ABUJA - African leaders and international donors launched an ambitious attempt on Friday to foster a "Green Revolution" in farming, based on increased fertiliser use, that would help end hunger in the poorest continent.
A third of people living in sub-Saharan Africa face recurrent famine and under-nutrition and experts say this is partly due to soil depletion, which occurs when cultivated land loses more nutrients annually than are being replaced.
The modernisation of farming techniques and increased fertiliser use spurred "Green Revolutions" in Asia and Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s that increased crop yields dramatically and eradicated hunger in most regions.
But in Africa, where many farmers cannot afford fertiliser, yields per person have fallen over the last 40 years and experts warn that if soil depletion continues unabated, they will decline by up to 30 percent over the next 15 years.
To prevent this, African heads of state and ministers, farmers' groups, scientists and foreign donors gathered in the Nigerian capital Abuja with the aim of identifying concrete steps to help African farmers gain access to fertilisers.
These could include creating rural networks of small retailers to reduce the distance that farmers have to walk to purchase fertiliser, and developing new "pro-poor" financing schemes to help farmers buy the products.
Measures could also include subsidies to reduce the cost of fertiliser, schemes to develop local production and better financing for private sector importers and distributors.
THREAT TO ENVIRONMENT
As things stand, Africans pay up to six times the average world price for their fertilisers because of a lack of local manufacturing and high transport costs.
The problem is most acute for landlocked countries. It costs more to transport a bag of fertiliser from an African seaport to a farm 100 km inland than it does to ship that bag from North America to Africa.
African farmers use on average 8 kg of fertiliser per hectare, or one fifth of the minimal amount needed to replace nutrients that are harvested along with each successive crop.
What this means is that crop yields and quality decline and the land ultimately becomes barren. Studies show more than 80 percent of Africa's farmlands are being severely degraded.
Combined with population growth, soil depletion exacerbates hunger and under-nutrition, but it is also a major threat to the environment as farmers abandon infertile fields to clear forests or plough the savannah.
Studies show that 70 percent of deforestation in Africa is done by farmers clearing land for cultivation.
Fragile ecosystems such as the Serengeti plains in east Africa or the Kalahari savannahs in the south of the continent are being converted into farmlands, threatening their wildlife.
Soil depletion also accelerates desertification, which affects half of Africa.
Experts acknowledge that fertilisers are no panacea, as their excessive or incorrect use can also harm the environment. Training retailers and farmers in correct use of the products is one of the challenges of the proposed "Green Revolution".
Story by Estelle Shirbon
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
