Misunderstanding the issue as unidirectional, as opposed to cyclical and interconnected, results in inappropriate proposals. It is important to comprehensively evaluate the phenomena that initiate hunger, for GM and improved food production to be soundly argued. Any theoretical benefits of increased production are limited by the institutional issues that anchor the problem. The following will provide examples of past agricultural programs similar to those of AGRA and Monsanto for comparative assessment and make predictions about the potential of new initiatives. Specifically, the paper will compare examples from the first Green Revolution- which instituted high-input agriculture and high-yielding seed varieties in rural communities of the Global South from the 1940s through 1980s- and measure its outcomes against contemporary case studies from Malawi and Tanzania, where many programs have been recently launched. Southern African Development Community member states have been heavily impacted by recent production-driven initiatives that include the use of altered seed species. This group of nations has also been home to staunch opposition movements, and think tanks and institutes dedicated to finding alternative solutions to food and agriculture issues in the region. Critical evaluations of shifting food and agriculture approaches are particularly important in Malawi, Mozambique, Madagascar, and Tanzania,hydroponic nft system as these nations possess the first, second, third, and fourth highest agricultural GDP percentages in the regional economic community.
For clarity, the definitions of terms as used in this paper follow. Food security will be defined as “physical and economic access by all people at all times to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life;” a “food-secure state is one that can produce, purchase, or obtain as aid the food necessary to satisfy the needs of its population” . Food insecurity will be defined as an “inadequate physical, social, or economic access to food . Food sovereignty goes further than food security, the definition of which is unconcerned about where food comes from. Food sovereignty is specific in that it requires that peasants have access to agricultural lands and control over the food systems that produce that which they consume . Food self-sufficiency refers to the capacity of a nation to strictly meet all caloric needs with domestically-produced food. Again, food security contrasts with food sovereignty and food self-sufficiency, as it refers only to the ability of nations to obtain the required calories and nutrients to adequately feed its population, regardless of whether the food is produced domestically or whether smallholder farmers have control over distribution or the means of agricultural production. Trade agreements and international market values are particularly significant concerns in matters of food security, for if a nation does not produce sufficient yields or employ effective distribution policies for food produced within its borders, the food security of such a nation and its citizens lies precariously in its capacity to purchase and import the volume required to stave off hunger. This paper will examine the utility of increased production and surpluses of staple crops in food security efforts in East and Southern Africa, with emphasis on Malawi and Tanzania, and present findings and alternatives.
Past programs such as those instituted under the first Green Revolution, linked smallholders to corporations through agrodealers and retailers who facilitated the participation, sale, and distribution of seed and inputs to rural farmers. To better assess the potential of the production-driven approach employed by Bill Gates’ Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, Mosley, Schnurr, and Kerr thoughtfully reflect on this history. This comparison is most appropriate, for the two initiatives not only share a similar name. AGRA, like the program before it, focuses on raising yields by utilizing hybrid seed and increased use of fertilizers and pesticides. The following will employ a similar comparative approach, weighing past case studies against recent initiatives in East and Southern Africa in order to make educated predictions and recommendations regarding the potential of production-driven approach to resolve malnutrition. Past approaches stemmed from the belief that stalled agricultural production could be attributed to failure to ‘modernize’ or adopt high-input agriculture and industrial methods. The initial Green Revolution, most prominently launched in Mexico and South Asia, responded to this belief by converting rural smallholders to non-indigenous seed varieties. Reaping the full benefit of these varieties required costly upfront investments, not only in the purchase of high-yielding seed, but in the fertilizer inputs, chemical pesticides, and irrigation networks required of such seed. Detailed analyses, such as Tony Beck’s assessment of a farming community in West Bengal state, reflect the first Green Revolution’s impact on poverty in rural Indian communities and represent a break in the tradition of evaluating GR projects solely through the lens of its resulting outputs.
Specifically, Beck’s study examines socioeconomic change in the village of Fonogram from 1985-1992 and evaluates ways in which GR high-yielding boro rice varietals and irrigation facilities shifted the community over this period. Longitudinal data demonstrates that the GR was “mediated by already existing power structures and… flowed in a disproportionate fashion to the richer villagers” . A substantial 83% of the income generated from high-yielding rice in Fonogram was earned by farmers who were previously well off , as this group was able to purchase mechanical hand tractors and extensive irrigation systems and reinvest increased crop earnings into additional business opportunities in nearby towns. As a result, the highest income farmers’ profits compounded exponentially, and they grew to earn 9 times as much as the poorest households in the same village under the Green Revolution . The study demonstrates that GR practices, which involve capital payments, benefit inhabitants that already enjoy relative power and access to capital. The GR reinforced class, ethnic, and gender inequity. Preexisting patriarchal biases, in particular, were reflected in data showing that poor women benefitted least from the Green Revolution in Fonogram. Benefits did not ‘trickle down’ to poorer smallholders or women. From this case study, it can be noted that future initiatives that do not consider provisions for poor populations and women- those most vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition will invariably fail to provide them food security. Another assessment, incorporating four decades of data sets, also finds that inequity worsened in areas impacted by the first Green Revolution in rural Pakistan . GRhigh-yielding wheat debuted in the 1960s in response to critical famine in the region. Years later,nft channel despite recovering from food deficits at the national level , poverty increased in rural areas. That is, while the GR can be perceived as a success as it relates to improving national output, it further augmented inequity and wealth gaps. As Pakistan was experiencing four decades of increased national growth, there was a simultaneous decrease in land tenure security and rural employment, with many smallholders, “realiz that they could not keep pace with the high cost requirements of intensive farming,” reluctantly abandoning lands of cultural significance . Tenant-operated holdings declined at the same rate owner-operated farms grew and, by 2004, half of the rural population no longer possessed land. The structure of the first Green Revolution held intrinsic biases toward rich and commercial farmers, pricing hunger-vulnerable peasants out of participation instead of facilitating conditions under which they could better meet their daily caloric needs. With this, it failed to attend to the very problem which had served as the impetus for intervention in the 1960s. The Green Revolution in Mexico has been reduced to a plutocratic land reform initiative by some critiques, rather than as a mission to alleviate poverty and hunger following food shortages similar to those of Pakistan.
A survey of GR interventions from the 1940s-1980s demonstrates that these programs, funded by USAID, Alliance for Progress, and the Rockefeller Foundation , encouraged increased production specifically for export purposes. These neoliberal agriculture initiatives resulted in ongoing food crises, a consequence of increased vulnerability and heightened dependence on imports. The GR in Mexico, as in the examples above, altered the lives of peasant farmers residing on small communal landholdings. Here again, land would eventually come under the control of the wealthy, sometimes with the aid of dubious legal battles over land titles in courts that did not privilege traditional homesteads or the ancestral land claims of poor and indigenous people, facilitating further displacement . Dispossessed peasant farmers either found meager employment on expanding estate farms, relocated to competitive urban centers, or migrated abroad to apply their agricultural knowledge in places such as the United States, where they were vulnerable to exploitative labor practices. The Green Revolution of the 20th century demonstrates that considerations for existing power dynamics must be fully integrated into the planning and implementation of future such programs. This is especially true in SADC nations, where 70% of the population relies on smallholders for income, employment, and sustenance . Without such considerations, the rural poor may simply become further oppressed, displaced, and bound by poverty, conditions which are antithetical to hunger alleviation. Proponents of the approaches employed by the first Green Revolution cite statistics that show tremendous growth in production. However, as is perhaps most evident in the Pakistan example, the Green Revolution increased global food production, while global hunger increased in much of the Global South . Indeed, after the introduction of modified Mexican dwarf wheat species, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and irrigation systems, production of wheat doubled in Pakistan and increased 40% in India within five years . These types of figures are often used to illustrate the validity of high input programs and modified seed usage in efforts towards hunger alleviation, despite the increases revealing nothing about decreased local poverty, increased nutrient and caloric intake, or the long-term sustainability and utility of initiatives. An assumption is made that these numbers equate to reduced hunger. But arguments displaying a strong relationship between export-driven productivity and hunger eradication in rural regions most impacted by GR are elusive. Rather, reports that favorably portray the 20th century Green Revolution list broad market value indicators and increased national export potential. These reports also tend to sometimes ambiguously refer to ‘farmers’ as beneficiaries of these programs without clarifying whether ‘beneficiary’ translates to being lifted out of poverty or explicating whether the farmers referenced were the original inhabitants of the land. Unfortunately, considerations for existing networks of power and relative vulnerability are not integrated into AGRA’s new programs on the continent. Therefore, predictably, just as with the former Green Revolution, data of 200 households in southern Malawi demonstrate that high-input maize production failed to provide food security or adequate nutrition. In fact, the poorest families were found to be those selling more maize . Upfront costs, loans, and unpredictable commodity prices neutralize profit potential. Agriculture companies and corporate-government partnerships that urge adoption of proprietary hybrid or genetically modified seed continue to conflate production with hunger alleviation, and donors and stakeholders continue to mistake increased national output with income opportunities that filter down to smallholders. Despite enthusiastic Monsanto and AGRA campaign messaging, which either imply or flatly profess that altered high-yielding crops can remedy deficiencies in local diets, varieties grown under these schemes have been overwhelmingly geared toward export, not domestic consumption. As neither the beneficiaries of food grown for immediate consumption nor the proceeds from export sales, populations of African farmers continue to experience economic hardship. The African Centre for Biodiversity has been closely monitoring the progress of AGRA initiatives on the continent in recent years, including extensive assessments in the SADC nations of Malawi and Tanzania . The following engages 2 programs documented by ACB: a program integrating a hybrid pigeon pea variety in the Kasungu and Lilongwe districts in Malawi, and an evaluation of AGRA agrodealer networks in Tanzania. It is important to note that the Malawian farmers were more readily able to participate in the pigeon pea program due to partial government subsidies. That the program ultimately failed meant not only lost incomes for smallholders with surpluses they could not unload, but federal losses in three years of proprietary pea and input purchases that could not be recouped. Selling surpluses is difficult, as “African farmers have to compete directly with the heavily subsidized and marketed agricultural products from the West” . US and European Economic Community subsidies enable overproduction and Western agribusinesses dump “agricultural commodities on Third World economies at prices often below the cost of production” .