Boosting production of Africa’s poor farmers, the GM way
Poor people constitute a significant part of the world’s population and Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the regions where many of these poor people live. Countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, and Niger are all found in this region.
The United Nations description of poverty is living under a dollar a day. And per this metric, the World Bank estimates that, in 2015, 10 percent of the world’s population or 734 million people lived on less than US$1.90 a day.
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Many of the world’s poor are smallholder farmers and they mostly live in rural communities in developing countries. For instance, a World Bank report titled: “Accelerating Poverty Reduction in Africa: in Five Charts," published on October 9, 2019, indicates that 82% of people living in extreme poverty in Africa live in rural areas and earn little money primarily from farming.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in its report: "Farming Systems and Poverty; Improving Farmers' Livelihoods in a Changing World," supported the view that most poor people live in rural areas of developing countries and are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood.
Poverty among smallholder farmers in rural communities, according to the FAO, is growing at an alarming rate in Sub-Saharan Africa, where Ghana is inclusive. The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) says that about 25 percent of Ghana’s population, representing about seven million people, live on less than a dollar a day.
In a report titled: “Poverty Trends in Ghana: 2005 – 2017," and published in August 2018, the GSS explained that of the seven million poor people in Ghana, about 2.2 million of them live in extreme poverty and are small-holder farmers in rural areas.
According to Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), most of the food crops in Sub-Saharan Africa are produced by approximately 33 million smallholding farms. Experts believe that to increase domestic food security as well as to reduce poverty among smallholder farmers, it is necessary to close farms’ yield gaps. This is the difference between the actual yields farmers are achieving and the yields they could achieve, if they were to adopt better agricultural technologies.
This is because yields in Africa are among the lowest in the world, according to a report on “Poverty eradication and food security through agriculture in Africa: Rethinking objectives and entry points." The report published in the November 21, 2019, edition of the SAGE Journal, states that in the 1960s, the average cereal yield in Africa was only 57% of that of the world and that by the 1980s and 1990s, the gap had widened with Africa achieving cereal yields of only 47% when compared to the rest of the world.
Closing the gap means that smallholder farmers will have to grow sufficient crops to feed their families, with a surplus to sell, thus meeting food security needs and bringing in an income to move them out of poverty. Question is how can this be done?
What are the prospects for smallholder farmers?
Farming in this part of the world is mainly rudimental and weather dependent. Experts believe that the African farmers’ inability to take advantage of scientific technology advancement, has being their disadvantage. The adoption of technology including hi-tech agricultural implements, is what has enabled only a handful of the population in developed countries to be productive and feed their people as well as export to other nations. These farmers have also embraced scientific tools including tissue culture and hybrid to enhance crop production.
In recent times, scientific tools applicable to the agricultural sector that have been embraced by some countries around the globe include biotechnology (BT). It involves the genetic engineering (GE) or genetic modification (GM) of a crop to produce traits, which hitherto were non-existent in that crop. So, what biotechnology does is that it enables the precise isolation and transfer of a trait like pests resistance from one plant to another plant or crop of object, for similar characteristics to be effective in that crop.
The need for such a mechanism arose, because pests are a constant menace to farmers and have been and still are responsible for huge losses for the smallholder African farmer.
The Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI) puts crop losses in Africa due to insect pest at 49% annually. Some crop losses can be even worse than others, and the effects of the changing climate are expected to increase the damage done by insects. As at 2015, Ghanaian farmers were said to experience a total destruction of 30 % of its crop yields due to pests and diseases.
What makes pests a serious farmers problem is that different pests attack different parts of a crop or even the entire crop. The fall army worm for instance, is known to attack every part of the crop, while others are more specific in the parts they attack such as the leaf and flower-eating caterpillars and beetles, bark borers, fruit-sucking bugs and fruit-piercing moths.
In their bid to address the problem of pests, farmers apply lots of pesticides, which apart from being an additional cost to the farmer, ends up destroying helpful micro-organisms in the soil and insect pollinators including some species of flies that are vital for fruition and yields.
However, through GM or GE, crops can be tailored to address specific problems of farmers such as pest infestation, issues of droughts, high salty soils and soils that lack some nutrients.
GM crops such as the insect-resistant cowpea and cotton, for example, have been enhanced to withstand pest infestation. More importantly, some GM crops have also been enhanced to withstand some adverse effects of climate change, which is having a devastating impact on agriculture and plunging many smallholder farmers into extreme poverty.
It has been estimated that cultivation of GM crops could reduce pesticide use by 37%, increase crop yields by 22%, and increase farm profits by 68%. This is reason why farmers in countries such as the United States, Brazil, South Africa, and China are making good gains from the GM crops.
Established gains from GM crops
Scientific experts in biotechnology attest to the effectiveness of this tool to enhance agricultural production. In their report: "GM crops: global socio-economic and environmental impacts 1996-2018," Graham Brookes and Peter Barfoot state that "GM technology has had a significantly positive impact on farm incomes derived from a combination of enhanced productivity and efficiency gains."
According to the report in 2018, the direct global farm income benefit from GM crops was US$18.95 billion and that since 1996, farm incomes have increased by US$225 billion. It further notes that the largest gains in farm income in 2018 have arisen in the maize sector, largely from yield gains. They say, in 2018, the GM insect resistant (GM IR) maize, specifically, added $4.53 billion to farmers’ income.
Substantial gains have also been made in the cotton and canola sectors through a combination of higher yields and lower costs. And with this proven technology, it is obvious that when Ghanaian farmers in as well as others in the rest of the sub-region in particular adopt this technology, it will help increase their yields and therefore boost their incomes.
Experts views on the potential of GM crops
A Senior Research Scientist with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Science Technology and Research Institute (CSIR-STEPRI) and National Coordinator of Open Forum Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB) Ghana, Dr. Richard Ampadu-Ameyaw sees biotechnology as part of the current scientific direction and trends in plant science can profoundly change our approach to Africa’s food, medical and environmental problems.
He says, “the cultivation of GM crops will lift many Ghanaian and African poor farmers from poverty, because farmers can be assured of robust crops with enhanced yields.”
But the adoption of the technology will largely depend on how it is understood and appreciated by all relevant stakeholders. This is why the Dean of the School of Agriculture, University of Cape Coast (UCC), Professor Elvis Asare-Bediako, thinks that there is the need for more education on the technology.
He said because it is a scientific tool involving processes that maybe be complex to non-scientists, scientists need to really explain the technology in very simple terms, for people to appreciate. This implies that people need to be informed about these scientific tools, so they can respond positively to the outcome, by embracing and demanding for them.
For his part, Professor Hans Adu-Dapaah, the Vice President of the CSIR College of Science and Technology (CSIR-CCST), stated that “…scientists cannot force people to use their inventions,” adding, “it is up to people to realise the times we find ourselves in and to see science as the best way to solve our problems.”
He emphasized that “rejecting biotechnology in our agricultural sector, will continue to make Ghana and Africa lag behind. This is because biotechnology has a potential to create wealth for farmers and boost our food security as a nation and as a continent.”
Prof. Adu-Dapaah said as scientists, they will continue to do their part including training students in the sciences, their processes and application. He urged other sectors of society including civil society organisations, political actors, religious and traditional leaders as well as the media, to also play their part by assisting in creating awareness and need for the technology.
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