In an article in The Christian Science Monitor Jean-Marc Gorelick posits that African farmers do not need bailouts, and that their priority is not aid. Rather, the problem with agriculture in Africa is that too many farmers are vulnerable to greedy middle men and to a system stacked against them. A sample:
Because the farmers are desperate, they sell their crops to middle men for low prices. The buyers have enough liquidity to store the crops and sell them when the price goes up. One person’s desperation becomes another person’s profit. Uganda and other sub-Saharan African countries are packed with these predators according to news reports from the BBC, as well as several aid organizations, including the Food and Agriculture Organization.
The farmers I met knew almost nothing about the G-20 summit, but they are paying a painful price for global financial machinations they do not understand. They are hidden from the headlines, they are struggling to feed a continent, and they are unable to provide the employment that has traditionally been such a backbone of African economies.
They don’t need bailouts. They don’t need anyone to buy their toxic assets. They need secure storage areas where they can safely store their crops when quick sale would be financially devastating. They need transparently governed marketing associations that can help them act aggressively to identify buyers for sesame and other crops.
The governance of these marketing associations could be further strengthened by holding regular elections, drafting constitutions and bylaws, and engaging in constituency outreach services to the farmers whom marketing leaders are supposed to represent. Farmers need timely information on commodity prices that they can use to decide when to sell. In some cases, notably in Senegal, farmers have made innovative use of cellphones to determine world commodity prices. This kind of activity should be expanded.
In order for all of this to occur, a high commitment is needed on the part of the international community to encourage responsive and accountable institutions in developing nations that are charged with developing the agriculture sector. When it comes to food security and agriculture concerns, there has been too little attention paid to agriculture policy planning at the national level.
And let us not forget subsidies in western nations that protect their own farmers at the expense of providing a true open market in which African farmers can reasonably try to compete.
[Hat tip to the FPA’s Abraham who sent this my way.]
