AFRICA AGRICULTURE STATUS REPORT 2016

Introduction
For centuries farmers have actively managed their farms
and the land around them. They have invested in crop
rotation and planting landraces of diverse crops, and in
applying crop residues, composts, animal manure, and
more recently chemical fertilizers, to increase productivity
and produce more healthy crops and pastures. In the
last few generations these approaches have come under
pressure from increasing human and livestock populations,
and increasing climate variability. The resulting reduction
in land size, the time available for fallowing the land, and
the reduced pasture area has led to increasing rates of
land degradation and has forced households to farm on
more marginal and less productive soils. As a result, more
than half of the world’s 1.5 billion hectares of arable land is
moderately or severely degraded leading to low crop yields
(FAO & ITPS, 2015).
Providing food, feed and fiber for a growing global
population is a major development challenge. In many
areas of the world the potential for increasing crop yields
is limited. In others, like SSA, there are large yield gaps
between what farmers get from local varieties and the yield
potential of improved varieties. Reducing this yield gap is
a major opportunity and challenge to address household
food security and countries’ food sovereignty. Most of the
agricultural growth in SSA can be attributed to expansion
of the land area cultivated rather than through an increase
in agricultural factor productivity. For example, in the
period 2001–2008, 69 percent of the observed growth
in agricultural output was attributed to expansion in land
area, 14 percent to favorable prices or terms-of-trade
effects, and only 17 percent to increased use of enhanced
inputs and to technical change (IFAD, 2016). This area
expansion cannot continue forever, owing to negative
environmental impacts, and land use change pressure
due to an increasing global population. Therefore the
continent needs increased and sustainable investments to
sustainably increase agricultural productivity.
Increasing agricultural productivity is of critical importance
for sustainable and inclusive growth in SSA. There is strong
and clear evidence that sustained investments to enhance
productivity in agriculture, and the broader rural economy,
has a large impact on growth and poverty reduction (Datt &
Ravallion, 1996; Christiaensen & Todo, 2014; World Bank,
2008). The challenge remains to identify what factors are
behind the relatively low intensification and yields, and
the persisting yield gaps in much of SSA. An additional
challenge is to identify what factors allow some countries
to make progress and leave others lagging behind.
This chapter introduces a brief analytical framework
and reviews the trends in agricultural productivity and
intensification (and associated factors) in SSA compared
with other regions, and among countries in SSA. Then,
it uses country level data to undertake partial correlation
analysis, complemented by household level data analysis
for selected countries, to test selected propositions. The
chapter finally discusses issues and draws conclusions to
inform policies and interventions to support services and
institutional arrangements aimed at increasing agricultural
productivity, promoting inclusive growth and poverty
reduction.
Analytical Framework
The analytical framework presented in Figure 5.1 is based
on the poverty trap framework of smallholder farming
households in development economics theory (Barrett,
2005; Sachs, 2005). For many smallholder households
caught in poverty traps, land is the only significant capital
asset that they have from which they can generate
economic livelihoods. These households have labor, but
returns to this labor use are low. In many environments
they depend on exploitation of natural capital with limited
improvement, resulting in degradation of these scarce
natural resources. In most smallholder farming areas, the
root cause of poverty and food security is limited adoption of
more productive and diversified agricultural technologies.
Slow technological uptake results from several interrelated
and mutually reinforcing factors: inefficient agricultural input
and output markets, low profitability of on-farm production,
low investment, soil nutrient mining and soil degradation,
lack of access to certified seed of improved varieties
and quality fertilizers, low crop yields, low purchasing
power and severe resource constraints, dysfunctional
local institutions, and weak scientific capacity in national
agricultural research, training and extension services.
Breaking the poverty traps requires delivery of sciencebased
technological, institutional, market and policy
solutions to farmers at multiple levels. Agricultural
productivity can therefore be improved through more
efficient agricultural input and output markets (agrodealers,
aggregators and grain traders, warehouse receipt
systems and agricultural commodity exchanges); expanded
farmers’ access to credit (microfinance institutions and
insurance companies); integrated soil fertility management;
improved crop varieties; and better ways of organizing
farmers for technology testing, dissemination, adoption
and diffusion, seed and fertilizer distribution and product
assembly. To achieve this requires not just one, but several
complementary and integrated investments to translate
these solutions into income growth and poverty reduction.
This, in turn, requires public policies and investments to
transform the rural economy, focusing on improving farm
productivity and production through marketing systems,
processing facilities, functional rural labor markets,
AFRICA AGRICULTURE STATUS REPORT 2016
107