The Africa Food Systems Summit, which wrapped up September 8 in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, once again was guided by a deep faith that Green Revolution seeds, fertilisers and chemicals can reverse the continent’s ever-worsening hunger. That faith is misplaced.
We know about faith. Our Southern African Faith Communities Environment Institute (SAFCEI) includes faith leaders from a wide range of religions who are committed to seeing every African well-fed from Africans producing food in a way that respects and restores nature.
That is why two years ago we delivered a letter signed by more than 500 African faith leaders to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other supporters of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (now known simply as AGRA) calling on them to shift their support from failing Green Revolution practices to ecological agriculture.
Donors and African governments should question their faith in the Green Revolution and start listening to the continent’s farmer and faith leaders, who have been sending one clear message for years now: Your Green Revolution is failing and you need to change course.
This year’s Green Revolution Forum used a lot of the right words. Its theme, “Recover, Regenerate, Act: Africa’s Solutions to Food Systems Transformation,” claimed to champion “building better food systems and agricultural sovereignty”.
Fifteen years after its convener, AGRA, was founded in 2006, questions remain about its viability given its failures to address food security through its high-input model, promoting hybrid and genetically modified seeds, chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
A rebrand last year saw AGRA and its annual forum make cosmetic changes, seeming to acknowledge that failure. Both removed the words “green revolution” from their names.
But their faith in Green Revolution dogma seems unshaken. Speaker after speaker talked about doing more of the same thing – somehow expecting different results.
As usual, the Dar event brought together agribusiness leaders, experts, donors, policymakers and representatives from various sectors of the food industry. But it sidelined the main actors – farmers – without whom all the high-minded promises will count for naught.
Small-scale food producers
Indeed, groups representing millions of small-scale food producers across Africa rejected the Dar forum, saying it ignored the silenced narratives of farmers. At the forefront of this push was the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), which champions agro-ecological farming. Like our faith leaders, AFSA has been calling for change for years.
Juma Shabani, a farm leader in Tanzania, lamented at AFSA’s August 30 press conference: “Why were we excluded from the AGRF meeting yet over 70 per cent of Tanzania’s population engages in agriculture?”
AGRA is mainly funded by governments and international donors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with support and partnerships with some of the very corporations that profit from the Green Revolution model – Yara, Corteva, Bayer. With their backing, AGRA vows to “transform African agriculture from a subsistence model to strong businesses”.
However, the countries where AGRA has focused its efforts have seen little productivity and have remained in poverty. AGRA has failed to deliver on its original promise to double productivity for 30 million households while halving food insecurity by 2020.
Of the 13 countries it has primarily worked in, none has reached that goal and only three – Zambia, Ethiopia, and Ghana – have even reduced the number of undernourished people. According to recent United Nations data, the number of undernourished people has grown by 44 per cent and 247 per cent in Kenya and Nigeria, respectively. For AGRA countries as a whole, chronic hunger has increased 50 per cent, not decreased 50 per cent.
Meaningful progress
Yet despite its failure to yield meaningful progress, Green Revolution zealots have continued to sing the same tune. After backtracking from its ambitious goals, AGRA may even be abandoning its focus on “sustainable intensification.” Ms Agnes Kalibata the President of AGRA, now says the goal is to triple food production by 2025. How? Has the goal now shifted to tripling production instead of doubling productivity? That means bringing new lands into production, an environmentally costly strategy that is hardly the way to recover and regenerate.
Independent researchers agree that since AGRA began its work, food production has increased mainly due to expanded planting, rather than productivity.
Meanwhile, the Forum’s new promises include “fulfilment of a vision where Africa can feed itself and the world; transforming agriculture from a solitary struggle for survival into a thriving business; improving productivity via seeds as a “trigger point; and building resilient farming systems. And the chartered goals include “zero hunger, improved nutrition, and climate adaptation”.
Pray, how does increased production by bringing new lands into cultivation help in climate adaptation? Green Revolution approaches are not a solution Africa’s land-use crises, they are one of their primary causes.
Is it not time for AGRA’s donors and African leaders to question its faith in its failed “theory of change” and question its faith in the Green Revolution model? Africa’s farmer and faith leaders certainly think so. Africa needs more than a rebranding. Don’t just drop Green Revolution from your name, move on and support ecological agriculture, which has a proven track record of success.
Ms de Gasparis is the Executive Director of the Southern African Faith Communities Environment Institute (SAFCEI), while Mr Manyangadze is SAFCEI’s Food and Climate Justice Manager