Tag Archives: agriculture
China Corn Imports Could Reach 20-30 Million Tonnes
Reuters | September 6, 2013 China could import 20 million to 30 million tonnes of corn a year to cover growing supply shortages, a researcher with a government think tank said on Thursday, as much as four times current levels. This would be around a quarter of globally traded corn and up to twice as much as number one importer Japan buys, a boon to exporters like the United States, Ukraine and Argentina. While Xu Xiaoqing, the head of the rural department at the State Council’s Development and Research Centre, didn’t give a timeframe, his comments to a conference are another sign that China is relaxing its policy of being self sufficient in the feed grain. The think tank, an agency of the country’s cabinet, doesn’t decide policy but does directly advise and issue policy recommendations to Chinese leaders. “For corn, we can maintain basic self-sufficiency and whenever there is a shortfall, we could import – there would be no problem importing 20-30 million tonnes,” said Xu. “But we should keep self-sufficient in staple grains of wheat and rice.” Imports are expected to rise to 7 million tonnes in 2013/14, 3.3 percent of China’s total domestic output of 211 million tonnes. Xu’s comments reflect a wider debate in government about the country’s food security goals in the light of soaring demand, rapid urbanisation, declining farmland and a shortage of agricultural labour. Agriculture minister Han Changfu on Sunday told state media that corn imports would have to rise gradually in order to meet feed demand, reversing his 2012 vow that China would not allow itself to become dependent on foreign supplies. China could tweak its grain security strategy by allowing its corn self-sufficiency rate to fall to around 80 percent, Xu said. China has long vowed to maintain a 95-percent rate of self-sufficiency in major staples, but imports of rice and corn have been steadily rising, and analysts also expect the country to start sourcing large quantities of meat from overseas. Xu said China’s demand for beef has risen more than twice as quickly as domestic production in recent years, driving up prices. He said meat consumption would continue to rise as China urbanises, and imports could be increased. Continue reading
Wood Could Bring Power To Those Without Electricity
05 SEP 2013 SIPHO KINGS Biomass energy could be the answer for the two-million rural households that are not connected to the electricity grid. The largest renewable source of energy being used in South Africa is one that has been used for millennia – wood. More than 10% of households use this as their primary source of energy supply, with 80% of these relying on firewood and charcoal to cook and warm their houses. A fifth of urban households and half of rural households are still not connected to the grid. This equates to over three-million households. The two million in rural areas are especially problematic because they are far from the main grid so connecting them is very expensive. The white paper on renewable energy identified biomass as an important source of renewable energy. It would rank alongside the more sophisticated sources like wind, solar and hydro in supplying a third of all energy by 2030. This is also the target set by the department of energy. But the problem is that biomass is currently collected in an unsustainable manner – mostly from people chopping down whatever trees at nearest for firewood. Several reports have investigated the pros and cons of biomass as a source of energy. One of these, written for the non-profit Trade and Industry Policy Studies in 2008, said South Africa should become a world leader in renewable energy technologies. Together all the renewable options could supply half of the country’s energy needs by 2050. It did however warn, “Biomass is a renewable resource only if production is sustainable.” If crops were planted specifically for bioenergy, which includes conversion to biofuels, the impact on food and water security would have to be monitored. But the sector had the potential to be a big driver of jobs, given how labour intensive agriculture is. Continue reading
Africa’s Farmers Seek Private Money
By Busani Bafana [ Sweetpotato farmer Jose Ricardo in Maputo Mozambique. Africa currently imports almost 40 billion dollars worth of food, and experts say that the continent needs to become more self-reliant. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS Africa currently imports almost 40 billion dollars worth of food a year, but it should implement measures to attract private sector investment in agriculture in order to reduce its food import bill and increase its self-reliance, experts in the sector tell IPS. “In the next 10 years, African countries should not rely on food aid, but should produce their own food and buy from within Africa when they run out of food,” agriculture researcher and director of the Barefoot Education for Africa Trust, Professor Mandivamba Rukuni, told IPS. “The biggest trick is the private sector putting more money into agriculture. There is nowhere in the world today where you can get the government or industry moving if government and the private sector are not working together.” — agriculture researcher, Professor Mandivamba Rukuni “Food self-reliance means wealth creation and farmers should be directly linked to markets. More people will have more money in their pockets if more smallholder farmers are farming profitably, and this can be done,” Rukuni said. African countries, according to an Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) African Agriculture Stats Report launched in Maputo, Mozambique’s capital, on Sep. 4, produced 157 million tonnes of cereals and imported 66 million tonnes in 2010. In August, the Forum for Africa Research in Africa put the continent’s current food import bill at more than 40 billion dollars, money it said would be better spent enabling African farmers to become self-sufficient. African heads of state and government committed themselves to improving agricultural and rural development in Africa in the Maputo Declaration of 2003. It includes the ambitious goal of governments allocating at least 10 percent of national budgets to agriculture and rural development. But in the last 10 years, only a few of the 54 African Union (AU) member states have made this investment. These include Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Senegal. A further 27 have developed formal national agriculture and food security investment plans under compacts. Compacts are a result of country roundtables that bring together key players in agriculture to agree on investment priorities. Currently one of the few countries prioritising investment in agriculture is Nigeria. In that West African nation, the government developed the Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), which seeks to reduce the risk in the agricultural finance value chain by building long-term capacity and institutionalising incentives for agricultural lending. The goal of NIRSAL is to expand bank lending in the agricultural value chain. Nigeria’s minister of agriculture and rural development Akinwumi Adesina told IPS that Nigeria was leveraging 3.5 billion dollars for agriculture from local banks. The government is shouldering the risk in a bid to attract the participation of the private sector. “We are developing an approach for the private sector to have access to finance because without finance you cannot do much,” Adesina told IPS. “We are working on new financing instruments that will allow our capital markets to work for agriculture. Agriculture accounts for 44 percent of our GDP and 70 percent of all employment but it has only two percent of all bank lending in Nigeria.” Meanwhile, Rukuni told IPS that while most African countries have not been able to commit 10 percent, they have seen the wisdom of doing so. “Although 10 percent is a nice figure to talk about, it is not a magic figure. What is more important moving forward is catalytic public financing, where government, its experts, farmers and private sector work together and really understand here it is important for government to invest to trigger private sector investment,” Rukuni said. Citing China, India and Brazil as examples of public-private partnerships at work, Rukuni said it was time for Africans to understand that there is no competiveness in agriculture without governments and the private sector setting joint targets in infrastructural development, for instance. “The biggest trick is the private sector putting more money into agriculture,” he said. “There is nowhere in the world today where you can get the government or industry moving if government and the private sector are not working together.” The AGRA report notes that despite having over 70 percent of prime uncultivated land, land holdings in Africa continue to shrink. This shrinkage has impacted on the productivity of the 33 million smallholder farmers responsible for up to 90 percent of the continent’s agricultural output. The alliance estimates that a one percent growth in agriculture will increase the income of the poor by more than 2.5 percent, yet only 0.25 percent of bank lending in the Common Market for the Eastern and Southern Africa region goes to smallholder farmers. AU Commissioner responsible for agriculture and rural development, Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, told IPS that investment in African agriculture has become more urgent than before and this was reflected in the political movement towards the development of national agriculture plans as proposed under the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) framework of eliminating hunger and reducing poverty. “The 70 percent of the population who depend on agriculture is a big figure, so if we focus on improving the situation of this 70 percent, poverty will be eradicated. We do not want a situation where the economies are growing but agriculture is not,” she said. In a March 2013 report, “Growing Africa: Unlocking the Potential of Agribusiness”, the World Bank projected African agriculture would top a trillion dollars in 2030 on the back of increased domestic and international demand for food. The bank also urged African governments to improve their agriculture policies and promote agribusiness as a driver of growth. Abraham Sarfo, agriculture, technical and vocational education advisor at the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, told IPS that agriculture used to be part of dual development planning but was now on the continental agenda through the Africa-driven CAADP agenda of eliminating hunger and reducing poverty through agriculture. “A sector that contributes over 30 percent of the economy of a country and is still at subsistence level shows how it is underdeveloped compared to mining or ICT that attract the private sector,” Sarfo told IPS. He called for the increase of innovative financing models that will remove risk in agriculture investment to attract the private sector. Phillip Kiriro, president of the East Africa Farmers Federation, which represents about 200 farmer bodies told IPS that access to critical inputs and better technologies has slightly improved in the last 10 years but governments still need to help farmers live off their land. Continue reading
