Food security experts identify government support, policy implementation, private sector engagement and investment in smallholder farmers as keys to Africa’s agricultural future.

Food security experts from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) gathered to discuss transforming food production in Africa at Stanford on Nov. 29. The symposium, hosted by the Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE) examined the challenges, strategies, and possible solutions for catalyzing and sustaining an inclusive agriculture transformation in Africa. 

Moderator Ertharin Cousin, FSE visiting fellow and previous World Food Programme director with more than 25 years of experience on hunger, food, and resilience strategies, launched the panel by outlining Africa’s plight. “Today some 100 million of the farmers across Sub-Saharan Africa farm less than 2 hectares of land. Some 80 percent of those living in rural areas are poor. More than 30 percent of the rural population is chronically hungry and 35 percent of the under-five-year-olds are stunted. By 2050, the bulk of the world's population growth will take place on the continent. In fact, some project that 1.3 billion will be added to the continent, and Nigeria’s [population] will grow larger than the size of the United States between now and 2050,” Cousin said

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While Africa continues to experience the highest occurrence of food insecurity worldwide, the continent also contains over 60 percent of the worlds uncultivated but fertile land. AGRA formed in 2006 to fulfill the vision that Africa can feed itself and the world. Panelists included Agnes Kalibata, AGRA President and former Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources of Rwanda; Kanayo F. Nwanze, AGRA board member and immediate past president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development; Usha Barwale Zehr, AGRA board member and Director and Chief Technology Officer of Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company Private Limited; and Rajiv Shah, AGRA board member, Rockefeller Foundation President and former Administer of USAID.

Kanayo F. Nwanze stressed the importance of agricultural transformation for Africa’s future. “No country in the world ever transformed itself without going through an agrarian change. No country. Europe, 17th; Japan, 18th century; 19th century was the US, your country; China, 20th century. Why should they be different from Africa? So, first and foremost, we have to have total agricultural transformation,” Nwanze said.

AGRA president, Agnes Kalibata, also spoke to the need for policy implementation and government support in helping drive change. “AGRA as an institution can only do so much. But these governments have the potential and the capacity to reach every corner of their countries. The problem is they are challenged by capacity to do that, by capacity to design proper programs, and by capacity to implement these programs,” Kalibata said.

Expanding on governments' ability to impact and drive change, Usha Barwale Zehr highlighted Asia’s success, specifically with strategic partnerships. “…we've done a lot of talking about public/private partnership. Not so much on the ground on implementing it in a manner, which happened in Asia, for instance, where there was policy, and, most importantly, government will. The government was willing to do whatever it took to make sure that agriculture was transformed at the end of it,” Zehr said.

Beyond government and policy support the panelists also addressed the need for innovation and access to seed technologies. “Why is it that the African farmer and the Indian farmer should not have access to what the American farmer has access to today and reaps benefit from it? …So it's the hybrids, the varieties, the GM technology. Tomorrow it'll be the gene-edited products. And after that we will talk about the satellite-based imaging data that we will use for developing drought-tolerant crops for that very, very small micro environment that existed in the one district in Nigeria,” Zehr said.

"By 2050, who is going to feed Africa? … It's the youth of today. But they're not going to be using the same technologies that exist today. Just think of what IT can do, aggregation, organization of farmer's groups. So, the elements are there. I see the agriculture of tomorrow meeting the challenge – for Africa meeting that challenge is Africa being at the forefront of feeding the world. Africa has to be able to feed itself first. And we have all the opportunities there,” Nwanze said.

This is the first installment of the Global Food Security Symposium series hosted by Stanford University's Center on Food Security and the Environment and generously supported by Zach Nelson and Elizabeth Horn. FSE is a joint initiative of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

An interview with authors of the “The Tropical Oil Crop Revolution” predicts the future of soy and palm oil booms by examining the past and present.

Used in everything from food to fuel, soybean and palm oil have seen production rates skyrocket in the past 20 years. Controversy surrounds the planting of oil crops – cultivated primarily in Southeast Asia and South America – as they are often grown on deforested lands and rely on large farmers and agribusiness rather than smallholders. “The Tropical Oil Crop Revolution: Food, Feed, Fuel, and Forests,” a new book co-authored by Stanford University researchers, examines the economic, social and environmental impacts of the oil crop revolution, and explores how to develop a more sustainable future.

Derek Byerlee, visiting fellow at Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSE), FSE Fellow Walter P. Falcon, and FSE Director Rosamond L. Naylor recently discussed some of their book’s key ideas.

Q: What are the key similarities and differences between the rise of oil crops and the 1965-85 green revolution?

A: From 1990 to 2010, world production of soybean grew by 220 percent and production of palm oil by 300 percent. Like the green revolution for cereal crops, this recent revolution involves two crops – oil palm and soybeans – that dramatically expanded shares in their respective crop subsector – oil crops.

The oil crop revolution differs from its predecessor, the green revolution of rice and wheat, in its mode of expansion. The green revolution embraced tens of millions of producers across many countries, especially where irrigation was available. The oil crop revolution was highly concentrated in a few countries and almost entirely in rainfed areas. Unlike the green revolution, which was spurred on by rapid yield gains, the force behind the oil crop revolution was expansion of crop area. 

Q: What are some ways to improve oil palm sustainability?

A: A lot of faith has been put on certification and private standards and commitments. However, without effective land and forest governance, it will be very difficult for the private sector to operate. The state at both national and local levels will need greatly improved and more transparent systems starting from land and forest tenure laws, information systems, civil service capacity and judicial and redress systems. 

Q: How will the future of oil crops differ from the past?

A: By 2050, we predict demand for oil crops to drop by as much as two-thirds. Demand for biofuel feedstocks cannot maintain the rapid pace of the past decade. Vegetable oils used for food will also grow more slowly. In Asia, population growth will slow and the effects of rising incomes will diminish as consumers in middle-income countries reach high levels of vegetable oil consumption.

The biggest wild card in terms of supply is land availability. Africa has the most land available, however access to clear property rights are often difficult due to “customary rights” to the land. Soybean, a new crop in much of Africa, will increase along with oil palm. We believe the area covered by oil crops does not have to expand greatly; rather, intensification of existing crop land and a modest expansion in area can meet demand. Steady progress is possible through genetic gains in yield. Sufficient degraded land is available for area expansion, provided land governance and incentive systems are developed to steer the expansion onto degraded lands.

Q: How has development of the biodiesel industry affected tropical vegetable oils in the past 25 years, and how will it shape the sector going forward?

A: Before the turn of the 21^st century, few analysts predicted that biodiesel would play a major role in boosting global vegetable oil demand and prices. As it turns out, the expansion of biodiesel markets has been responsible for roughly half of the increase in vegetable oil consumption since 2013. Global biodiesel production more than doubled between 2007 and 2013. By some estimates, it could grow another 50 percent by 2025.

National energy policies continue to play a dominant role in the profitability of the biodiesel industry. The growing response of biofuel policies to low agricultural commodity prices is an important factor that is bound to keep biodiesel in the transportation fuel mix. This is true at least in countries that have strong interests oil crops, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Colombia in the case of oil palm, and the U.S., Brazil, and Argentina in the case of soybeans. Without policies mandating the use of biodiesel in fuel mixes, or incentivizing its use, the industry might fade away.

Q: What do you believe is the biggest takeaway from your research?

A: We are cautiously optimistic that the future expansion of the oil crop sector can be managed more sustainably. The predicted slowing of demand and land requirements will reduce pressure on native ecosystems. Several signs point to convergence among global consumers, private business, civil society, and local governments in finding ways to minimize the trade-offs between economic benefits and social and environmental costs.

Derek Byerlee, is an Adjunct Professor in the Global Human Development Program at Georgetown University and Editor-in-Chief of the Global Food Security journal. Walter P. Falcon is the Farnsworth Professor of International Agricultural Policy (Emeritus) at Stanford, senior fellow with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Rosamond L. Naylor is the William Wrigley Professor in Earth Science and Professor of Economics (by courtesy) and Gloria and Richard Kushel Director, at the Center on Food Security and the Environment Stanford.

Joann de Zegher is one of nine selected as a SAWIT Challenge Finalist. She will be pitching her sustainable palm oil solution in Jakarta, Indonesia November 17-18, 2016.

FSE is excited to announce that graduate student, Joann de Zegher, is one of the nine innovators chosen in the SAWIT Challenge to pitch her solution to help independent smallholder farmers produce palm oil sustainably. She will present her idea to international businesses, government, and NGO leaders in Jakarta, Indonesia November 17-18, 2016.

The nine finalists submitted their ideas to solve the biggest challenges facing independent smallholder palm oil farmers in Indonesia: financing, farming inputs and best practices, mapping and land tenureship, market information, as well as product traceability and transparency. The innovations are designed to make sustainable, more profitable palm oil production.

The SAWIT Challenge is run by Smallholders Advancing with Technology and Innovation (SAWIT), a partnership between the Oil Palm Smallholders Union, and the Indonesia Business Council for Sustainable Development, with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

De Zegher’s solution offers a substantial price incentive to smallholder farmers who comply with buyer sustainability policies, but only passes on a very small portion of the cost to buyers. The innovation leverages the simple fact that small farmers and large buyers have substantially different cash flow needs. It also helps to shorten and strengthen the palm supply chain from smallholder farmers to mill.

Walter Falcon, the Helen Farnsworth Professor of International Agricultural Policy in Economics (emeritus), writes from an unusual perspective. During the academic year he serves as a senior fellow with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. He spends the summers on his family farm near Marion, Iowa. He returns to campus each year with reflections on the challenges and rewards of faming life in his "Almanac Report." Falcon is former deputy director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment. 

It is now the end of summer for what has been a milestone year for my wife and me. This essay, itself a mini-milestone, is the fifth annual report from our farm. As readers of prior Almanac postings will know, my day job is as professor of international agricultural policy at Stanford University; however, we also own a medium-sized farm in east central Iowa that produces corn, soybeans, alfalfa and beef from a cow-calf herd. Our friends laughingly refer to our operation as a corn-California crop rotation. 

The 2016 crop year has been nothing short of phenomenal. Planting was early, the weather was warm – sometimes downright hot – and the rains were ideal. On average, our county receives nine inches of rain during the critical growing months of June and July. This year we received more than 12 inches, quite unlike the two inches I wrote about in 2012.

Both corn and soybeans are about two weeks ahead of their maturity schedules for what promises to be record production. Corn yields of 225 bushels per acre on our farm look probable. Soybeans are more uncertain; they are loaded with pods, but all of the rain has left them susceptible to a fungal disease known as sudden-death syndrome (SDS). This fungus, present in many Iowa soils, enters the roots and emits a toxin. Plants looking healthy one day can suddenly wither a few days later. The exact amount of bean loss is mainly a function of how close the plants are to being ripe. We are almost past that maturity barrier now, so even if SDS strikes, it should not lower our yields very much. Unfortunately, record yields do not equate to record incomes, an important point that I return to later.

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The perfect summer and record crops were complemented by two milestone events of a more personal nature. In June, my wife and I celebrated our 60^th wedding anniversary. Then in September, we both celebrated our 80^th birthdays. There has never been a day when I have not known my wife. We grew up on nearby farms and are fourth-generation caretakers of land that was settled in the late 1850’s. And, we have both seen the most extraordinary changes over our eight decades. Even with a 50-year hiatus while at Harvard and Stanford universities, Iowa has always been home. 

Anniversaries are the time for reminiscing and looking at old pictures. Not surprisingly, a major topic of conversation at our gathering was the change in farming practices. As the younger son in our family, I remember a long list of chores, even when I was small – gathering eggs, filling the watering tanks for pigs and “going after” the cows in the evening. But I really took notice of agriculture when I was about 10.

It was shortly after Word War II, and at that time we used a four-year crop rotation: corn, corn, oats, clover. We were in the transition from horses to tractors, with the corn still being planted with a two-row horse-drawn planter. This was a task reserved for my father (a.k.a. Buck), for no one else could get the rows sufficiently straight to suit him. On a really long day, when the horses were in good condition, father could plant 15 acres. He used 42-inch rows, wide enough for the horses, and planted about 18,000 kernels of seed per acre. The seed was “checked”, which meant that cornfields could be cultivated for weeds both via the length of the field and across it. 

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The contrast between then and now is stark. An 18-row planter, dispensing 36,000 seeds per acre in 20-inch rows, can now plant 40 acres per hour – almost three times what my father could do in an entire day. Unlike horses, the tractors do not get tired. And they have lights. Steering the tractor is no longer a problem, since the fields and tractors are now synchronized with global positioning systems. For the most part, farmers are just along for the ride, and to keep awake on mile-long rows, several have become Sudoku fanatics! The planting system is wonderful except for one large problem – a new 24-row planter costs upwards of $225,000, not including the tractor.

When I was 12 my father decided that he needed more help and that I was his newly designated “hired man.” To reinforce the point, he decided that I needed my own tractor. He purchased a new Farmall “C” for me, including a two-row cultivator for attacking weeds. The grand total cost of this equipment was $1600! (Perhaps what I remember most is driving myself around the block in my hometown on the day we took delivery.)

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For the next 10 years, I spent most of my summers on that damned tractor fighting morning glories (that would tangle and often require dismounting every 100 yards), thistles, button weeds and all manner of other species. Now, herbicides, Roundup-ready seeds and no-tillage farming are the norm. What took a summer for me to do is now completed easily in a day or two with a high-clearance sprayer with long booms that cover 48 rows at a time.  

What the future will bring is an interesting question. For 20 years or more, farmers have used and overused highly effective herbicides such as Roundup.  And predictably, there is increasing weed resistance to these herbicides. In our county, there has been a devastating spread of Palmer amaranth—a tall spiky plant that produces thousands of seeds. It is highly resistant to commonly used herbicides, and whether its control lies in yet another new herbicide remains to be seen. For the moment, however, it is a menace.

For years, our entire crop rotation was constrained by labor availability at harvest. The picking of ear corn by hand was time-consuming, and typically a cold, miserable task. I can still hear my father saying, “the mark of a man is whether he can pick 100 bushels of ear corn, and then shovel them into a crib before nightfall.

Several things happened almost simultaneously, however, that fundamentally changed rural Iowa life: the switch from horses to tractors; the availability of cheap commercial nitrogen fertilizer; and the large-scale introduction of soybeans.  The departure of the horses was a joyful occasion in itself – tractors neither kick nor need their sheds cleaned.

Moreover, much less land was now needed to provide hay, oats and straw for the horses. A new crop rotation evolved that took the form of corn, soybeans, corn, soybeans. Commercial nitrogen helped maintain the soil fertility; hybrid corn seeds offered new genetic potential as yields on our farm went from 70 bushels per acre in 1946 to more than 200 bushels per acre currently; herbicides more or less controlled the weeds; and perhaps most of all, the mechanical corn picker broke the critical labor bottleneck at harvest.

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To the extent that my family ever celebrated, we partied the night our first new Case corn picker was delivered in 1948. (Father may have even had one of his carefully hidden beers that evening!) It was a one-row snapper that was simple beyond belief – just rollers that stripped the corn ears from the stock and elevated them into a trailing wagon.

It was the start of a new era, however, and the one-row pull machine quickly gave way to two-row pickers that mounted directly on a tractor, which in turn gave way to self-propelled picker-combines that used multiple “heads” for harvesting either corn or soybeans.  These machines are huge – and are extraordinarily costly. A new 12-row combine fitted for corn harvest costs on the order of $600,000. Unlike picking by hand, when 100 bushels per day was the norm, the new behemoths can harvest 10 acres per hour – some 20,000 bushels per day – provided that the farmer has enough trucks and collector wagons to move the grain from the combine to market or to on-farm storage units. Many are the farm spouses who now drive massive grain trucks during the harvest season!

The coffee crowd is delighted that the traffic from presidential politicians across Iowa is down substantially from last summer, but the two remaining candidates seemingly have yet to say anything meaningful to my neighbors. Farmers are feeling economically trapped and politically abandoned. “None of the above” would certainly win the election if it were held today. While Iowa shows as a dead heat in the presidential polls, it is the most unenthusiastic 50/50 that I have ever seen on both sides.

Most farmers truly enjoy their work and lifestyle, but they are now hurting. It is easy to understand how the hurt arises. In the last 36 months, corn, soybean and fed-cattle prices have dropped about 50 percent, 33 percent and 25 percent, respectively. The $600,000 machines that (perhaps!) were feasible economically with $7 per bushel corn now look like a mechanical albatross with corn at $3.50 or less per bushel.

Even with low interest rates, many farmers find themselves overcapitalized and with heavy debt burdens. During the prior period of high prices, many borrowed against the equity they had in land, only to see local land prices go from about $9,200 to roughly $7,800 per acre. Solvency has become a serious question for some. Interestingly, the younger, most modern, and most aggressive young farmers seem in the most trouble, whereas some of the older, more conservative farmers using rebuilt machinery are coping better.

The morning coffee conversations are also punctuated by several environmental topics, especially nitrogen and water runoffs.  The state of Iowa is pressing hard for voluntary conservation approaches. But farmers are truly puzzled and worried about what they should do. For 100 years they have been urged to improve their land by tiling, that is, to lay clay or perforated plastic pipe three to four feet underground such that wet portions of fields could be drained to facilitate greater yields. Often these tiles have outlets into creeks or ditches.

But now there is a dilemma. The EPA is asserting that water from tiles is running water, and therefore subject to EPA regulation under the Clean Water Act. Given uncertainty about the regulations, farmers fear the worst. Moreover, much of the nitrogen runoff from cornfields is via drainage into those same tiles. While better placement and timing of fertilizer applications can help, it is hard to envisage major curtailment of nutrient runoff without also taking up the tile issue. 

Tiles are virtually in all fields, and the implications of potential new regulations are enormous. As a consequence, groups like the Farm Bureau are pushing new voluntary conservation measures very strongly. They are also going after EPA’s attempt to regulate farm waters in an all-out war. In the meantime, farmers wait uneasily and hope for the best.

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My final comment for the summer is not a “cock and bull” story, although it borders on one. (Definition: “an absurd, improbable story presented as the truth.”) It was partly motivated by “Desperado,” the 2,972-pound Angus bull that won the “Super Bull” contest at the Iowa State Fair. (Lest I be accused of being gender insensitive, I should also report that the life-sized cow, sculpted in butter, is still doing well and now stands beside a sculpturefrom “Star Trek”, also in butter.  Do not ask me why!)

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