Youth with ‘swag’ can succeed in Agriculture

By Kofi Adu Domfeh, Luv Fm, Ghana

Cynthia Mosunmola

Cynthia Mosunmola Umoru is a young Nigerian lady passionately driving the beauty in agriculture in her home country. Proud to be a farmer, she’s got her swag – twitting @PrettyFarmer on her sleek tablet.

Cynthia produces food to feed her nation, and delights in inspiring other young persons to take up a profession in agribusiness.

Her company, Honeysuckle Ventures, distributes livestock produce to fast food companies and restaurants in Lagos and one of her farms is used for research and training of young farmers in the agri-food sector.

For Cynthia, it is critical that women and the youth focus less on the drudgery of agriculture and rather focus on the opportunities therein for financial independence and the nutritional security of families.

“If people are concerned about the quality of the food that they eat, they should be concerned about the quality of the produce that comes out of the farm…it means that we need to be involved” she noted. “Now if as women, as young people we love to eat, wear cloths, we love to spend money, then I think it’s critical that we begin to look closely at the agric sector”.

Cynthia inspires her peers not only in Nigeria but others of Africa to venture agriculture, a profession often perceived to be unattractive to today’s African youth.

“I think that people need to begin to look at the brighter side and then appreciate agriculture for what it is – a wealth creating platform. This is one sector that singly is capable of creating total employment across its value chain”, she added.

In Ghana, the government’s Youth in Agriculture Programme (YIAP) was established to increase employment opportunities and incomes, encourage entrepreneurship, and upscale food production.

With the average national farmer age at 55 years, the programme seeks to increase productivity in agricultural sector by tapping into the energy of the youth who compromise about 30percent of Ghana’s active population.

According to National Programme Coordinator, Alhaji Adam Mahama, the Ghanaian youth are interested in venturing agriculture but financial constraints remain major obstacle.

“My office, on daily basis, is filled with applications, proposals from youth, university graduates – both male and female – who are interested in going into agriculture but I’m constrained by funding”, he stated.

Alhaji Adam estimates that a minimum of Gh₵10,000 ($5,000) is needed to support a university graduate to be able to take off into full-time agriculture, but such funding is not readily available.

He however does not subscribe to the establishment of a fund by government to be accessed by the youth “because immediately government takes too much interest in funding such things, people don’t want to be independent”.

Hence, government should provide the farming inputs whilst the private sector is engaged in providing financial packages for such agricultural ventures, he opined.

“If a package is made in such a way that they take the money from the banks that they can use and pay back to the banks [and] account to the banks, then they’ll learn to be independent and good private sector”, noted Alhaji Adam.

Private sector agribusiness players believe the public-private partnerships are important to drive young people into agribusiness but this, they say, must be devoid of politics.

Prince Obeng Asante, Deputy Managing Director of Ghana Nuts Company, says concepts geared towards youth employment must move from a political platform to a pseudo-business organization for the private sector to buy into them.

“It should be partnership which is built on rock, not on sand which can easily be washed away when the political season comes to an end”, he observed.

Ghana Nuts is a leading agro processor, manufacturer and exporter of a gamut of edible oils, animal feed input materials and Shea Butter.

The company has been supporting the agricultural project under the National Service Scheme and recently received 4,000 bags of yellow maize from the NSS Wenchi Farm to produce feed for the local poultry industry.

The NSS project is making some inroads with an expected harvest in excess of eight metric tonnes of maize by end of 2012 from the combined 2,120 acres it is farming in five regions.

It is early days yet to ascertain what percentage of the young national service personnel engaged in the NSS agric project would opt for full-time ventures in farming or agribusiness at the end of their service.

But Prince Obeng says there is the need to critically show young people that agriculture could provide a dynamic and productive future for them.

Young people who see the profitability in agriculture will naturally move into the sector, he said.

“The cost of production vis-à-vis the revenue has been the major bottleneck; the guy is spending Gh₵1,000 per hectare and the revenue coming from it is Gh₵900, why do you think the youth will be there?” queried Prince. “But if today we say that you spend Gh₵1,000 but your revenue is Gh₵2,000, so the [profit] margin is Gh₵500, I tell you even the dead will resurrect and go into agriculture”.

To set the agenda right, Cynthia Mosunmola Umoru, who is currently a Youth Consultant to the African Union Commission, has emphasized the direct engagement of the youth in agricultural policy formulation whilst providing avenues for the youth to access mentors and role models to success in agribusiness.

Already, youth in agriculture is one of the driving issues on which the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) focuses its work.

“Granted that there are a lot of countries benefiting from oil and natural resources, but most of the countries in Africa today are primarily agriculture-based communities, so when you think about the future of agriculture you should start with the source which is the young people of Africa”, said James Tefft, Senior Policy Officer, FAO Regional Office for Africa.

He wants the subject of young people in agriculture to be embedded within national policies in the implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

He says investments in the agricultural sector should be about the people and integrating youth in agriculture is essential in addressing the demographic challenges.

“The policy framework in Ghana with respect to METASIP exists but we need to get into the specifics of how these partnerships between public and private actors actually take place… we need the young people, civil society [to be] engaged in the process. So to move forward, we need to move into the specific of the dialogues at very decentralized levels”, said James Tefft.

The Ghanaian government developed the Medium Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plan (METASIP) to implement the Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policy (FASDEP II) over the medium term 2011-2015.

Whilst expecting agricultural policies to be youth-centered, there is the potential for women and young people to strategically plug into the sector by “unlocking their minds and view agriculture as a business; it is not just about farming and tilling the soil – there is processing, packaging, distribution, cold storage, marketing – the opportunities across its value chain is enormous”, said Cynthia Umoru.

Transforming mindsets are the core values of the AgroMindset Organisation, which is educating a new generation of entrepreneurial minded agriculturists in Ghana.

“Our idea is using the bottom-up approach to transform youthful thinking from fork (state of consumption) to field (state of activity and productivity), and so we seek to introduce the concept of agric entrepreneurship to young people right from childhood”, said Founding Director, David Asiamah.

The Organization seeks to erase negative perceptions about farming, showcasing that it can bring people great wealth and prosperity, through strategies like organising the Agro Summit and Agro Tourism events, embarking on outreaches, undertaking Green projects and promoting agribusiness, innovation and entrepreneurship.

“We have visited over 5000 young people in basic schools and our meetings attract interested students and industry experts to learn and share ideas at the same time churning them into entrepreneurs”, he said.

Without a clear policy strategy for engaging this rising group of rural youth, Africa’s leaders and the development partners that work with them risk creating an economic time bomb for their successors, warned David Asiamah.

New Investment Models for Agric in Africa

Agricultural projects take more time to mature and investors are developing new models to encourage businesses to appreciate a longer bottom line.

 

Investing in agriculture takes patience – not something a lot of investors, eager for quick returns, have in ready abundance. However, a new investment model is gaining traction, using professional fund managers to invest donor funds as 'patient capital' in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

UK-based social venture capital firm AgDevCo has become one of the model's pioneers after investors chose it to manage a catalytic fund for the Beira Agricultural Growth Corridor in Mozambique.

AgDevCo has $28m under management; $23m of that consists of funds for investment in the Mozambique catalytic fund, from donors including the UK, Dutch and Norwegian governments. So far, it has made nine investments in SMEs plus three larger investments with its own capital. Unlike some venture capital investors, AgDevCo invests in both primary agricultural production and agribusinesses.

Chris Isaac, business development director of AgDevCo, says the lack of bankable projects is the main constraint facing private equity funds and commercial banks looking to invest in African agriculture. "Our role is to invest to create a pipeline of bankable agriculture businesses which can attract third-party investment," says Isaac.

AgDevCo deems an investment successful if it can exit by replacing its investment with private capital. Any profits from the Beira catalytic fund will be reinvested back into the country. For other investments, profits will be reinvested back into AgDevCo projects.

The average SME investment is $200,000-$500,000 and the management approach – which it sees as project incubation – is very hands on. Sometimes strategic partners are brought in from the outset, such as with banana company FrutiManica when AgDevCo's $150,000 was matched by a private investor.

Another investee company – extension and marketing company Empresa de Comercialização Agricola – will soon sell grain to the World Food Programme and is about to sign a contract with a large brewer.

AgDevCo is also investing in the livestock sector, as demand grows. Founded in 2009 by executive chairman and principal sponsor Keith Palmer, a former vice president at investment bank Rothschild, AgDevCo was modelled on InfraCo, an infrastructure fund also run by Palmer.

But there is a difference in the size and timeframe of the projects: whereas a typical InfraCo project could go through the project development cycle in two to four years, it could take six to seven years for an agriculture project.

No shortcuts

"Where one has seen investment fail in the agriculture sector in Mozambique, in the biofuels sector for example, is because that process of developing the project was not done properly and there were short cuts taken,"says Isaac.

AgDevCo has made "significant process" in Mozambique, says Patrick Guyver, managing director of Prorustica, which advised on the blueprint for agricultural corridors in Tanzania and Mozambique. He says the jury is still out on the catalytic fund model, which is not a "silver bullet" approach but shows potential as a means of supporting the development of smallholder farmers.

Outside of Mozambique, the company has investments in five large irrigation projects in Tanzania and Ghana, and is working on more in Zambia.

In Ghana, it is investing in three projects involving irrigation and food crops, each requiring $30m-$40m. AgDevCo expects to commit the first $2m-$3m, according to Isaac, and hopes the World Bank will step in as a source of patient capital. It is also waiting for the launch of a tender process to run a catalytic fund that will invest in the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania.

Source: The Africa Report

African agriculture as solution for World food crisis

Cabbage farms in Egypt.

Concerns around the earth’s ability to nourish a population of 6 billion people, expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050, are increasingly abundant. According to the UN’s FAO, food production will have to increase by 70% to feed the globe’s larger, more urbanised, and more affluent population, by 2050, necessitating a total average annual net investment in developing world agriculture of US$83 billion.

Much of the new demand for food continues to originate from the developing world’s rising, and increasingly affluent, population. For many emerging markets, rising demand is being met with diminishing local resources – most principally arable land and irrigable water – placing pronounced strain on local governments. In China, which is home to 20% of the world’s population and less than 8% of its arable land, total cropland is expected to decline from 135 million hectares today, to 129 million ha in 2020 (120 million ha is considered the “red line” for Chinese food security). Meanwhile, in large part due to rapid urbanisation and excessive water use by China’s industrial sector, almost half of China’s cities face water shortages.

Attention is increasingly turning to Africa

Naturally, as nations seek external sources of nutrition, focus is narrowing on those regions which still have large untapped agricultural potential. No region (with the exception to an extent of Latin America) epitomises this residual allure more than Sub-Saharan Africa. It is estimated that over 60% of the world’s available and unexploited cropland is in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Cassava farm.

While water scarcity is increasingly prominent in most North African, and some Southern African, nations, for much of West, Central and parts of East Africa, renewable water reserves are plentiful. Central Africa receives around 38% of total precipitation in Africa per year, and holds 48% of Africa’s total internal renewable water reserves. The Gulf of Guinea region is similarly well-endowed, with 15% of Africa’s total annual precipitation and 24% of the continent’s internal renewable water resources. The Congo River Basin alone holds 23% of Africa’s irrigation potential, while the Nile River Basin holds a further 19%.

Investment is key to unlocking Africa’s potential

The majority of the large investments concluded in recent years have been structured on a government-to-government basis. Unsurprisingly, Gulf States have been prominent, though several Asian nations, most prominently China and South Korea, continue to play pivotal roles.

Beyond government transactions, the potential value inherent in untapped farmland within a climate of elevated global demand and volatile prices has inspired a surge of private and institutional investor interest, much of which is focusing on primary agriculture as opposed to agri-business and other agricultural support industries. For instance, London-listed Agriterra owns a variety of African agricultural assets, including 14,000 ha of land for ranching, as well as a maize processing facility in Mozambique. Private Indian investors, often backed by government loans, have purchased land in several African countries – principally Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Senegal, and Mozambique. Indian horticultural firm Karuturi Global has, for instance, emerged as the world’s largest exporter of fresh cut roses on the spine of its investments in Kenya and Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, the firm has since branched out into agriculture, leasing 100,000 ha of land (Karuturi claims it has access to 300,000 ha) in the Gambella Province to produce crops primarily for local demand.

Rice farming

Meanwhile, alternative investment firms, such as Emergent Asset Management through its African AgriLand Fund, have in turn attracted private investors to Africa’s agricultural sector. Private equity interest has also spiked considerably since 2008.

The reasons for Africa’s underperformance are complex, and varied. Yet, certain elementary causal dimensions are clear. For one, African governments have persistently underinvested in the sector. On average, African countries allocate 4% of their budgetary expenditures to agriculture, compared to 14% in Asia. Spending on agricultural research and development has also been consistently minimal, even declining between 1991 and 2000 in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Then, Africa’s largely small-scale farmers rely disproportionately on rain-fed agriculture, in the absence of sufficient irrigation systems. Indicatively, only around 6.5% of African farmland is irrigated, compared to 40% in Asia. Irrigation has the ability to raise agricultural productivity by more than 50%.

In addition to insufficient use of irrigation systems, which places Africa’s smallholder farmers in a constant state of insecurity given the unreliability of rain patterns, access to and use of fertilisers remains low. According to World Bank data, Sub-Saharan Africa uses just 11.6 kg of fertiliser per hectare of arable land, compared to a world average of 119 kg/ha, and a South Asian average of 148 kg/ha of arable land.

Meanwhile, given inadequate storage and transport facilities in Africa, post-harvest waste is a perennial concern. It is estimated that post-harvest grain losses in Sub-Saharan Africa are equal to $4 billion per year – approximately 15% of total output.

Finally, and related to both insufficient irrigation and fertiliser usage, smallholder farmers in Africa are generally locked out of the formal economy, unable to raise finance for investing in the means to secure increased output.

Policies are increasingly supporting Africa’s own Green Revolution

Ndama-breed cattle.

Fortunately, new levels of investment in African agriculture are increasingly being supported by enhanced policy frameworks. Under the New Partnership for Africa’s Development’s (NEPAD) CAADP, 22 African countries have committed to raise the budget share for agriculture to 10%. CAADP aims to see agricultural productivity in Africa increase by 6%. Meanwhile, critical research support is being lent to small-scale farmers by organisations such as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). And innovative financing mechanisms between donor institutions and commercial banks are increasing access to financing for African farmers. For instance, in Kenya, Equity Bank is administering a $47.6 million credit line from AGRA and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) for small-scale Kenyan farmers.

These shifts are inspired in part by the tremendous success of so-called green revolutions in other emerging markets – principally Mexico, Brazil, China and India. In Africa, as in some of these markets, investment in agriculture, bolstered by adequate policy support, has the ability to substantially raise growth, and create new employment opportunities.

Source: How We Made In Africa. This article is a shortened and edited version of Freemantle’s original report, titled Africa’s dormant resources potential.

N’Dama: Ancient West African Cattle

As the African continent is faced with the challenge of meeting a growing demand for milk and meat, the genetic diversity of livestock breeds is being lost at an alarming rate. Governments and agribusiness continue to promote exotic commercial breeds of livestock that are bred to gain more weight and produce more milk than traditional breeds. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns that around 1,710 breeds of livestock—21 percent—are at risk of extinction worldwide as farmers abandon their traditional breeds. For millennia, pastoralists have bred livestock that are well-adapted to local conditions. Understanding and preserving these breeds could be useful in helping communities adapt as their climates and environments change in the coming decades.

N'Dama of  West Africa (Photo: ILRI)

N’Dama is a hardy breed of cattle indigenous to the Fouta-Djallon highlands in the West African country of Guinea. N’Dama cows were domesticated around 8,000 years ago in the region and they have evolved to be resistant to local diseases and parasites. The breed is common throughout West and Central Africa, especially in areas infested by the tsetse fly—an insect known to transmit disease to both humans and livestock. According to the FAO, there are approximately 7 million head of N’Dama cattle.

N’Dama cows produce two to three liters of milk per day and their meat is renowned for its flavor. The breed is the most popular among West Africa’s small-scale, low-input livestock keepers. This is largely because they are heat tolerant, are docile and do well in harsh environments, and can survive on poor quality feeds.

But the most important quality of N’Dama is its resistance to trypanosomiasis, a widespread African cattle disease spread by the tsetse fly. In the areas of Africa with the greatest potential to increase domestic livestock production, trypanosomiasis is a major constraint. Because of its natural resistance to the disease, N’Dama cows do not require expensive antibiotics to be healthy. For this reason, N’Dama is seen as the breed of choice to help West and Central Africa meet the increasing demand for meat and milk products.

The International Trypanotolerance Centre (ITC) has launched an N’Dama improvement program in The Gambia. The program uses 400 breeding cows to try and select larger, higher milk-producing animals that retain disease-resistant qualities. A company in the Democratic Republic of Congo called Jules VAN LANCKER, in collaboration with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), has used its herd of over 40,000 purebred N’Dama to breed desirable qualities without losing hardiness. According to ILRI, the company has increased the average weight of its N’Dama cattle by 30 to 50 kilograms per animal through selective breeding.

Economically, livestock production is the fastest growing sector in agriculture worldwide. Livestock-keeping can be an important way to improve diets and raise incomes in the developing world. Less well-known livestock breeds contain valuable resources that could be vital for food security and help farmers deal with the challenges of climate change, animal disease, and dwindling water supplies.

What are some less well-known livestock breeds that you know about? Let us know in the comments!

Source: Matt Styslinger is a research intern with the Nourishing the Planet project.

 

‘Unlocking the value of the cow' - East Africa’s small-scale dairy producers

A new project identifying appropriate dairy breeds for small-scale farmers in East Africa, and making these breeds more available in the region, was launched in February 2011 at the Nairobi campus of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). The Dairy Genetics East Africa project—a partnership between ILRI; the University of New England, in Australia; and PICOTEAM, a consultancy group facilitating change processes—will help smallholders obtain the most appropriate cows for their farms so as to increase their milk yields and improve their livelihoods.

A small-scale dairy farmer with her cows in Uganda

Speaking to dairy stakeholders from Kenya, including officials from Kenya’s Ministry of Livestock Development, the East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project and other dairy industry development partners, at the launch on 9 February 2011, Okeyo Mwai, a researcher and the project’s coordinator at ILRI, explained that even though smallholder dairying is booming in parts of East Africa, such as in Kenya’s central region and the north and southern Rift Valley areas, where farmers have adopted improved animal breeds and intensified milk production, many more smallholders lack research-based knowledge about which dairy breeds are best suited for their farms and production systems and information about where to obtain them. According to Mwai, ‘Kenya’s dairy sector currently does not have a clear “breeding strategy.”’ That means that many poor smallholders are unable to take advantage of breeds that best suit their situations.

In the absence of appropriate breeding strategies and the ready supply of appropriate replacement stock, farmers face an unpredictable, unreliable and often costly replacement processes. Many are forced to replace their animals from their existing animals or from their neighbours. Others go to large-scale commercial farms and end up ‘upgrading’ to the main commercial dairy breeds even where these don’t suit their farms.

This project will determine the breed composition of cows currently kept in the project areas, the breeds smallholders prefer and the reasons for their preferences, and which breeds perform best under specific conditions. ‘This information will help us assess the relative fit of the various breeds to different production systems,’ says Ed Rege, a team leader at PICO. ‘We’ll then develop partnerships and business models with the private sector to breed, multiply and continuously supply the best-performing dairy breeds to farmers at affordable prices.’

The project will be implemented in five sites in western Kenya and three sites in Uganda. The first phase of the project will start with gathering information to assess the relative performance of breeds in the sites, setting up partnerships with other stakeholders in dairy development in the region and developing business models that will be carried out the later (phase 2 and 3) stages of the project.

In the first phase, project staff will collect information on about 3000 cows based on two monthly farm visits made over a period of 18 months. Field agents will compile information on the performance of the cows vis-vis farm-level inputs for a cost-benefit analysis of the different breeds. The agents will also collect information on farmer-perceived risks associated with different breeds, on means of livelihoods of the farmers, on any gender-specific preferences for certain breeds, and on farmer use of the various breeding services available and their costs.

The breed compositions will be obtained using advanced genotyping technology, which will be led by John Gibson, the project’s principal investigator, who is based at Australia’s University of New England. This information will be combined with cow and household data to identify the most appropriate breeds for various dairy production systems and household circumstances.

‘This project will harness the diverse expertise of the key partners, and combine the latest technologies with tried and tested methods of engaging with the community, to answer critical questions much more rapidly and accurately than has been possible in the past,’ said Gibson, who formerly worked at ILRI as a livestock geneticist.

Participants in the meeting expressed their support for the project, noting its focus on cattle genetic improvement—an area that has received inadequate research attention in the region. Alex Kirui, country director of the non-governmental organization Heifer International, said the project’s focus on ‘giving farmers the right breed for given circumstances’ is an essential requirement if the dairy industry is to be competitive enough to meet the high and increasing regional demand for fresh milk and other dairy products. Moses Nyabila, regional director for the East Africa Dairy Development Project, said the project would ‘unlock the value of the cow, which is a key asset for smallholder farmers.’

Results from the project’s first phase will guide future dairy pilot studies in East Africa and will inform a comparative study of the South Asian dairy industry.

The project is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It started in September 2010 and is scheduled to end early in 2013.