ADDIS ABABA – Money flows in agricultural development are still reinforcing damaging industrial models in Africa, according to a new report by Biovision, IPES-Food and the UK-based Institute of Development Studies.
Biovision president Hans Herren said: “Most governments, both in developing and developed countries, still favor ‘green revolution’ approaches, with the belief that chemical-intensive, largescale industrial agriculture is the only way to produce sufficient food.”
“But these approaches have failed,” warns Herren, winner of the 1995 World Food Prize and 2013 Right Livelihood Award. “They have failed ecosystems, farming communities, and an entire continent.”
Herren added: “With the compound challenges of climate change, pressure on land and water, food-induced health problems and pandemics such as COVID-19, we need change now. And this starts with money flowing into agro ecology.”
Approximately, 30 percent of farms around the world are estimated to have redesigned their production systems around agro ecological principles, the report says.
The report finds that support for agro ecology is now growing across the agridevelopment community, particularly in light of climate change, but this hasn’t yet translated into a meaningful shift in funding flows. Around 13 percent of projects carried out by Kenyan research institutes are ‘agroecological’, with a further 13 percent of projects focusing on the substitution of synthetic inputs.
Olivia Yambi, co-chair of IPES-Food, said: “We need to change funding flows and unequal power relations. It’s clear that in Africa as elsewhere, vested interests are propping up agricultural practice based on an obsession with technological fixes that is damaging soils and livelihoods, and creating a dependency on the world’s biggest agri-businesses. Agro ecology offers a way out of that vicious cycle.”
To accelerate this shift to agro ecology, the report calls on donors to: shift towards long-term, pooled funding models; require projects to be co-designed with farmers and communities; increase the share of funding going to African organizations; and increase transparency in how their projects are funded, monitored and measured for impact.
The Ethiopian herald June 11,2020
BY MULATU BELACHEW
