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SUSTAINED smallholder agricultural growth needs to move to the top of the agenda for industry, citizens and government.
As strike season is upon us, let’s explore an alternative perspective on a traditional problem - with no illusions that we are in search of solutions which are far from the ideal.
Last week the annual innovation summit was held at the Industrial Development Corporation in Johannesburg, and there was the usual focus on stimulating innovation.
My ears pricked however when one of the participants in the CEO discussion panel unpacked a fundamental driver of the current economic malaise.
Big city blues
Urbanisation creates a pooling of low-skilled, volatile youths which presents a cacophony of challenges. In order to appreciate the solution, it is necessary to rewind to the cause.
Urbanisation is driven by push and pull factors, a push to get off the farm since crop yields and markets are inadequate and a pull to cities in the hope of finding gainful employment.
With the binary alternatives of starvation or migration, it is not hard to understand the decision taken by millions to leave the family farm for the bright lights of the big city.
In an ideal world, these forces are positive since they allow rural workers to transition from agriculture to other sources of income which present a far higher potential for poverty alleviation, while simultaneously enhancing agricultural productivity.
However, in the African reality in which South Africa is no different, urban employment opportunities are by and large a mirage.
What I had never contemplated, however, is the potential to drive transformation by addressing the factor responsible for populations moving to towns and cities.
If a tree falls in an empty forest
When I began researching the crop yield side of the equation, I soon discovered that forests had been felled to publish the large quantity of research and policy papers on the topic by development funding institutions and the like - both globally and on Africa specifically.
Which brings me to my soap box moment: why are we not hearing agro-solutions posited from stakeholders far and wide?
Indeed, we have heard calls for job creation in the smallhold farming sector - but what has been missing is the narrative behind why this is so important, and who stands to benefit from such initiatives.
Merely marketing such initiatives as job creation strategies gains no traction.
The unemployed youths are disbelieving of yet another volley of empty promises, and the private sector is so fixated on its own narrow interests that it ignores any noise which doesn’t impact it directly and immediately.
Pump the volume
Alternately, if this was communicated as a holistic, strategy level interim solution, the benefits would be understood by a vast stakeholder base.
Industries such as mining can offload their leg hugging, productivity-eluding, cost-escalating semi-skilled workers.
Urban workers can achieve higher wages with a drop off in supply of super cheap farm labourers willing to do their jobs for a fraction of the price.
Suburbanites can sleep all the more soundly with the resulting crime reduction, as fewer disenfranchised desperados walk the streets in search of opportunistic gains.
And finally, it is needless to mention the incentive for government - both national and provincial - to reduce dependency on welfare budgets by converting impoverished youths from net drains on the fiscus to low-level contributors.
Life over limb
Ironically, politics is very similar to mining currently.
Mining houses have all dropped the pretence of developing long-term top tier assets, and are for all intense and purpose-focused cash flow and profitability.
The chorus is audible on any given day from mine bosses: assets need to pay for themselves - if they don’t add value, we’re chucking them out of our portfolio.
That is how business functions; in times of crisis, the philosophy is life over limb and that is what shareholders expect.
The irony however is that this is the same modus operandi displayed by government; instead of having the privilege to deliver against long-term planning horizons, government are starved for quick wins and as such are focused on their versions of cash flow and profitability: job flow and credibility.
You say potato
Fortunately, regardless of motives, crop side interventions - provided they are implemented thoughtfully - stand to benefit all stakeholders.
I flagrantly concede that this oversimplification obscures the complexity of raising smallhold farmer outputs.
The details of how to reorientate policy to enhance access to inputs, access to markets and credit, how to adopt technology and how to increase crop variety among the multitude of requirements are neither simple nor easy.
However - as witnessed by the success of the Asian “green revolution” - despite the challenging nature of delivering on smallhold farming opportunities it is achievable, desirable, important and worth elevating to the urgent action item list in this country, among many others across the continent.
- Fin24
*Jarred Myers is a resources strategist and can be followed on Twitter on @JarredMyers. Opinions expressed are his own.
As strike season is upon us, let’s explore an alternative perspective on a traditional problem - with no illusions that we are in search of solutions which are far from the ideal.
Last week the annual innovation summit was held at the Industrial Development Corporation in Johannesburg, and there was the usual focus on stimulating innovation.
My ears pricked however when one of the participants in the CEO discussion panel unpacked a fundamental driver of the current economic malaise.
Big city blues
Urbanisation creates a pooling of low-skilled, volatile youths which presents a cacophony of challenges. In order to appreciate the solution, it is necessary to rewind to the cause.
Urbanisation is driven by push and pull factors, a push to get off the farm since crop yields and markets are inadequate and a pull to cities in the hope of finding gainful employment.
With the binary alternatives of starvation or migration, it is not hard to understand the decision taken by millions to leave the family farm for the bright lights of the big city.
In an ideal world, these forces are positive since they allow rural workers to transition from agriculture to other sources of income which present a far higher potential for poverty alleviation, while simultaneously enhancing agricultural productivity.
However, in the African reality in which South Africa is no different, urban employment opportunities are by and large a mirage.
Having always romanticised the helplessness and permanence of the African smallhold farming reality, my focus has been on the flip side – absorbing rural populations into urban economies.
What I had never contemplated, however, is the potential to drive transformation by addressing the factor responsible for populations moving to towns and cities.
If a tree falls in an empty forest
When I began researching the crop yield side of the equation, I soon discovered that forests had been felled to publish the large quantity of research and policy papers on the topic by development funding institutions and the like - both globally and on Africa specifically.
Which brings me to my soap box moment: why are we not hearing agro-solutions posited from stakeholders far and wide?
Indeed, we have heard calls for job creation in the smallhold farming sector - but what has been missing is the narrative behind why this is so important, and who stands to benefit from such initiatives.
Merely marketing such initiatives as job creation strategies gains no traction.
The unemployed youths are disbelieving of yet another volley of empty promises, and the private sector is so fixated on its own narrow interests that it ignores any noise which doesn’t impact it directly and immediately.
Pump the volume
Alternately, if this was communicated as a holistic, strategy level interim solution, the benefits would be understood by a vast stakeholder base.
Industries such as mining can offload their leg hugging, productivity-eluding, cost-escalating semi-skilled workers.
Urban workers can achieve higher wages with a drop off in supply of super cheap farm labourers willing to do their jobs for a fraction of the price.
Suburbanites can sleep all the more soundly with the resulting crime reduction, as fewer disenfranchised desperados walk the streets in search of opportunistic gains.
And finally, it is needless to mention the incentive for government - both national and provincial - to reduce dependency on welfare budgets by converting impoverished youths from net drains on the fiscus to low-level contributors.
Life over limb
Ironically, politics is very similar to mining currently.
Mining houses have all dropped the pretence of developing long-term top tier assets, and are for all intense and purpose-focused cash flow and profitability.
The chorus is audible on any given day from mine bosses: assets need to pay for themselves - if they don’t add value, we’re chucking them out of our portfolio.
That is how business functions; in times of crisis, the philosophy is life over limb and that is what shareholders expect.
The irony however is that this is the same modus operandi displayed by government; instead of having the privilege to deliver against long-term planning horizons, government are starved for quick wins and as such are focused on their versions of cash flow and profitability: job flow and credibility.
You say potato
Fortunately, regardless of motives, crop side interventions - provided they are implemented thoughtfully - stand to benefit all stakeholders.
I flagrantly concede that this oversimplification obscures the complexity of raising smallhold farmer outputs.
The details of how to reorientate policy to enhance access to inputs, access to markets and credit, how to adopt technology and how to increase crop variety among the multitude of requirements are neither simple nor easy.
However - as witnessed by the success of the Asian “green revolution” - despite the challenging nature of delivering on smallhold farming opportunities it is achievable, desirable, important and worth elevating to the urgent action item list in this country, among many others across the continent.
- Fin24
*Jarred Myers is a resources strategist and can be followed on Twitter on @JarredMyers. Opinions expressed are his own.
