Ivory Coast or Kenya", one commentator has pointed out, "there was no indigenous social class (in Nigeria) that had a stake in agriculture as a base for capital accumulation ... except for community self-help projects and infrequent and uncoordinated extension of assistance into the rural areas, Nigeria lacked and has continued to lack a rural development strategy worth its name."The net result is that with the oil boom and corresponding step-up in commercial activities, food imports which in 1960 had stood at 23.9m naira had escalated to a hefty 1 billion naira per month, in 1980. In 1976 Nigeria imported 45 million kilos of rice which jumped to 264 million kilos in the first 9 months of 1977. In recognition of the need to step up food production the government of Ghana's Crash Agricultural Programme of 1983, a one year programme is to be implemented to "increase supply of staples, meat, fish and poultry." It put down the reasons for the poor output in 1982 to natural and artificial causes - inadequate and inconsistent rainfall and lack of fertilizer.
The programme is designed to achieve modest but visible targets on the basis of existing acreage under cultivation.
Target
"If more land is brought under cultivation and more inputs are made available particularly for the minor season, it is anticipated that the targets can be exceeded." Under this modest programme, about $ 61 million will be required to achieve an 81 percent in- crease in maize output, 39 per cent in rice, 10 percent in cassava, yam, millet and sorghum, 50 per cent in poultry and 16 per cent in fish whereas the targets for rice and maize alone would cost the nation $65 million if imported directly.One would not dispute this impressive projection of agricultural target but the question is whether there are any realistic supportive planning on district, regional and national levels to implement the programme?
Irrigation has, for instance, been paid lip-service for quite a long time in Ghana until the Tono irrigation scheme in the northern part of the country was commissioned. With that the importance of seasonal rainfall has been considerably minimised but the projection that the north would become the granary of the country appears to have eluded us due to a variety of unintended. consequences like smuggling of produce across the borders into Togo and Upper Volta and black marketing of inputs. The shameful absence of coordinated transportation and marketing facilities naturally have not helped matters any.
The point has therefore been made in knowledgeable agricultural circles that barring fickle weather Ghana's food problem may not really be lack of pro- duction but in effective distribution and marketing transportation being the main culprit. The point being heavily belaboured here is that one can tabulate an action programme on agricultural food ex- pansion as long as the arm and an equally impressive strategy for increasing output but without the often elusive co-ordination between the vital link in the production circle, bank loans and inputs to the farmers who need them, and on time, extension service at all times and reasonable producer price, very little would be achieved.
If this is pursued in conjunction with the popular enthusiasm generated through the various defence committees, Ghana, a country which has suffered terribly with food shortages may at last be on the road to years of successful harvests and food at reasonable price in every pot.
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I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me. (John Keats)
The Widow's Mite
Oxfam supporter Joan Kerr has auctioned all her furniture including some antiques to raise £3,000 for the Ethiopian drought appeal.Mrs Kerr, a widow with four children, was left with only beds, a cooker and house fittings after the auction recently at Lindsey Village Hall, near Ipswich.
Mrs Kerr said, "In the past I suppose I have reacted like everyone else to such appeals, but this time I decide to do something about it"....
Since the auction she has received a number of items of furniture from people who wanted to help her replace what she had auctioned but Mrs Kerr now plans a second auction for the appeal fund, selling off what she has been given.
