Transforming lives of smallholder farmers - Pointers to consider
Agriculture is the lifeblood of many economies around the world. It helps feed billions and provides jobs for millions of people. In some countries, the sector’s growth to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is as high as 15 per cent and it helps give people in the sector and its entire value chain several billions of United States dollars.
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Ghana’s agricultural sector registered a growth of just 2.4 per cent in 2015, compared with the 2014 growth rate of 4.6 per cent. This phenomenon has continuously become worrying because just like many other countries in the developing world, agriculture is a major employer of people. It also gives income to many and helps feed millions in spite of the subsistent nature of farming in the country. But in Ghana, the situation is different as the figures show.
The government, in the 2016 Mid-Year budget statement, said the declining growth trends in agriculture had often coincided with declining growth rates in the crops subsector due to its weight. Subsequently, it repeated what is heard always that “effort continues to be made to address the challenges in the sector, including ensuring that fertilisers are released to farmers on time.”
Though yet to be implemented, President Akufo-Addo has pledged the commitment of the current administration to ensure that agriculture is mechanised but not in the rhetorical way as has been the case for decades. The commitment of the government ties in well with discussions by experts in Davos.
From Davos
At the World Economic Forum annual meetings held in Davos recently, it became clear that there is the need for governments across the world to take agriculture seriously if governments are to contribute to ensuring sustainable supply of food for the growing mass of people in the world.
From artificial intelligence to precision agriculture, to the Internet of things, emerging technologies have the potential to revolutionise the way food is consumed, handled and produced. But which technologies could most powerfully transform the lives of smallholder farmers? These, after all, are the people who produce as much as 80 per cent of the food consumed in some parts of the developing world, yet make up a majority of the world’s undernourished population.
The Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU) gave voice particularly to smallholder farmers who produce food on less than two hectares of land with limited assets. Here in Africa, over 80 per cent of our farmers are smallholders and they produce 70 per cent of the continent’s food.
But just like Ghana, there are five technologies that are said to have the potential to connect smallholder farmers to new resources, information, knowledge and markets. The good news is that many of these innovations already exist; the challenge lies in scaling them up in ways that are inclusive, while navigating the inevitable challenges that will accompany their uptake.
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- Improved access to electricity to increase efficiency and reduce food loss
Electricity is hardly a new innovation, but there are still many people – almost two-thirds of sub-Saharan Africa, for example – who lack access. Even where energy infrastructure exists, cost can often be a barrier.
Access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy enables smallholders to improve efficiencies in land preparation, planting, irrigation and harvesting. It also allows them to use certain methods for storing, cooling and preserving goods. The ability of smallholder farmers to participate in global food systems depends on their access to electricity.
- Increased Internet connectivity to access information and knowledge to improve productivity on their farms
To many agric experts, the internet is a fundamental part of everyday life. But over four billion people – more than 55 per cent of the world’s population – remain unconnected to the web.
The vast majority of smallholder farmers live in remote areas where good, fast Internet connectivity reaches less than 30 per cent of the population. Women constitute almost half of the agricultural labour force in developing countries, yet they are less likely to access the Internet than men in the same communities.
If this “digital divide” were closed, smallholder farmers could access information and knowledge-related to weather, rainfall or market demand, allowing them to grow and harvest food more efficiently. Timing has increasingly become a key source of competitiveness and access to real-time information is crucial. To be truly transformational, Internet access must be reliable, affordable and secure.
- Mobile devices and platforms connect smallholder farmers to markets
Connectivity is not only about access to information – it is also about access to services. For example, mobile banking can give smallholder farmer’s access to formal financial services such as banking and loans, which they all too often lack. Take the example of Trringo: this smartphone app is being hailed by the Uber for tractors, thanks to how it has disrupted India’s farm equipment renting process.
Farmers can use the mobile platform for aggregation and then leverage the volume to negotiate better prices with suppliers. This platform, designed by farmers and for farmers, also includes a host of other features. It has since been transformed into a digital highway through which services and products will flow between suppliers and farmers.
Investing in a mobile phone as an agricultural tool has perhaps become the single most strategic decision by a smallholder farmer, and we need to make sure we’re doing everything we can to facilitate such smart investments.
- Unique identifiers improve data about farmers, for farmers
Unique identifiers are commonly used in the developed world. When one logs on to Amazon or Netflix, the site knows who one is and makes personalised recommendations based on what one has purchased or viewed before. But data about smallholder farmers in developing economies is largely based on samples and extrapolations, and is thus unreliable or incomplete.
With unique identifiers, businesses could offer tailored services, policy-makers could make more informed decisions and knowledge institutions could make better assessments of farmers’ circumstances.
For example, the eWallet system in Nigeria has allowed the government to identify and deliver input subsidies directly to farmers based on personal and biometric information provided by smallholder farmers. As with all innovations, this technology is not a silver bullet. For unique identifiers to improve farmers’ lives, data systems must be able to guarantee that data remains anonymous for the privacy and security of individuals.
- Geospatial analysis to help farmers make informed decisions
Geospatial technologies can help both policy-makers and individual farmers assess, monitor and plan the use of their natural resources. If smallholder farmers had access to foundational technologies – such as electricity, the Internet and mobile phones – then they too could use geospatial analysis to make decisions about the management of their farms and other assets. In this realm, FAO and Google are partnering to make geospatial tracking and mapping products more accessible.
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If geospatial technologies were easy to download and use, a smallholder in Colombia could discover the distance to the nearest river, or a farmer in Malawi could use sensors to more efficiently manage their farm or another farmer in Wenchi, in Ghana, will not have problems locating areas to sell his farm produce.
Conclusion
Some of the technologies discussed above are hardly new, so it might seem odd to see them on a list of innovations that could transform the lives of smallholders. But for these farmers, access and adoption of technology is not automatic.
It is, therefore, the need for the government to ensure that smallholder farmers are not left behind in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Strong digital infrastructure is crucial for smallholders to access and create tools that empower them to make decisions about their farms and businesses. As innovation evolves, there is the need to continue to question how the benefits of technology are being shared and how these benefits can nurture the smallholder farmers who feed the world.
In the case of Ghana, it is refreshing to know that the new administration intends to take agriculture seriously. There is a policy yet to be actualised, the ‘one dam, one village’ concept which is intended to help smallholder farmers to access all year round water on their farms.
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Data and Internet access must reach every nook and cranny of the country to enable the smalholder farmers, most found in the rural areas, to access it and at a cheaper price.
Against this background, the government needs not fail when it comes to agriculture because the challenges are known and all it takes is to fix them and provide the enabling environment for players in the sector to make the best of the situation and growth will be more pronounced.