Improved agricultural output key to cutting poverty

A three-day conference on sustainable agricultural growth in Africa this week insisted that only if productivity is boosted can the welfare of both rural households and the urban poor improve.

"Regrettably, past performance has proven inadequate. Africa remains the only region of the developing world where per capita agricultural production has fallen over the past 40 years ... African farmers, governments, international partners and private sector must all do better in the future," said a statement at the end of the International Conference on Successes in African Agriculture: Building for the Future.

The conference, held from 1 to 3 December in the South African capital Pretoria, brought together high-level policymakers, senior researchers, and representatives from farmer groups, the private sector, and international development agencies, who noted that Africa's sluggish aggregate performance masked a rich record of substantial agricultural successes.

"Though these episodic and scattered booms have proven insufficient to sustain aggregate per capita growth in agriculture, they do prove informative in pointing to promising areas for effective intervention for the future," the statement said.

The gathering suggested there were two fundamental pre-requisites for sustained agricultural growth - good governance (with high-level political commitment and good cooperation with farmers' organisations) and sustained funding for agricultural research and extension.

Two-thirds of all Africans work primarily in agriculture, while the urban poor spend over 60 percent of their budget on food staples. Raising productivity remains central to boosting farm output and lowering consumer food prices.

"Virtually all of the successes we have identified involve some form of improved biological or mechanical technology, or organisational arrangements. Therefore, governments must elevate funding for agricultural research and extension. Furthermore, it is important that farmers' innovations be mainstreamed into the research agenda," the delegates concluded.

The conference was jointly convened by the New Partnership for Africa's Development, the Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung (the German government's agency for human resources development), the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, and the International Food Policy Research Institute.