Opinion
– Despite its dismal record, the Gates Foundation-sponsored Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) announced a new five-year strategy in September after rebranding itself by dropping ‘Green Revolution’ from its name.
Not reform, but rebranding
Instead of learning from the past and adapting its approach accordingly AGRA’s new strategyPromises more of the same. Neglecting evidence, critics and civil society pleas and demandsThe Gates Foundation has added $200 million to its five-year plan, bringing their total contribution to $900 millions.
Timothy A. Wise
More than two-thirds of AGRA’s funding has come from Gates, with African governments providing much more – as much as a billion dollars yearly – in subsidies for Green Revolution seeds and fertilizers.
AGRA was angered by the criticisms of its poor results. It delayed announcing its strategy for one year while its chief executive managed the controversial UN Food Systems Summit 2021. AGRA has continued to use UN Sustainable Development Goals rhetoric after this.
Hence, AGRA’s new slogan – ‘Sustainably Growing Africa’s Food Systems’. Likewise, the new plan claims to “lay the foundation for a sustainable food systems-led inclusive agricultural transformation”. However, beyond this lip service, there is no evidence that the new plan has made any real commitment to sustainable agriculture. $550 million plan for 2023–27.
Despite large government subsidies, AGRA promotion for commercial seeds and fertilizers only for a handful of cereal crops failed significantly to increase productivity, incomes, nor food security. But instead of addressing past shortcomings, the new plan still relies heavily on more of the same despite its failure to “catalyze” a productivity revolution among African farmers.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
The new strategy does not reflect any hope that AGRA or Gates Foundation would recognize the harmful environmental and social effects of Green Revolutions in India, Africa, or elsewhere. AGRA offered no explanation for why it dropped ‘Green Revolution’ from its name.
The name change suggests that 16-year old AGRA wants to distance itself from past failures, while not acknowledging its own flawed approach. Recently, much higher fertilizer prices – following sanctions against Russia and Belarus after the Ukraine invasion – have worsened the lot of farmers relying on AGRA recommended inputs.
It is time to shift course and promote ecological farming, while reducing the reliance on synthetic fertilisers as necessary. But despite its new slogan, AGRA’s new strategy intends otherwise.
Last month, Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa rejected the strategy and name change as “cosmetic”, “an admission of failure” of the Green Revolution project, and “a cynical distraction” from the urgent need to change course.
Productivity gains or losses
Despite spending over a billion dollars, AGRA’s productivity gains have been modestOnly for a few heavily subsidized crops like maize and rice. From 2015 to 2020, the cereal yields have not increased at all.
Despite this, traditional food crop production has been declining under AGRA, with millet falling. over a fifth. Cassava, groundnuts, and root crops like sweet potato saw their yields fall. The yields for a basket of staple crops rose just 18% over 12 years.
Even after taking into account increased production costs, farm incomes have not increased. As for halving hunger, which Gates and AGRA originally promised, the number of ‘severely undernourished’ people in AGRA’s 13 focus countries increased by 31%!
A donor-commissioned evaluation confirmed many adverse farmer outcomes. It was found that the few farmers who received benefits were mainly well-off men and not smallholder women, as the program was intended.
The Gates Foundation did not hesitate to commit more to AGRA, despite its poor track record, failed strategy and poor monitoring to track progress. We can expect even less accountability, judging by the new five year plan.
The new planDoes not set measurable goals for yields and incomes, or food security. As the saying goes, what you don’t measure you don’t value. Apparently, AGRA does not value agricultural productivity, even though it is still at the core of the organization’s strategy.
Last month, the Rockefeller Foundation, AGRA’s other founding donor and a leader of the first Green Revolution from the 1950s, announcedA reduction in its grant for AGRA and a decisive backward step from the Green Revolution approach.
Its grant to AGRA supports school feeding initiatives and “alternatives to fossil-fuel derived fertilisers and pesticides through the promotion of regenerative agricultural practices such as cultivation of nitrogen-fixing beans”.
Business in charge
AGRA’s new strategy is built on a series of “business lines”, e.g., the “sustainable farming business line” will coordinate with the “Seed Systems business line” to sell inputs. Private Village Based Advisors provide training and advice to help you plant your garden in this privatized, commercial reincarnation or quasi-government extension service.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has successfully promoted peer learning of agroecological practices via Farmer Field SchoolsAfter field-testing them successfully. After field-testing them, this was achieved. research showed ‘brown hoppers’ thrived in Asian rice farms after Green Revolution pesticides eliminated the insect’s natural predators.
China lost a fifth its 2007-08 paddy crop to the pest, which triggered a rise in rice prices on the world’s thinly traded market. The International Rice Research Institute, which is located in the Philippines, can be contacted for assistance. Chinese delegation foundUnder-funding had caused the Entomology Department to lose most of its former capabilities.
Earlier international agricultural research collaboration associated with the first Green Revolution – especially in wheat, maize and rice – seems to have collapsed, surrendering to corporate and philanthropic interests. This bitter experience prompted China to intensify its agronomic and agro-ecological research efforts.
Empty promises?
The new strategy promises “AGRA will promote increased crop diversification at the farm level”. However, the advisers to the strategy have a vested in selling their products rather than local seeds that do not require repeated purchases.
AGRA is not strengthening resilience through promoting agroecology, or reducing farmer dependency on costly inputs like fossil fuel fertilizers, and other, often toxic agrochemicals. Despite many. proven African agroecological initiativesHowever, they are still receiving modest support.
The new strategy stresses irrigation, key to most other Green Revolutions, but conspicuously absent from Africa’s Green Revolution. However, the plan is silent on how fiscally poor governments will be able to provide such vital infrastructure in the face growing water, fiscal and financial stress, which has been exacerbated by global warm.
It is often said that stupidity is repeating the same thing over and again expecting different results. This could be because technophiles believe that one type of innovation is superior than all others, including scientific knowledge and processes, or agroecological solutions.
IPS UN Bureau
Source: ipsnews
