By Tulizo D. Malavanu
Worldwide, smallholder farmers are significant in sustainable food production in achieving food security at family and local levels.
In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) rural areas, smallholder farmers produce for food and sell the excess to get money for other needs.
The majority of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa own a piece of land for cultivation ranging between 2-5ha. These farmers account for about 80% of all farmers and contribute up to 90% of the food production in some countries of this region.
In developed countries such as in Europe, smallholder farmers make an economic and social backbone of European agriculture, where they contribute a lot in conserving nature, society, and culture. When talking about smallholder farmers in Europe, they own 14ha farms.
Developing smallholder farmers can be one strategy to reduce hunger and improve lives in countries with a small income. It can be done by opening doors and making smallholder farmers access markets easier through infrastructure improvements such as roads, storage facilities, reliable information about their products’ prices, and access to improved seeds.
Situation in sub Saharan Africa (SSA)
Recently production in SSA remained low because of the different challenges smallholder farmers are facing.
Among others, climate change, the eruption of pests and diseases, and reduced soil fertility put pressure on the sector considering the farming systems used by smallholder farmers in this region; worse, the farming system depends on rainfall and temperature.
In SSA, land degradation is another major problem facing smallholder farmers. This
problem may be associated with the use of blanket recommendations of the fertilizers, which also degrade the soil quality and reduce soil fertility, leading to low production.
Smallholder farmers are still facing a market challenge, which is made worse by the lack of proper packaging materials, storage facilities, and accessibility to the markets because of the poor infrastructure such as road networks.
Challenges such as access to credits and services, information gaps such as climate/weather information, which can help them plan and decide what they will plant depending on the weather forecast are also another hindrance.
Inadequate extension services due to few extension experts reach farmers and less prioritising soil sampling before fertilizer application are also of major concern.
Strategies available in sub Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa has two important primary documents designed following the agriculture development; The Malabo Declaration and Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP).
From these primary documents, every country developed policy documents to implement them. These documents provide some strategies to help smallholder farmers; however, its implementation has been lacking due to inadequate funding in the agriculture sector.
They also direct the states to allocate 10% of their expenditure towards agriculture development in their countries.
Another area of strengthening in SSA is the collaboration of governments and their private sectors (Private Public Partnership), though it has been working well in some countries.
However, the resources are still not enough to push the sector and help smallholder farmers achieve their goals because Governments are still not investing/allocating the 10% of their expenditure into agriculture development as agreed in the Malabo and the CAADP documents(AU, 2016).
With this pace and the crisis, we are into “climate change,” which continues to threaten the sector in Sub-Saharan Africa and it is high time to rescue smallholder farmers, who depend on agriculture as their main livelihood source.
European Union small scale farmers
European smallholder farmers may have been more advanced due to the presence of viable strategies and farmers’ associations, which make sure that farmers’ voices are heard.
Small-scale farmers in the EU positively utilise the knowledge networks they have around them, including strategies on proper agriculture production and how to access subsidies; they are also responsible for complying with the regulation and utilisation of the advisory services they get (Sutherland et al. 2017).
For example, the Farm to Fork Strategy highlights many initiatives that make sure they help farmers effectively produce and much reduced food waste.
This strategy also insists on green agriculture production, reducing food losses on the entire chain of production and less environmental and biodiversity destruction while ensuring food and nutrition security for the European citizens (EU).
States, farmers associations, and private sectors join hands to ensure there is enough enabling environment for their farmers to produce and get markets for their products.
Enabling environment includes doable strategies, transport facilities including roads, cold rooms, packaging materials, reliable markets for their products in and outside their countries, and financial support.
Lessons for sub Saharan Africa
Full engagement of farmers during the preparation of working policy documents such as strategies is essential.
Doing so will help plan effectively depending on the resources available and enhancing farmer responsibility in complying with the strategy as they would have been involved during preparation.
To enhance the use of regulations and advisory services, especially at this changing time of climate change. Farmers use their experiences and sometimes ignore expert advice, which leads to failure accompanying many losses.
As long as sub Saharan Africa countries depend much on agriculture, governments need to adhere to the Malabo declaration agreement to spend 10% of the government expenditure to invest in agriculture.
The funds can be used to improve infrastructures (cold rooms, roads for transportation of agricultural products).
To ensure subsidies and agro-inputs are available and accessible to farmers, improve working environment for farmers such as access to finances to invest in their farms, and provide reliable agricultural markets for produce, make sure there are enough and improved packaging materials.
States should also invest some funds into agricultural research and produce enough agriculture experts to help farmers achieve their goals and contribute to achieving sustainable development goals number one and two, on eradicating poverty and hunger.
Concluding remark
It is impossible to compare smallholder farmers from Europe and those from sub-Saharan Africa. Still, many lessons have to be learnt to prepare and implement agriculture-related strategies to help smallholder farmers improve their lives.
Accessibility of reliable markets and packaging materials is crucial for this value chain because it reduces food losses.
Another important aspect to consider for sustainable agricultural production is the conservation of the environment, reduced shifting Agriculture and blanket recommendations of fertilizers to help reduce soil degradation.
However, conservation agriculture practices (such as crop rotation, leguminous plants, and recommended amount of fertilizer) will ensure sustainable production.
