AFRICA AGRICULTURE STATUS REPORT 2016

already occurring (Headey & Jayne, 2014)
and will be further encouraged to the extent
that farmers can rely on staple food markets to
acquire food in local rural markets at reasonable
prices. In this way, well-functioning local food
markets encourage both agricultural and nonfarm
productivity growth and therefore broader
economic transformation processes.
Land degradation
Declining soil fertility is a major constaint to
agricultural transformation in Africa (Montpellier
Panel, 2014). Roughly 28 percent of rural Africa’s
farmers cultivate land that is considered to be
degrading over time 6 (Barbier & Hochard, 2016),
and SSA is witnessing the fastest increase in
the proportion of rural households working on
degraded land of any region of the world. As
population pressures cause farm sizes to shrink
over time for most small-scale farm households,
they respond by continuously cropping their fields
every year. Fallows have largely disappeared
in densely populated areas 7 . More continuous
cultivation of existing plots would not necessarily
pose problems to sustainable intensification if soil
quality were maintained or improved over time,
for example, through adequate soil amendment
practices, crop rotations, use of fertilizers and
other inputs. However, a major body of evidence
in Africa points to soil degradation arising from
unsustainable cultivation practices in high density
areas of the continent (e.g., Drechsel, Gyiele,
Kunze, & Cofie 2001; Stoorvogel & Smaling,
1990; Tittonell & Giller, 2013). Nitrogen is one
of the major nutrients mined from African soils;
sufficient quantities of inorganic fertilizer can
address this constraint. However, many problems
leading to land degradation cannot be addressed
by conventional inorganic fertilizers alone, such
as losses of organic carbon and rising soil
acidification. These “non-nitrogen” constraints
on soil quality tend to depress the efficiency of
inorganic fertilizer in contributing to crop output
(Kihara et al., 2016) and thereby depress the
effective demand for inorganic fertilizer. Some
of these constraints are related to current forms
of continuous cultivation and insufficient crop
rotation. Tittonell and Giller (2013) conclude that
smallholder farmers are largely unable to benefit
from current yield gains offered by plant genetic
improvement because they farm on depleted soils
that are non-responsive to fertilizer application. A
holistic and integrated land management strategy
is needed, which focuses on raising organic
matter, moisture retention, and other forms of
soil rehabilitation in addition to greater inorganic
fertilizer use are preconditions for sustainable
agricultural productivity growth in densely
populated rainfed farming systems of Africa
(Kihara et al., 2016).
Rising land prices
There is also growing evidence of rising land rental
values in areas of agricultural commercialization
with favorable access to markets. Figure 1.5
provides illustrative examples of a broader trend
over the past decade in parts of Africa: that land
prices appear to have risen dramatically in areas
of high agro-ecological potential within reasonable
proximity of urban areas (Jayne et al., in press).
These trends have created new stresses on the
ability of customary tenure systems to protect
small-scale farmers’ land from encroachment or
appropriation. The region has experienced rising
demand for agricultural land by both international
and national companies (Deininger & Byerlee,
2011), as well as urban investor farmers (Jayne et
al., 2016; Sitko & Jayne, 2014). Increased interest
in African farmland may also be explained by the
perception that there are large areas of unclaimed
“available” arable land in Africa for investment,
however, recent studies indicate that the amount
of fertile land for cropland expansion may be
considerably less than earlier estimates indicate
(Chamberlin et al., 2014; Young, 1999).
Governments have also become increasingly
aware of the potential for revenue generation from
the lease or sale of agricultural land, and many
are reportedly putting pressure on customary land
administration institutions to gain leverage over
“unutilized” rural land. This trend is particularly
problematic given that land rights under most
customary systems are, almost by definition,
undocumented. This suggests that even if
customary rights holders or their leaders do have
the authority to (re-)allocate rights, in particular to
non-community members, these decisions may
be based on less than complete information on
the actual amount and location of truly unclaimed
land. Moreover, Deininger and Byerlee (2011)
report widespread allegations that local chiefs
sometimes perceive themselves to be “essentially
private owners of the land” instead of trustees on
behalf of their communities, and inefficient land
administration systems have led to the sale or
6
As proxied by a
reduction in Net
Primary Productivity
(NPP) which is
measured as the
change in grams of
carbon sequestered
per square meter
over the 1981–2000
time period after
subtracting
respiration losses.
7
Fuglie and Rada
(2013) report that
fallowed land as a
proportion of total
farmland in SSA
declined from 40
percent in 1960 to
roughly 15 percent
in 2011.
10 AFRICA AGRICULTURE STATUS REPORT 2016