Monday 9 November, 2009
kilimokwanza@guardian.co.tz
The Guardian KILIMO KWANZA
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EDITORIAL
Monday 9 November, 2009
Mechanised agriculture not impossible
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very hard. But almost 24 years since I spoke as President to this Parliament about the vital need to modernise (our agriculture) by the use of ploughs and tractors, it has been estimated that 79 per cent of our cultivation is still being done by the hand hoe. Further, very little fertiliser is being used; even worse, the use of compost, manure, and even natural land regeneration methods, has declined.” Close to quarter a century since the Founding Father made these remarks, and a decade since his passing, it would be an excellent opportunity for the nation to look back and ask itself about the extent to which it has gone in living the dream of transforming Tanzania into a world-acclaimed agricultural giant. Now, it may be very true that our rural development policies have registered considerable success. It may also be true that the real income of the average small farmer is now higher than that of the urban minimum wage earner. One simple explanation for this is that in areas where there is a good cash crop, a successful small farmer can earn a lot more than most civil servants and other employees and not pay taxes as huge as the ones they pay. However, this is by no means the same as saying that there is no need to modernise our agriculture. In fact, the contrary is true – the green revolution which the ‘Kilimo Kwanza’ programme is out to help realise is partly about moving away from reliance on the hoe or the ox-drawn plough and having a go at more mechanised agriculture.
Quick NOTES
inside
This is how we killed Cooperatives
n his last address to the National Assembly as President of the United Republic of Tanzania – in Dar es Salaam on July 29, 1985 – Founding Father Mwalimu Julius Nyerere gave what he called his own provisional assessment of the national achievements and problems he would be passing on to his successor to deal with. He said, in part, that for several years in succession from 1979 the country had such inclement crop weather that agricultural production took a nosedive. This led to the 1980-1983 forced importation of more than 600,000 tonnes of grain, mainly maize, rice and wheat, to feed the urban areas and those rural areas where crops failed. Mwalimu rightly noted that it was upon Tanzanians themselves to free themselves from the socio-economic mess that climatic conditions and problems with the world economy had plunged them into. He said the recipe for success was for everyone to become more efficient in both production and distribution and that this had to apply as much to agriculture as to everything else. Himself a modern farmer by Tanzanian standards, Mwalimu knew very well that the productive use of land held the key to the country’s future – and would readily confess to the fact that Tanzania had made very limited headway in that regard. In his words: “Our peasants work
The Guardian KILIMO KWANZA
Monday 9 November, 2009
This is part of the focus of this second issue of our ‘Kilimo Kwanza’ Supplement and we must quickly add that we have no illusions whatsoever about the swiftness or efficiency with which we hope the dream will come true. For instance, it is well known that small farmers constitute an estimated 80 per cent of Tanzania’s population. But it is also well known that hardly any of these farmers can afford the power tillers and tractors so badly and urgently needed to make agriculture really pay. This is precisely why we recommend that, since even the government may not on its own have the capacity to help these farmers benefit from the use of power tillers and tractors, other players be involved. These would include the Agricultural Bank now being mooted and NGOs that have useful connections with countries boasting decades of experience in mechanised agriculture. The goals we have set for ourselves under ‘Kilimo Kwanza’ are not beyond attaining. But we shall make it only if we come together and fight together in full force – with our development partners chipping in as appropriate.
Wallace Mauggo Editor
Eighty-seven year old Gerald Rugarabamu vividly remembers the day cadres of the CCM up to him, asking him to lend them his trucks shortly after the Arusha Declaration was adopted. He now takes in through the glorious years of coops and how they were finally killed.
How secure is Tanzania from food scarcity?
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ONE billion people experience the hardships that hunger imposes, a figure which continues to rise even amidst the riches of the 21st century, says the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
For Kilimo Kwanza success: Make rural roads all-weather
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Among the ten pillars that will transform Tanzania's agriculture from its current state to a more efficient and rewarding sector, is an accelerated improvement of the country's infrastructure, especially rural roads and bridges.
Trucks operator rears 1000kgs cows
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It may sound unbelievable to many in Tanzania that a cow that can produce 30 litres of milk with ease every day in our local environment.They may find it hard to believe that cattle can grow up to 1000 kilogrammes in our local environment.
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ough times call for tough measures. The government has decided that it can no longer stand by while farmers continue getting a raw deal from produce buyers. And so it is back to the crop buying business, two decades after surrendering it to the free market. “Even the free market text books state that if the free market fails, the government should intervene in strategic areas such as agriculture,” the minister for Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives Mr Stephen Wasira told Parliament. He was winding up debate on the Bill to create the Cereals and Other Produce Board which will buy produce directly from the farms because the private sector has virtually failed to assure farmers a fair price. Citing European states that subsidise their farmers, Mr Wasirra said the Tanzania government cold not afford to be more Catholic than the Pope. Pronouncing the free market a failure in this respect, the minister decried the shortage of rice in many parts of the country while there is a glut in Rukwa region. The government has as a result decided to move into the market in Rukwa by offering farmers Shs27,000 per 50 kgs bag of rice compared to Shs22,000 private operators were buying at. The new board is going to participate directly in buying cereals, legumes and horticultural products and compete directly with private buyers in order to create stability and order in the market.
Bill Gates injects $21m into sweet potatoes The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is injecting $21 million in a project that will exploit the under-tapped potential of sweet potato farming by improving the nutritional value and income generating capacity of the crop. Billionaire Gates, who has thrown his weight behind the campaign to increase food security in the world, said that helping poor small holder farmers grow more sweet potato and getting it to the market is the “world’s single most powerful lever for reducing hunger and poverty”. The project which is codenamed SASHA (Sweet potato Action for Security and Health in Africa) is being implemented in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, Malawi, Ghana and Nigeria.
Scramble for TZ farmland is on:
Dodoma food shortage gets acute
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region. Mr Kikwete made the decision last weekend when the Institute Director, Dr Catherine Madatta, told him they needed Tsh20 million to conduct research to improve for the growth of better apples. The president had decried the poor quality of local apples which compare unfavourably with South African apples sold in the super markets.
Back into business
First it was the Koreans heading for the Rufiji valley of the coast region. Government decided to earmark 100,000 hectares to enhance food production and enable them set up food processing plants. Tanzanian nationals would be the ones to carry out the actual farming and sell to the processors. According to the Korea News Agency Yonhap, the state owned Korea Rural Community Corp (KRC) said in September they were eyeing produce from the Rifiji valley both for local and European markets. Before that in April this year, Saudi investors asked the government to lease them 500,000 hectares of farmland so they could produce wheat and rice farming as part of a plan to boost the desert kingdom’s food supplies. And India’s Yes Bank has set aside $150 million for a farm project in the country to grow wheat and rice if they are allocated between 30,000 and 50,000 hectares of land.
There is food shortage in several parts of the country but the Dodoma situation seems to be unique; whereas relief food supplies have been sent there by the government since the beginning
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Turkey to add value to Tanzanian cotton
of the year, there seems to be no end in sight for the hunger.Kibakwe MP George Simbachawene was forced to call the press last month and appeal to the government for at least 300,000 tons of food if Mpwapwa district, in which his constituency is located, was to be saved. Mr Simbachawene cried out to the government to act and save lives as many people were facing certain death, he said, if emergency food supplies did not reach them soon. Dodoma region is home to some 2.5 million people, and it suffered severe drought that resulted into poor harvest.
Swedish group pulls out of biofuel project
Sekab International Group has sold out its East Africa ventures to minority owners,
EcoDevelopment in Europe Incorporation, including the 300m US Dollars (about 390bn/-) biofuel investment in Bagamoyo and Rufiji districts. The sale made a 400 SEK nominal value covering 100 per cent shares of Sekab BioEnergy Tanzania Limited and Eco Energie Mozambique company in Mozambique.
JK sows sh40m in quality Tanzanian apples Presidemnt Jakaya Kikwete has decided to inject Tsh40 million in research for better quality apple seeds. The president is putting the money in Uyole Agricultural Research Institute in Mbeya
The Turkish government is in talks with Tanzania’s Ministry of Agriculture to lay ground for major cotton farming and processing works. The talks are focused on working out modalities that will enable Turkish investors to come and grow large amounts of cotton and also process it into high class fabrics for export. Turkey is a traditionally renown for top quality textile production. Their involvement will help Tanzania add value to its cotton currently being exported as raw material.
Sh5b for prison farms Prisons chief commissioner Augustino Nanyaro has announced that the department has set aside Sh5billion to revamp the prison farms. The main purpose of the investment is to make the prisons self sufficient in food so that they do not rely on government disbursements to feed the inmates. The money will help the prisons adopt modern farming methods, use improved seeds, fertilisers and procure modern equipment. The prisons have also embarked on tree planting as a way of replacing the many trees they destroy in search of firewood. However, they are also planning to shift from cooking with firewood and embrace the use of biogas, natural gas, liquid gas and coal.
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From The Ground
Angel Navuri
Email: angelnavuri@yahoo.com
Building roads not a favour to village people Rural areas only catch the attention of the (urban) media for bad or trivial news. But continuing to treating our countryside like a different world and remaining ignorant of the more important issues that need to be fixed there as a first step to improving agriculture putd the social and economic stability of the country at risk. Praising the country’s agricultural potential this will always remain empty talk if we continue treating the development of infrastructure, especially rural roads, like a favour for people in the villages, who incidentally comprise over 80 percent of our population. Developing the infrastructure linking the regions and towns of the country is crucial for improving everyone’s income and the country’s GDP. While communication infrastructure from roads, rail to aviation facilities can increase the capacity to export our produce and raise the income of the primary producers in the villages, a bigger portion of the proceeds would end up with people in the (urban based) commercial services sector, not just the farmers. And if agricultural productivity is to increase, it will require a lot of inputs from the (urban based) factories to reach the farmers using a reliable transport network. The countryside thus constitutes a big market for the urban producers, and higher incomes there provide a bigger market for industrial produce from the towns, and stimulate higher employment there. For example, most of the millions of people who have bought mobile phones (which we do not even manufacture here) today are in the villages, not towns. How many more products would they consume if they had higher incomes? The need to fix all rural feeder roads is therefore a no brainer. The private sector which now leads the development efforts is motivated by profit. What it needs is good infrastructure to play its roles. The state, using the peoples taxes and aid from abroad, must build the roads and no politician should insult the people especially during campaign times by even remotely suggesting that building roads and maintaining them is a favour to be extended to an area because of the way people there would vote.
Monday 9 November, 2009
TRANSFORMATION
This is how we killed Cooperatives
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NYERERE TOLD ME I WAS TALKING ECONOMICS WHILE HE WAS TALKING POLITICS ONLY MEMBERS OF THE RULING PARTY WERE APPOINTED TO THE UNION POARDS
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Mzee Rugarabamu recalls how they killed the cooperatives.
By Erick Kabendera
ighty-seven year old Gerald Rugarabamu vividly remembers the day cadres of the ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi went up to him, asking him
to lend them his trucks shortly after the Arusha Declaration was adopted and the government subsequently embarked on an exercise to dispatch people to the newly established Ujamaa villages. He had shortly left the civil service where he served as permanent secretary in different ministries, including the Agriculture ministry to become the
General Manager of Mtibwa Sugar. According to Rugarabamu, people were forced to move without prior notice and taken to places which were mostly not fertile and lacking basic social services. “Some people were taken to dangerously remote areas and in some cases they were attacked and eaten by lions. I instructed my drivers to immedi-
ately stop taking part in the exercise because I didn’t like it,” recalls the senior citizen. When cases of people losing lives were reported to the government, Rugarabamu says the then Prime Minister Rashid Mfaume Kawawa said the exercise was like a battle and that some people had to lose life for the benefit of others. “There were even stories that the heads of those eaten by lions were taken to the President. Some people were living a few metres from the villages but were told to abandon their property and join the villages whereas the villages could have been extended to their places,” recalls reach Rugarabamu. The Ujamaa ideology was a good idea, Rugarabamu says, but the manner in which it was conducted made it lose its essence because people were forced to move to new places rather than being persuaded to do so. For the past ten years, Rugarabamu has been spending most of his time at home writing his Ruhaya-Kiswahili Dictionary and a 2500 years calendar. He says he has not interacted with policy makers for years but has nonetheless heard about the Kilimo Kwanza initiative on radio. According to Rugarabamu, the project risks being unsuccessful if the government uses the same presumptuous old methods of thinking for farmers and peasants, deciding for them and driving them into producing crops they don’t like or which they have never produced. Demonstration farms should be set up in different places in the country, according to Rugarabamu, such that small farmers and peasants could learn best practices from such farms. People who have used modern methods of farming and yielded abundant produce should be used to show others how useful modern agricultural methods could be. He also feels that the government and private sector should create enough markets both outside and inside the country so that farmers could get places to sell their produce before luring them to produce large amounts. “Experience has taught us that if you tell them to produce more but in the end lack market to sell their produce there is a possibility that they won’t oblige in future; they will continue producing for their own use,” he says. “Like was the case with Nyerere, the problem is not developing a policy but rather discharging of policies already in place. Implementers are the ones who make good policies fail,” he says. It is for example important for the government and all stakeholders to consider providing small loans after providing education to the small farmers so they could use the money to hire tractors, according to Rugarabamu. He cites an example of Rufiji area as being suitable for maize farming than other crops. “Former Prime Minister Kawawa once suggested that we introduce cashew nut farming in Dodoma but that would have not worked before the region wasn’t suitable for cashew nut farming. The retired officer has several examples of hurriedly implemented plans that collapsed before they could have any significant impact. Before the Arusha declaration,
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The Guardian KILIMO KWANZA
Monday 9 November, 2009
From p4
Rugarabamu says the government had embarked on a villagization initiative aimed at dispatching young people who lived in urban areas to Kilombero to grow sugarcane. But he recalls that the plan misfired in the end because the young people abandoned the farms and returned to the cities. A man of wide experience who worked al over the united republic, Rugarabamu qualified in agricultural studies in 1949 at Makerere University College in Uganda where he in 1946 won the year’s Foster Research Cup. As soon as he graduated and returned to Tanzania, he joined Tengeru station as officer in charge of the station when it was still the country’s Soil Conservation Service Headquarters. Rugarabamu says he was responsible for teaching soil conservation methods to different people drawn from different parts of the country. “I was transferred to Rungwe District in 1951 to work in the soil conservation services. The area was badly eroded so I was advising farmers on how to conserve the soil,” says Rugarabamu. He later worked in Kasulu District where one of his main duty was to introduce coffee as a main cash crop in the area for four years before he moved to Ufipa district to carry out trials on growing of wheat and coffee. In 1958, Rugarabamu resigned from civil service to work for the Bukoba Co-operative Union as head of the agricultural department, which was mostly engaged in improving the coffee industry before he was promoted to become the manager of the union. The union had over 70 primary cooperative societies affiliated to it and it handled and marketed coffee. “We were selling coffee directly to the world market in Mombasa where one of the biggest coffee auctions in the world was based. I would tune to BBC every morning to follow coffee price trends in the world market. “I would then use the trends on the world market to advise our agent on whether to sell or not. I would spend the whole of Thursday, which was the auction day on the phone with the agent,” recalls Rugarabamu. Rugarabamu who served as permanent secretary in different ministries believes that the villagisation policy was wrongly implemented because it removed people from fertile areas to infertile places, thereby disrupting even the already profitable agricultural operatons that were taking root. At that time, Rugarabamu recalls that the Bukoba union would make a gross of Shs 40 million per season through selling of hard coffee. Primary cooperatives were taking coffee to them and they would give them advance payment and pay the remaining amount at the end of the season. “Farmers and peasants would be paid between sh200 and 300 per kilo and we didn’t have middlemen. Those who bought from the world market were consumers themselves. Every coffee grower had to pay half a cent per kilo to the union and the money would be used to send our children for further studies overseas,” he says. The downfall of the cooperative unions all over the country saddened Rugarabamu who says that was mostly caused by the government’s decision to introduce a system that allowed only TANU members to become board
members of the unions. Most of these people, according to Rugarabamu were purely politicians who were neither interested in developing coffee farming or knew nothing about agriculture. He accuses such people of stealing the unions’ money and in the end the unions couldn’t even pay their bills. “People were cooperating because those who run the union were people they knew because they came from the same communities and it was easy for them to listen to them. But the idea of bringing in people from other regions to run such institutions wasn’t good,” he says. In 1962, he says an expatriate named Forbes who was the then Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture went to see him in Kagera and told him that he wanted to leave the country but didn’t want to leave the ministry to the people who didn’t know about agriculture and requested him to go back to the civil service. Forbes wanted Rugarabamu to become the Principal Secretary but when he was about to start work Prime Minister Kawawa rejected him, saying he had left the government and there was no reason for him to come back. “So I was made the Director of Agriculture at the ministry but President Nyerere called me shortly afterwards and told me I had looked after the cooperative money very well and appointed me Deputy Secretary to the Treasury and I was subsequently sent to the treasury of Nigeria and Bank of England to learn how they were doing it in their countries.
TRANSFORMATION
and nationalized the farms except for the farms which were owned by Karimjee family because of their support to small farmers and of course TANU,” says Rugarabamu. Before the British colonialists left, he says agriculture was well developed but it seems that colonialists left with everything because agriculture efficiency fell soon after they had left. In those days, Rugarabamu says agricultural officers were required to
be out in the field at least 20 days a month and would only go to the office to write reports. For the case of instructors, he says they were expected to be out in the field all the time. When he retired, his idea was to start his own farms thinking he would perform well because of the skills he had gained over the time but he lacked capital and decided to invest the little money he had in the transport sector. “I thought it was time wasting to
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hen he came back, Rugarabamu was surprised to learn that somebody else had been appointed to his post. He complained to President Nyerere who immediately decided to return him to theMinistry of Agriculture, Forest and Wildlife as Principal Secretary. Before villagization policy was set up, Rugarabamu recalls another policy that was developed with the aim of returning all young people to rural areas but a big group of young people were sent to Kilombero to cultivate sugarcane. “As top adviser to the Minister for Agriculture on agricultural related issues, I told them that it was not practical to send young people back to rural areas because they would come back but they didn’t listen to me. The exercise failed as a result,” he recalls. In 1967, he was posted to the Ministry of Commerce and Co-operatives for four years where one of his responsibilities was to deal with agriculture policies but he was transferred to the Ministry of Commerce and Co-operatives as Principal Secretary. While at the helm of the ministry, President Nyerere directed him to nationalize sisal plantations which were mainly based in the Coastal region of Tanga . Rugarabamu says sisal growers had set up strong sisal industries, which made the country the leader in sisal production in the world followed by Brazil . “I told President Nyerere that instead of nationalizing the farms we could start fresh farms but he told me that I was talking economics while he was talking politics. So we went ahead
First President and Father of the Nation Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere
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go back to hoe farming and so I gave it up,” he says. For Kilimo Kwanza, he advises the government to retain all crops where they are farmed and not introduce people to new crops. “I hear MPs and ministers saying in parliament that they are marketing Tanzania abroad but I thought we already did that in our times,” he said as we finished our interview. It was now his time to catch up with world issues on BBC.
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Monday 9 November, 2009
FOOD SECURITY
From P6
Kilimo “ The Kwanza
campaign needs to maintain and boost the momentum in the govt’s commitment to provide small-scale farmers with chemical fertilizer subsidies and to enable them to buy agricultural inputs crucial for high crop production
O By Michael Mbiro
NE billion people experience the hardships that hunger imposes, a figure which continues to rise even amidst the riches of the 21st century, says the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). “Engulfed within a vortex of energy shortage, price inflation and climate change, food security has become the most intractable challenge for development agencies,” the UN body reveals in its updated reports. Food security, which is defined by access to sufficient and affordable food can refer to a single household, community or to the global population. But the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) falls short of food security aspirations in seeking only to reduce by half the proportion of the world’s population experiencing hunger. People in developing countries are more threatened by food insecurity, with millions even not sure of their next meal. Even many of those who have food eat unbalanced diet, deficient of vital components. Tanzania being one of the developing countries and among the countries ranked poorest in Sub-Saharan Africa is not unexceptional, it has been experiencing food insecurity time after time caused by a number of factors, such as drought, floods and climate change. According to available reports from the
How secure is Tanzania from food scarcity?
Ministry of Agriculture Food Security and Co-operatives, food insecurity has been in the country for years, despite several measures taken by the government to eliminate. Measures taken by the government to address this serious problem include special campaigns launched by the first phase administration under the first president, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere like Siasa ni Kilimo and Kilimo cha Kufa na Kupona. Apart from the national concerted efforts being made to eradicate the problem, Tanzania has been in the
frontline in implementing regional efforts such as those initiated under the Southern African Development Community (SADC). A review of progress in agriculture and food security by SADC Integrated Committee of Ministers (ICM) in June revealed that although the overall cereal deficit in the region has increased this year, food security for most Member States has improved compared to last year. In addition, as the SADC Directorate of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources (FANR) says, the
last three decades have seen a decline in financing inflows into agriculture development from the public, private and donor sectors. “The most significant decline was in multilateral aid to African agriculture,” says FANR in a document on sustainable food security prepared for the SADC Consultative Conference held in Namibia in April. Perennial food shortages prompted SADC leaders to call an extraordinary summit in 2004, whose main outcome was the Dar es Salaam Declaration, which is a framework of short, medium
and long-term measures needed to improve food security in the region. A communiqué issued after the FANR Cluster Ministers meeting held in South Africa in April to review progress on the implementation of the Dar es Salaam Declaration noted that, although some progress has been made in improving the availability and accessibility of key agricultural inputs such as improved seed and fertilizers to small-scale farmers, declining investment and national budgetary allocations to agriculture remain a major concern. Some members have done much worse than others. In Zambia, budgetary allocation to agriculture was a mere two percent in 2001, rising to seven percent in 2004, before declining to about four percent in 2005, according to a presentation on Resource Allocation for Agriculture by Jones Govereh of the Food Security Research Project . Back home, Tanzania has also seen a gradual decline in public sector investment in agriculture over the last two decades. Budgetary allocation to the sector fell from 21 per cent in 1980 to 2.1 per cent in 1998 before rising marginally to 6.5 per cent in 2002/03 farming season, according to a Country Strategic Opportunities Paper prepared through collaboration between the government and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. The Dar es Salaam Declaration calls for governments to progressively increase budgetary allocations for agri-
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Monday 9 November, 2009
culture to at least 10 per cent of the national total budgets as recommended in the African Union’s Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security adopted in July 2003. The ambitious Kilimo Kwanza Strategy initiated by the fourth phase CCM government, is another milestone in the history of the country. The initiative is meant to be a catalyst in boosting agricultural growth and increased food production, provided it is given befitting action. The Kilimo Kwanza campaign need to maintain and boost the momentum in the government’s commitment to provide small-scale farmers with chemical fertilizer subsidies and to enable them to buy the agricultural inputs crucial for high crop production. If this spirit will be sustained by the government, for sure, food insecurity in the country can become history in not too a time long to come. It has however been observed globally that despite the stated political commitment by most countries to reduce hunger, the problem still persists. The number of people lacking access to minimum diet according to FAO has risen from 824 million in the baseline year 1990 to 963 million in 2008, and a further 750 million are assessed to be at risk. The UN body further notes that only one third of the developing countries have succeeded in reducing hunger. Even on the less demanding MDG yardstick, hunger has fallen only from 20% to 17% of the population of developing countries. Prospects for achieving the 2015 Goal will be further diminished by the impact of the current economic crisis on poorer countries and the FAO has already warned that its latest figures may be conservative. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are the regions most affected, with almost half of all young children in India being underweight. Hunger is a double-edged sword: Malnutrition impairs the ability to learn or to work and reduces resistance to disease. Such affected people will produce less and become increasingly worse off in a vicious circle. Hunger is therefore a cause as well as a consequence of poverty. It is also reported that children’s health and cognitive development are especially sensitive, to the extent that the majority of child mortality cases are attributed to malnutrition. The second Millennium Development Goal indicator is the proportion of children under five years who are underweight in relation to their age. This figure has reduced only from 32% to 27% in the period 19902006, but UNICEF says that 51 countries are unlikely to reach this MDG target by 2015. But the situation is bound to get more complicated. Experts now note with concern how climate change has thrown policymakers into disarray. As recently as 2006, progress reports on malnutrition published by UN agencies made no reference to climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted in 2007 that for Africa in which “for even small temperature increases of 1-2 degrees…. Yields for rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50% by 2020.” Despite this warning, climate negotiators later presented a 2-degree
temperature rise as an acceptable threshold. Climate change is also predicted to increase the intensity and frequency of drought and floods, already a serious short-term cause of food insecurity. The Bali Climate Change Conference launched an Adaptation Fund which may help farmers in poor countries to adapt through use of alternative seed varieties, improved soil management, maintenance of water management systems and reforestation. Enter the bio-fuels Recent developments of the production of petrol additives such as ethanol and biodiesel manufactured from plant crops as a means of reducing dependence on fossils and potentially cutting carbon dioxide emissions, has met strong opposition on grounds that these move are likely to paralyse efforts calculated at cutting down food insecurity. As calls to drop the idea of producing ethanol and biofuels fall on deaf ears, by 2008 one third of the US maize crop was diverted to biofuels production instead of food, encouraged by
FOOD SECURITY
subsidies of US dollars 7 billion per year. Today, over 5 per cent of global cereal production is allocated to biofuels, a development which has partly accounted for the 30 % increase in the price of corn this decade. These policies have provoked outrage amongst groups campaigning for poverty reduction. Not only is land for growing food being used for consumption by rich motorists at a time of global food insecurity, but also the net saving in carbon dioxide emissions from maize-based ethanol has been exposed as moderate. The EU parliament has extensively modified its targets but the new US president has so far expressed support for biofuel producers. Promotion of biofuels has been cited as a breach of the right to sufficient food enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to feed, Olivier de Schutter, has thus described the food crisis as a human rights emergency and called for a freeze on new investment in convert-
ing food into fuel. Similar to the dilemma posed by the production of bio-fuels is the older problem of animal feeds. A third of the world’s grain has for the last five decades been used to feed animals, with seven kilos of corn required to produce one kilo of beef. Many of the world’s food security problems stem from the absence of an overriding goal to honour the right to sustainable food resources. For example, giving priority to market economics over the last three decades as imposed on developing countries by international financial institutions has been a major cause of current food insecurity. The proportion of foreign aid allocated to agriculture has thus fallen from18 % in 1979 to less than 3%. African governments have therefore struggled to meet their 2003 Maputo Declaration commitment, which called for 10% of national budgets to be dedicated to agriculture by 2008. The consequence of this prolonged lack of investment is an inadequate infrastructure to support local distribution and market knowledge.
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Poor roads, irrigation and storage facilities impede efficiencies. Insecure tenure and exclusion from affordable credit limit aspirations of small farmers. Despite the generally poor soil quality of the continent, only 5% of cultivatable land in Africa is supported by irrigation. In such an environment, planting for a mix of household subsistence and surplus for market is a model chronically vulnerable to fluctuating prices or unfavourable weather. But some causes of food insecurity are man made. The 2007 Global Hunger Index reports that almost all of its worst ranking countries have been involved in violent conflict in the last decade. Tanzania does not exist in isolation and the Kilimo Kwanza strategists need to recognize that while larger farms can raise capital for the expensive products and compete in export markets on their own, small farmers need to be supported through subsidized inputs like fertilisers and simple machinery to raise their productivity through intensified crop and animal husbandry.
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COVER STORY
Monday 9 November, 2009
Monday 9 November, 2009
The Guardian KILIMO KWANZA
COVER STORY
Can Tanzania afford even half the tractors it needs?
- WE NOW HAVE HALF THE NUMBER OF TRACTORS IT HAD 30 YEARS AGO WHEN IT HAD HALF TODAY’S POPULATION - HAND PLOUGH TOO EXPENSIVE FOR SMALL FARMER AND NOT NEEDED BY THE BIG FARMER - SHS 50bn FOR TRACTORS COULD BE AN UNDERDOSE AND NEEDS TO BE SUPPLEMENTED BY OTHER SOURCES
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By Angel Navuri
t may come as a surprise to most Tanzanians that the country’s agriculture was by far more mechanized thirty years ago than it is today. In fact the country today has less than half of the tractors it had in the seventies, though it now has to feed twice the population. That agriculture in Tanzania therefore needs to be rapidly mechanized to cause a significant rise in output has never been in doubt. We actually need to double the number of tractors to just catch up with where we were thirty years ago! The question is how this can be realized when the intended users, the farmers, are still too poor to afford even basic equipment and most of them have to use the same kind of hoe that their grandparents relied on a hundred years ago! The much touted, hand-held power tiller costs about six million shillings and therefore remains out of reach for any small-scale farmer. Yet the large scale farmer is not likely to have any use for the little machine. The most viable way to meaningfully till the land is the tractor, which can work on many different farms, being accessed by individual farmers per hour or per hectare. Whether the farmers access the tractor through hiring from enterprising operators or through reviving cooperative societies is a matter of detail. First, the tractors must be available if they are to be accessed by the peasant farmers. Ministry of Agriculture officials estimate that the present tractor population is a mere 8,000 in the whole country that requires to till 44 million hectares. The number has fallen more than a half, from 17,000 the country had in the seventies. The very minimum number of tractors required to add to the ageing stock that can make sense as an emergency measure is 4,500 which should be imported imme-
A tractor can be fitted with many different implements for different functions on the farm. However, workshops must be set up to service the tractors and the various implements as well as fabricating them.
diately. That would mean the country deploying one tractor per 3,500 hectares on average. At the moment, 400 tractors are being imported into the country every year by private companies from India, Pakistan, China, Iran, Brazil, the United States and Europe. It would therefore take these importers a decade before they can supply the number that is urgently required as first aid today. Government has reportedly availed some Tsh50billion for the importation of tractors. At a duty free average cost of TShs37 million per unit, these are 1,350 tractors, still far below the “emergency” requirement of 4,500 units. Nevertheless, the 1,350 will improve the available capacity to one tractor for 4,700 hectares from the present one tractor for 5,500 hectares. On its own the Tshs50billion, large a sum as it may be, may end up being an under dose to the problem, unless specific conditions are attached to ensure the machines are concentrated in specific areas where they can have an impact. Having already declared the start of the green revolution and having gone ahead to start committing billions of shillings towards this end, government has no option but to ensure that its tractor strategy works. The alternative – making a postmortem a few years later why it failed – is too costly to contemplate. Government therefore needs to consider some key factors, one being to ensure that the
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“usual” procurement irregularities do not also afflict the tractor deals. It must also decide and explore different ways to finance enough tractors to make an impact. For the resultant increase in output should translate into capacity to repay for the investment in the medium to long term. And above all, whichever means, sources and methods are used to finance and procure the tractors, their final allocation much be as rational as possible with no political influence whatsoever. Most of the failures in the agricultural history of the country were related to political considerations overriding economic ones in decision making. There is no point in knowingly repeating the mistakes of the past. It is an irony of poor societies, as it is with poor individuals, to be more wasteful of their meager resources than their wealthy donors who tend to be more strict and efficient. This often characterises the relationship between African beneficiaries and their European and American benefactors. The first world donors often give money to among other things feel morally right, but do very little to enable Africans and Tanzanians to become economically and technically independent. Failure to provide for technical sustainability makes the recipients develop a sense of dependency, and expect to be helped over and over as one scheme after another grinds to a halt. Tractors for the country whether bought with cash, loans or grants should help the people break away from this donor mentality and bring about a sense of ownership among the local farmers who receive equipment. The tractors and implements need not be given to local farmers and cooperatives of farmers, rather the tractors should be available for purchase by industrious Tanzanians who will use them to farm and to hire out. On its own, government may not have the resources to finance or the expertise to manage the importation of the all the tractors needed to kick-start the green revolution. The Agricultural Bank under reconstitution would need to be involved. Other players need to be invited and these should include NGOs that have links in the countries where mechanized agriculture has been going on for many years. These would obtain used tractors and farm implements which are no longer in much use at minimal cost. The tractors and implements must be refurbished, taking care to only accept the fuel efficient ones, and shipped into the country. The shipping would in fact constitute the bigger cost. The importing NGOs would train maintenance technicians who would service the machines once they have been sold to the local farmers on credit. Some of the money being recovered from the buyers would then be ploughed back into importing more equipment. Some investment should also be into fabricating spare parts locally. The required annual importation of tractors, according to experts, is 1,800 units. This is after the urgently required 4,500 units have been procured. Clearly, different sources of funding are needed but with strict, unified quality control. The task to mechanise our agriculture to at least the 1970s levels is urgent but not impossible. The earlier a determined, purposeful start is made the better.
The Guardian KILIMO KWANZA
Monday 9 November, 2009
INFRASTRUCTURE
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For Kilimo Kwanza success:
Make rural roads all-weather
A By Wence Mushi
mong the ten pillars that will transform Tanzania's agriculture from its current state to a more efficient and rewarding sector, is an accelerated improvement of the country's infrastructure, especially rural roads and bridges. Indeed the campaign to reduce poverty will be attained more easily and make a bigger impact when this sector is run more efficiently. Infrastructure is like the veins and arteries in the human body which enable blood and oxygen, to reach all parts of the body. Only that in the case of the country's road network, the blood and oxygen constitutes the various inputs ferried to the farmer in the remotest parts of the rural countryside to coincide farming plans and the agri-
cultural produce that has to be taken out to the various market destinations. The timely delivery of the various inputs for land preparation, planting, weeding and harvesting are thus critical for enhancement of crop production, just as is the timely transportation of the produce to the market. But the country’s infrastructure in its present state will be a major hurdle to these efforts which are critical in turning around the sector on which the majority population relies for a living. A quick look shows that the country’s total road network length is 85,517 kilometres including trunk and regional roads (28,892 kms) which are under the ministry while the urban, district and feeder roads with a total of 56,625 kms are under Local Government Authorities. Only about 5% of the network is paved. The road network carries over 90% of passenger and over 80% freight traffic in the country. The tarmac
roads are those connecting business city of Dar es Salaam and other regions (Morogoro, Dodoma, Iringa, Mbeya and Ruvuma) located in the southern highlands and central part of the country and neighbouring countries of Zambia and Malawi. Others connect Dar es Salaam with other regions (Tanga, Kilimanjaro, Arusha, and Manyara) and neighbouring countries of Kenya and Uganda.The work of connecting the country’s regional headquarters through paved roads is near completion, with only Rukwa, Kigoma, Tabora and Manyara remaining. The government has set up the Tanzania Road Fund to generate revenues to maintain and extend the country’s network. Last financial year, the road fund raised over 200bn/mainly for road improvement, covering the highways and regional roads under Tanroads, and district and feeder roads under the Local government au-
thorities. Over 60 per cent is left to Tanroads for maintenance of the highways and regional raods, while Local governments get 29 per cent and the ministry of infrastructure gets seven per cent. Recent estimates put the maintenance of a kilometre of bitumen road at USD 800, while a kilometre of gravel road was costed at USD 400 and USD230 for earthen roads. With these estimates, there is always a gap of over 60 per cent between the collected funds and expenditure requirements for not only building new roads, but improving the current ones, requiring more efforts and multipronged approach to cover the deficit. For the push to Kilimo Kwanza to bear the intended results, it is the district, feeder and community roads which call for a major inflow of resources to upgrade them in a bid to open the vast fertile hinterland. Some few years back the World Bank in a
major study described the 27,550 kilometres of district roads as being poor condition, requiring major rehabilitation. This is the gateway to the villages and communities, engaged mainly in agriculture and who badly need all season roads to enhance their work. But the poor condition of the infrastructure has imposed a significant penalty on agricultural activities through higher vehicle operating costs, delays caused by long travel time to the nearest transport services, decreased crops and animal production, and therefore adversely affecting the economy. Indeed as one goes into the villages and farms, the infrastructure is poorly serviced, and at some point along the way, the farmer has to carry the inputs on the head for distances of up to ten kilometres and do likewise when taking out the produce.
Continues On P11
The Guardian KILIMO KWANZA
Monday 9 November, 2009
From P10
When it rains, the situation becomes worse, trapping inputs in warehouses or produce in farmers’ hands. The farmer is thus the loser in both situations. Poor infrastructure, especially feeder roads and rural community roads have thus been the Achilles heels of hard working farmers in most parts of the country. Almost all the major food and cash crop producing regions, such as Morogoro, Iringa, Rukwa, Ruvuma, Kigoma, to name a few suffer to a great extent from the lack of a reliable, allseason network of feeder roads in the rural farmlands. The farmer in the fertile Rukwa region may fail to realise a bumper maize harvest, because of the difficulty in securing inputs in time due to lack of passable roads. Even where a bumper harvest is realised, most of it may rot in the village, again because of poor infrastructure which makes it difficult to reach needy consumers in the same region, and neighbouring ones. No wonder the major refrain from the rural areas, especially during elections, has been the call for improved rural road network. Poor accessibility restricts not only the physical access to the badly needed goods, but also the necessary information to ensure smooth exchange among potential sellers and buyers, thus killing the dynamics that would see the rural economy improve and be the main weapon with which the country kicks out poverty. That is why a critical review of the state of the country's infrastructure, especially the rural roads and its adequacy in serving the Kilimo Kwanza programme is a paramount requirement. Indeed a properly mapped out plan to improve the state of the country’s roads if implemented systematically, could have an immediate and huge impact on the efforts for a green revolution. Just for the sake of elaboration, a farmer who gets the inputs on time for a proper sequencing of farming activities, can immediately boost output, while a reliable network to get the produce out on time, would improve the market for the produce and therefore raise incomes, if all other conditions remain stable. The current institutional arrangements assign the responsibility to manage feeder and district roads to local government. Community roads are relegated, by mandate or by default to be managed by local communities whose financing capacity is limited. Furthermore, external funding is commonly restricted to the national and regional roads with less emphasis on district roads. For a start, after a thorough review of the state of the existing infrastructure, a systematic campaign to should be embarked on to ensure that it serves these communities at all times. They should be widened to allow in vehicles which will make movements easier during all seasons. The rural communities should be mobilized to help in keeping the infrastructure open, using budgets to be provided by the local governments, which in any case live off the cess from these same communities. The easier it is made to access urban markets, the more incomes the communities will generate, enabling them to pay the cess. The quality and quantity of rural
transport services profoundly affect the daily lives of millions of residents of rural communities. Goods and agricultural inputs need to be transported to villages and market centres. Social interactions generally require significant level of transport. Despite all these, transport services are limited making the mobility of rural communities difficult and costly. This leads to poor or unreliable
INFRASTRUCTURE
transport services, which in turn contribute to post harvest loss in agricultural products. For most farmers in even the most fertile regions, the main types of infrastructure are footpaths, trails, tracks, which are cleared narrow passages, not amenable to motorized transport. Others use rivers, streams and locally made bridges as infrastructure. Such infrastructure does not facili-
tate households to acquire their essential needs at a minimum possible cost. In rural areas walking and head loading dominate travel and transport activities, and in most cases the movements take place on footpaths, tracks and trails away from the formal road network. Availability of means of transports such as buses, tractors, pickups, trucks and lorries are very low and limited. Many households use non-mo-
The poor condition of the infrastructure has imposed a significant penalty on agriculture.
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torised transport (NMT) like bicycles, tricycles, animal drawn carts and wheelbarrows to transport agriculture inputs and outputs from their fields. But this mode of transport is used at a varying scale depending on the income levels, availability of appropriate livestock, equipment, terrain and social cultural factors. Out of the total carriage in the rural areas, only 25% is done using NMT. This situation reduces efficiency in economic activities and marketing, hence accelerates poverty in the rural.
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he poor condition of the infrastructure has imposed a significant penalty on agricultural activities through higher vehicle operating costs, delays caused by long travel time to the nearest transport services, decreased crops and animal production, and therefore adversely affecting the economy. Rural infrastructure is hardly passable especially during the rainy seasons. The infrastructure sometimes gets completely destroyed making accessibility impossible. Maintenance has been irregular and largely limited to spot improvements made by villagers with little or inadequate resources and skills, yielding just short-term results. Most of village dwellers are not aware of their role in making their contributions of the improvement of their roads, bridges and other transport infrastructure. Such infrastructure bars growth of economic activities as well as hindering local transport and travel. But the biggest victims of the poor state of the infrastructure are the rural women who are traditionally most active in the day to day upkeep of rural life. They spend an estimated 75 per cent of their time walking long distances to and from farms and other production centres. Due to poor rural transport infrastructure what they produce becomes small and sustains the poverty chain. It is clear that it is a huge task to get the feeder and community roads to a level where they are passable at all times of the year and able to raise productivity. The current institutional arrangements assign the responsibility to manage feeder and district roads to local governments. Community roads are relegated, by mandate or by default to be managed by local communities whose financing capacity is limited. Furthermore, external funding is commonly restricted to the national and regional roads with less emphasis on district roads. This certainly should keep policy makers busy charting strategies to raise the needed resources as fast as possible to get the roads into passable shape in the shortest time possible. The policy direction is to enable local governments to be more responsible and accountable for overseeing rural infrastructure development and management. The truly tested method of involving local labour in getting things done could come handy in moving more quickly towards the goal of implementing a major revolution in this major sector of the country’s economy and the livelihoods of the majority of our population.
The Guardian KILIMO KWANZA
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RANCHING
Monday 9 November, 2009
The Guardian KILIMO KWANZA
Monday 9 November, 2009
ADVERTISEMENT
Trucks operator rears 1000kgs cows
I
Iringa's superweight cows
Red Breed from Demark in 2006 through artificial insemination (AI) to increase milk production to feed the plant as it was now operating under its capacity. Abri said the Danish Red Breed has been well researched and proved to be resistant to diseases and produces much milk. He says cows of this breed produce up to 30 litres of milk a day per animal. He said the target is to have between 40,000 and 60,000 litres processed by the plant a day. Abri however says even the marvelous stosk at their farm is nothing compared to where they came from. In Demark, cattle can grow up to 1700 kilogrammes. So the ‘huge’ 1,000 kgs ones that mark the maximum that can far be reared in Tanzania would really be considered ‘tiny’ by the Danish breeders. The director said cattle keeping, though a profitable business, can get pretty expensive when it comes to procuring vaccines, drugs and food. On his part, he said he uses hay and ordinary grass to feed the cattle. He has three farms of about 3000 acres in total. Businesswise, Salim Abri complained of the government decision to slap 18 per cent of Value Added Tax (VAT) on all milk byproducts such yoghurt, cheese, ghee and butter, saying such a decision was setback to the business. He also said during power rationing, production costs tend to shoot up, a factor that makes them incur huge losses in the operations. He said during power outages one litre of milk is processed at Sh 40 while if power is available a litre of milk is processed at Sh 10. He added that in absence of power generated by Tanesco his company spends almost Sh200,000 on diesel to run the plant for only 10 hours. ASAS Dairies won a Gold Award in Geneva at The Century International Quality Era Awards, 2004.
By Rodgers Luhwago
t may sound unbelievable to many in Tanzania that a cow that can produce 30 litres of milk with ease every day in our local environment. They may find it hard to believe that cattle can grow up to 1000 kilogrammes in our local environment. But you do not need a passport or a visa to see these these animals and processes; they are riht here on dairy farms in Iringa region. We just visited one of these farms that raise the wonder cows, run by a group whose core business was managing transport trucks and only went into farming as an additional activity. We were welcomed by Asas Group of Companies Director, Salim Abri at his head office in Iringa where we arrived unannounced last weekend. In a brief interview, he told The Guardian that despite the fact that their core business is trucking and haulage they are also gainfully engaged in other businesses as well. Those businesses include production of diary products such as fresh milk, flavoured and plain yoghurt, cheese, Ghee and Butter, development of real estates, dairy farming and oil trade. Abri explained that though they started engaging in dairy farming way back in 1980s effective dairy processing started in 2000. Recounting how they recorded good results in dairy farming, Abri said from the start of the business they cross bred 100 cattle for the main objective of producing fresh milk that was sold to ordinary people in Iringa region before they also began supplying it to a processing plant that was owned by Small Industries Development Organization (SIDO). He said since the SIDO plant was privatized to an individual, it later closed business before it was sold to another businessman who relocated it to Dar es Salaam from Iringa, creating a market problem for Asas milk. However, the businessman who relocated the SIDO plant to Dar es Salaam later established milk collection centre in Iringa through which he collected milk from Asas and other small scale producers for his plant in Dar es Salaam. But the new milk processor was not lucky or successful either, and business for him collapsed in late 1990s. This development prompted Asas to establish their own milk processing plant. It officially started operating in 2000. Having an established brand new local milk processing plant, other local milk producers now could sell theirs to Asas Dairies Ltd. In other words the establishment of Asas milk processing plant created a market for other local milk producers as well. But a new ‘good’ problem arose. According to the director, the establishment of the plant suddenly turned
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what had been a glut into a shortage, as the amount of milk being produced then was too little for the capacity of the processor. This prompted the Asas Dairy Farming Ltd to improve its breed by cross breeding with Danish
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The Guardian KILIMO KWANZA
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Monday 9 November, 2009
What OTHERS SAY
New Promise and Problems for Tanzanian Agro-dealers
F
ive years ago when Ramadhani Kiombile was raising vegetables on a small plot near the central Tanzanian town of Ifakara, he took a bus to Dar es Salaam, the country’s commercial capital 450 kilometers (270 miles) to the east on the Indian Ocean, to attend an agricultural trade fair. While there he learned that the price of the pesticide he used on his produce was five times higher back home. “The difference in the price was so high that it encouraged me to open my own shop,” the 32-year-old farmerturned-agro-dealer said. Today he has two successful shops that sell improved seeds, fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides to hundreds of small-scale farmers. One is in Ifakara, and the other, opened just last year, is in the ricefarming village of Mkula, 50 kilometers (30 miles) north on a dirt road that resembles a washboard. Initially, Ramadhani had hoped to attend university after completing secondary school, but his father, a sugar cane farmer, died, and his mother had no money to pay the school fees so he grew vegetables for sale while struggling to get a loan to open his first shop. Banks in Tanzania have been reluctant to grant loans to small-scale farmers, many of whom operate at the subsistence level and are not considered businessmen. Their one-to-two acre plots are not accepted as collateral, and most lack the education, skills and money to advance. But Ramadhani Kiombile is not a man who gives up easily. And, the Kilombero district chairman of the 35-member UWAPEKI, an association of agrodealers, is always eager to seize new opportunities. Such an opportunity arrived about Zanobia Seeds, run by four Tanzanian brothers, sits in a valley 1500 meters below the jagged, forested hills of the Great Rift Wall. The area is isolated and suffers from periods of dry weather and inconsistent rainfall. Yet, here, Rajinder Singh Mand and his three brothers produce improved varieties of maize, beans, pigeonpea, sunflower, rice, banana, sesame seeds, lentils, yellow gram, wheat, finger millet and sorghum. Most of their customers are smallholder farmers, and, with the support of AGRA, they aim to produce quality seeds for Tanzanian farmers at prices they can afford. One day in early April 2009, a group of African seed company entrepreneurs visited Zanobia Seeds, about 140 km southwest of Arusha. Rajindir, a Tanzanian man of Indian descent, stands tall amongst rows upon rows of slender, green-leafed plants that color the landscape as far as the eye can see.
a year and a half ago, and Ramadhani became one of 15 agro-dealers to receive intensive training in business skills. The program was set up by the Tanzania Agro-dealers Strengthening Program (TASP), which seeks to build a robust and efficient system of distributing agricultural inputs to smallholder farmers. TASP also prepares the agro-dealers for certification to obtain overdraft loans from the National Micro-Finance Bank (NMB) of up to 15 million Tanzanian shillings ($12,000), which they can use to buy supplies for their shops. The arrangement was made possible by an innovative financing program spearheaded and partly financed by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
By December 31, 2008, the NMB had approved the applications of 114 agro-dealers valued at 1,491,200,000 Tanzanian shillings ($1,192,960). “Before the training, I sold products without keeping proper records,” Ramadhani said. He and his colleagues made no distinctions between sales and profits and did not factor in their expenses or labor. Initially he only dealt in seasonal products—what was needed at a particular moment in the farming cycle and moved fast off the shelves. He was advised to sell all products, but it was impossible to obtain the capital to purchase them. The overdraft facility, and a related voucher program—were designed to resolve that issue. Funded by the Government of
Tanzania, the National Agricultural Input Voucher Scheme (NAIVS) discounts the cost of agricultural inputs to smallholder farmers through vouchers. Farmers turn the vouchers in to the agro-dealers, in exchange for their farm inputs. Agro-dealers are then set to exchange the vouchers for cash at the local branch of the NMB—obtaining vital working capital which can also be used to pay off the overdraft loans. But it doesn’t always work that way. Ramadhani opened his shop in Mkula in 2008 as the voucher system was being introduced through a pilot project for small-scale rice farmers; his sales went up by 80 per cent, but he has had problems cashing in the vouchers.
Breeders of good seed
He explains their work and goals. “I’d like to leave my mark on this world. AGRA’s work is noble and I feel lucky to be part of this effort to bring a green revolution to Africa,” Rajinder says. “Instead of us going around begging for food, maybe one day we’ll be sending our rice to America.” The brothers have big plans over the next few years. Zanobia is working with a local research station and AGRA to, test, and multiply the first locally-adapted maize hybrid for the Manyara region of Tanzania. They are also producing a high-yielding variety of pigeonpea, one of the regions food staples.
Pigeonpea – untapped potential Maize and pigeonpea are the two
most important crops in this region of Tanzania. Pigeonpea – largely considered an orphan crop because neither the public nor private sector has invested much in research to improve yield – is nonetheless valued as a drought-resistant crop high in protein and ideal for farmers in dry areas. There is also a multi-million dollar export market for the crop in India, other Asian countries, and Europe. Several years ago, Zanobia received a rare high-yielding white pigeonpea variety from the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). The company released the variety as Mali to reflect its country of origin. The brothers are very excited about the possibilities this has
opened up: from export earnings to helping local farmers increase their yield and incomes. Since 2000, Rajinder has had a direct connection with buyers in Europe, thanks to his work with Technoserve, a nonprofit business and economic development organization. That year he exported his first seed crop ever – 40 metric tons of Mali – followed by 300 tons in 2001 as well as an additional 600 tons sold to exporters in Dar es Salaam. Some 250 small-scale farmers, most of whom are women, contract with Zanobia to grow the improved seed. The company also hires more than 150 women to work full-time over four months to hand-pick and sort export-quality pigeonpea.
Back in Ifakara, Ramadhani and five other agro-dealers met to discuss the teething problems of the program designed to make them more efficient—and prosperous. Salum Bohari, Hiyari Mwinyimvua, Elizabeth Bakari, Sudi Mindu and Sylvester Kasunga Idete, a former clinical officer at a local mission hospital, were all enthusiastic about the benefits of the intensive training. But they had misgivings about the overdraft system, and how it would affect them if they had difficulty cashing in the vouchers: they are charged 15 per cent interest on the overdraft, which is compounded daily—whether or not the bank is willing or able to honor the vouchers. As of the second week in February, Ramadhani was holding 32 million shillings ($25,600) in unredeemed vouchers that he had accepted in just one week from farmers in five villages as the rice-planting season moved into full swing. Parliament needed to approve the release of billions of shillings to fund the overdraft and voucher programs. “I can’t take the vouchers if there is no money,” the young businessman said. AGRA program officer Fred Muhhuku later explained the underlying problems, and the efforts to solve them. According to Muhhuku, at the start of the program, there was a delay in releasing funds to the bank for voucher redemption. This was brought to the attention of government, and rectified. The second problem causing delays was the need to manually input thousands of vouchers into the bank’s computers before they could be cashed. “This is an operational problem within the bank,” Muhhuku said. One solution being considered is for the government to design “master vouchers” which could be issued to agro-dealers in exchange for perhaps one thousand single vouchers. That would cut back considerably on the time needed to enter vouchers into the computer, but could cause other delays in the exchange process. The pros and cons of this approach are now being weighed. In the meantime, Muhhuku emphasizes that “there is a strong desire by the government and all partners to ensure the success of the voucher program.” AGRA WEBSITE Because many of the smallholder farmers in the region cannot afford to buy new seed, Zanobia, has initiated a scheme that encourages local farmers to trade in a portion of their harvest for improved pigeonpea seed. For the farmers, the result has been better harvests each season and increased income because they now produce enough to sell some of their harvest. In 2009, Zanobia will set aside 60 acres for multiplication and distribution of Mali for local farmers at affordable prices. “Many of the hopes for an African Green Revolution lie with the success of companies like Zanobia”, says Joseph DeVries, Director of AGRA’s Programme for Africa’s Seed Systems (PASS). “A robust private seed sector would help ensure that improved varieties developed by agricultural research institutes get into the hands of farmers. AGRA WEBSITE
The Guardian KILIMO KWANZA
What OTHERS SAY
Monday 9 November, 2009
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Seed celebration in Tanzania maize at the end of July. I was amazed that the crop took only 3 months to mature, whereas previously it took 4 months! These seeds are a wonder – especially considering that the dry season started early this year. “Seeing a demonstration farm is grand – a miracle! The demonstration shows us what works…we learn by observing and sharing views, then we apply the skills on our farms. Initially, we had so many problems. We didn’t know how to identify the right seeds or the right fertiliser or how to apply it!” Clapping her hands with joy, Ms Saidi is quick to add, “Through the demonstration we get to see and interact over the different varieties and application of fertilizer.” Seed challenges Like Ahmed and Mama, most smallholder farmers in Africa face the challenges of unavailability of seed, poor seed distribution networks, ineffective seed promotion and high prices for improved varieties. Furthermore, most farmers lack basic knowledge about fertilizers and selection of appropriate seeds. As a result, they often opt for seeds of inferior quality and lower yield potential, resulting in food insecurity and low incomes. Seed Production for Africa (SEPA) Through the SEPA programme, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, AGRA, will assist 40 African seed companies over 10 years to ensure that improved crop varieties are produced and distributed to smallholder farmers through private and public
T
ucked under Tanzania’s breathtaking Morogoro hills is a maize demonstration farm where about 450 farmers from neighbouring villages have gathered for a field day. Everyone is in a celebratory mood, swaying and ululating with the music. A stranger might think that the riotous colour and music mean that a big party is on. Well, the stranger would be right! These farmers have a cause to celebrate. In the midst of the hunger and food insufficiency affecting small-scale farmers in Tanzania this year, farmers in this village doubled – some actually tripled – their maize harvests. Why celebrate? Ahmed Tembo explains that he
harvested 24 bags of maize in the justended season. Until Tanseed International, a Tanzanian seed company, introduced farmers to improved seed varieties, he was able to harvest only 3 bags from his 2-acre plot. The new varieties, he says, have bigger and fuller cobs unlike those he borrowed from his neighbours or collected from previous harvests. “We got yields beyond our dreams even though we did not apply fertiliser as recommended by the Tanseed extension staff. We would have loved to apply the fertilizer, but could not afford to do so – it has become too expensive,” says Mr Tembo. Mama Saidi, another farmer, says “I planted my new hybrid maize in mid March. When the rains disappeared at the end of April, I feared massive crop loss as has happened in other years. But this time I harvested 24 bags of
channels, including seed companies like Tanseed, so that farmers can choose to adopt improved seed varieties. To qualify for the grant in this programme, AGRA requires that the seed company employ innovative community-based mechanisms to promote the production and distribution of the seeds. AGRA’s support will facilitate seed distributors in Africa to reach more farmers in remote places. Both small and medium local companies will be assisted in increasing production of improved crop varieties. For example, Tanseed started its business with only 50 tonnes of seed – but with funding from AGRA, production will increase fivefold to 250 tonnes of maize, pigeonpea and sesame seeds within the first year of support. Importantly, the number of outgrowers producing seeds will undergo a similar expansion.
Tanseed’s outreach to farmers Tanseed International has established a total of 50 demonstration plots. The company also conducts regularly scheduled field days at every stage of crop growth, dispatches mobile seed shops and participates in agricultural trade shows to exhibit its products. All these efforts are geared towards ensuring that improved crop varieties are promoted and distributed to farmers. Moreover, Tanseed, through funding from AGRA, is recruiting and training 60 agrodealers and stockists of the new varieties in different parts of the country to bring improved seed varieties closer to farmers. AGRA WEBSITE
The Guardian KILIMO KWANZA
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Monday 9 November, 2009
The CONCEPT
Email your comments to: Send messages to:
0787 – 345816 There has several criteria for prioritisation in administration of any type, in a country where the majority are farmers, “kilimo kwanza” is the best philosophy, taking into account production is the basis of development in any human affair.
0713 – 807409 With all due respect as an analytical news paper you shouldn’t have put yourself at the corner (fanatics of kilimo kwan-
za) you were supposed to accommodate all views. If I were the guardian editor I should have not put myself amid the fanatics of kilimo kwanza but remain inquisitive on the plan and let my readers debate freely. That is what we are doing now — Editor
0712 - 954182 Kilimo kwanza ni slogan ya watu fulani kuendelea kuwepo madarakani,
kilimokwanza@guardian.co.tz 0716 312725, 0733 312725 0767 312725, 0783 312725
huwezi sema hivyo wakati watanzania wengi mpaka sasa wanategemea mvua na jembe la mkono, no mvua, no mavuno. That is why Kilimo Kwanza is needed — Editor
John Katindasa Segerea Dar es salaam. 0715 – 568607 Anampongeza Rais Kikwete kwa kuamua kwa dhati kutoa tamko la kilimo kwanza na kuanza mikakati ya
utekelezaji wake. Pili nawapongeza IPP kwa kuamua kutujuza kinachoendelea na kutaka maoni yetu jinsi ya kufanikisha.
Mzee Bange Mkulima, Mgololo Mufindi. 0755 – 204533 Kilimo kwanza kitafanikiwa kama wadau wote wa kilimo tutashikamana pamoja. Juu ya mchoro haujitoshelezi marekebisho ni muhimu. Nina mengi nitafika ofisini kwenu.