How to Feed the African Poor

The G8, apparently meeting rather fruitlessly in L’Aquila, Italy, in July, unexpectedly addressed the issue of poor African people feeding themselves. They promised US$20 billion over three years, and said they “wanted to focus less on sending food to the poor and more on helping small farmers … produce more and better crops”.

The difficulty of reducing starvation and improving human dignity in rural Africa has deeply troubled good people in affluent countries for many decades. Unlike most of the rest of the world, in much of Africa crop yields have not increased significantly over the last century. In recent decades between $8 billion and $10 billion worth of food has been imported annually into the continent. Thus massive amounts of aid money have simply gone into feeding people rather than to programs of health and education and development. (At the same time, there is a conundrum: is provision of food aid necessary because local production is tenuous, or has the incentive to try to increase local production been destroyed by food aid through the availability of surpluses and money to buy it?)

Will this G8 initiative work? How will it be different? Many interest groups have their own simple answers. Some want large increases in financial aid. Some believe opening world markets for produce will solve much of the problem. Some want to dramatically “modernise” production, advocating the transplanting of farming systems, mechanisation, chemicals and all. Some reject outright new farming ideas and methods, urging the use of traditional agriculture, often stressing an “organic” basis. Others, such as Kofi Annan and Nicholas Stern, writing in the Guardian in May, attribute the “yield decline” to climate change and urge a ^“green” deal.

Many of these people operate with missionary fervour. At times they have some strange companions: last year on the same ABC 7.30 Report the CEO of World Vision, Tim Costello, urged the giving of much more money, and another man pleaded for support for shipping second-hand tractors, too old for use in Australia, to the Congo.

Confusion reigns. Dambisa Moyo, a former economist with Goldman Sachs, in a recent article, “Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa” summed up the aid question: “Millions march for it, celebrities proselytise for it; advocates push for doubling the $US50 billion or so now given. Yet evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that aid to Africa has made the poor poorer and the growth slower.”

Why is it that with so many people caring, so much effort and so much aid being invested, the problem appears to be intractable? Is it the need for capital? Is it the need for trade? Is it the need for more aid workers? Is it the need for even more aid money? Is it that the context of the work is misunderstood?

What can be done to increase the chance of the G8 move having more effect than the other efforts through the ages?

Development stages need to be clearly defined. In The End of Poverty (2005) the economist Geoffrey Sachs, a Director of the Millennium Goals Project, put forward a schema for stages: pre-commercial; commercial; industrial/knowledge. He argues that different aid strategies must be used for people in the different stages. His model is helpful, as many of us are concerned that serious attention still needs to be given to the pre-commercial stage, as we believe that many people are still in this stage and will remain so for years to come, with little or no commercial activity—their produce is mostly consumed locally with perhaps a small amount bartered at nearby villages. Simple changes affecting effort and yield may make a great difference to these people. World trade arrangements and capital supply, direct financial aid and mechanisation (for example through providing second-hand tractors) have little or no relevance.

What has been the pathway to increased yield elsewhere? What can history tell us?

The most recent and widely publicised “leap” in yield was the so-called Green Revolution in the 1970s and 1980s, which banished hunger from most of Asia. It was based on a clear recognition of needs and the precise application of fertilisers. At the same time plant varieties capable of responding and giving greater yield were supplied. Though the results were spectacular, it was essentially the sensible fitting of several important changes into existing farming systems—especially better genes and adequate plant nutrition. Then, overall there was the imposition of tight discipline to ensure the right seed and fertiliser were used and supply chains were maintained. In a way “Green Revolution” was an unfortunate descriptor, leading many people to call for nothing less than a revolution in Africa.

In China, through the decades up to the 1970s crops were grown with strong emphasis on organic materials, including human wastes, and the resultant crops looked impressive. However, over much of the crop area yields were more than doubled in the next decade—by identifying the continuing nutrient deficiencies and using manufactured, concentrated fertilisers in conjunction with the older system. Similar improvements took place in India and Indonesia.

Europe had famines well into the 1800s, despite a lot of thinking going into farming systems and rotations, and strong emphasis on organic matter. But yields have long trended upwards there and in Australia, partly through research and science but also through the understanding of some simple fundamentals and application of knowledge. The identification of the element phosphorus as critical—explaining how materials like ground bones and basic slag could help growth—was a vital event in England and Europe. The knowledge was exported to Australia and slowly applied to wheat crops, reversing yield declines from about 1870. Then, combined with nitrogen-fixing legumes, it made a huge increase in yields of pasture and crops possible through the latter half of the twentieth century.

The lesson from Europe is that despite thorough collection and field application of organic residues, there were famines well into the 1800s. In Medieval Europe the manager of dunghills and organic matter (Dungmeister), was an important social position, and all organic residues were coveted. The system took much arduous human labour, aided by beasts of burden, and today would involve a huge consumption of fossil fuel energy. If the fields are larger, and there is some regular export of food (nutrients) to be consumed far away and not returned, there will be an increasing gap between the reality and the ideal. If the nutrients are returned, larger and larger amounts of energy will be needed to restore them to their place of production. At best the system is circulating its own deficiencies. Thus food shortages really only ended with the realisation that mineral elements were necessary, and with the advent of concentrated inorganic fertilisers high in phosphorus through work at Rothamsted Experimental Station in Hertfordshire in the mid-1800s.

Scientific circles now well understood the fundamentals. A number of essential chemical elements and physical conditions—and of course water—were necessary for a plant to grow well vegetatively, which is the essential precursor for yield: the plant translocates from the leaves and stems to the fruit or grain, the yield. Traditionally, gardeners have had an instinctive feel for this, but scientists have now added precision.

Scientists also realised that few parent rocks release enough nutrients to keep pace with the removal through cropping as well as, usually, some losses through erosion and leaching. Test plots came to be used to assess need—with and without the nutrient, then perhaps more sophisticated testing for the size of application needed.

The latest development in cropping has been greatly reduced soil disturbance, not constantly digging over the soil, but allowing soil flora and fauna to be largely undisturbed. Minimal soil disturbance maximises moisture retention and improves soil health. Africans still tend to dig—turning over the soil with heavy, usually blunt, cast-iron hoes. As part of a system, this effort can be reduced, too.

The next step in the modern era was fast, efficient micro-analysis of soil, leaf and other tissue to measure levels and define need. Finally, all these elements can be incorporated into simple models.

New seed is necessary from time to time, because when it is kept from year to year there can be a build-up of seed-borne diseases, especially viruses. This new seed need not be complicated or genetically modified, just clean seed, with perhaps some pest resistance where this can easily be included, and sometimes new cultivars with the propensity for higher yield.

Finally there is precision in planting. In Sunday school we used to sing “We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land”, but we have now learned the value of precise depth and spacing. Early in farming in Australia there were experimental and demonstration plots investigating depth of sowing, seeding rate and the spacing of seeds and rows. Yet so much African cropping is scatter (poor) seed and hope.

Have these success stories—of essential elements, and proper planting of good seed—been forgotten by the people who go to Africa? When Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, they used a container made from wood, a bit like a barrel, a ring of planks sealed onto a bottom. The limitation on the capacity of the pail was the height of the shortest plank. The analogy can be used to describe limitations on the growth—the yield—of a plant: there are about fifteen essential elements for plant growth and the height of the plank of the least plentiful would limit growth. No matter how tall the other planks, it makes no difference—no amount of excess of one element can make up for the scarcity of another.

We were taught at school—and I hope our children still are—that the two most important processes in the world are photosynthesis (capturing solar energy by green plants and incidentally making all of the basic carbohydrate foodstocks and free oxygen) and respiration (which all living things do to get energy). Both processes use phosphorus—in adenisone di- and tri-phosphates. Low phosphorus means low levels of biological processes. The plant takes up each of the essential elements in an inorganic form in solution in the water present in the soil into its roots and hence its metabolism.

Perhaps the failure of basic science teaching has left us with so many experts who are knowledgeable in other aspects of development, but hopelessly ignorant of what produces yield. Many people of influence, with loud voices, who have forgotten, or never knew, this basis for yield increase, lead the rest of the population astray. In aid-giving countries like Australia this is connected partly to some of the green myths about farming (see the April 2009 issue of Quadrant). They simply do not understand what makes for yield increases and the consequences this could have and the importance of phosphorus to life.

For the aid agencies and their workers this is often compounded by loyalty to some “isms”. Jack de Groot, the head of the worldwide aid organisation Caritas, was interviewed by Fran Kelly on ABC Radio National about the world food crisis on April 8. He rejected the use of fertilisers and put his faith in composting. This might have been acceptable if he had added that careful analyses would be made of the compost and the information set against plant needs of all vital nutrients, with deficits being made up by either procurement of carefully analysed organic material, or, as a last resort, inorganic fertiliser.

On October 16, 2004, Phillip Adams interviewed Dr Mae-Wan, whose title and credentials were impressive: Director of the Institute of Science in Society and “scientific adviser to the Third World Network”. She described a region in Ethiopia, then asserted that though there are run-down soils and poor crops, the remedy lies in fitting her composting system into traditional farming. When she rejected the use of fertilisers, Adams interjected, “They can’t afford fertilisers anyway.” If he had understood the nature of yield he would more likely have asked, “Will that cover all the soil deficiencies? If not, how can we help them to access fertilisers?”

Working in Ethiopia in the late 1980s, I found that aid organisations—of which there were so many that we had to find a small hall for a meeting—predominantly advocated organic and traditional farming, seemingly unaware that nutrient deficiencies were obvious to crop agronomists and yields were not increasing, even declining, as the recent famine had shown. True, it is important to maintain a high level of organic matter and many small farmers have always done so; but that alone is not a remedy. Where there are serious deficiencies of nutrients, there is simply a vicious cycle of low productive capacity.

Peter Willis, Director of Industry Programs in Africa for Cambridge University, intervened in a series of items in the Cape Times of South Africa in August 2005 which dramatically illustrated our problem. The chairman of a fertiliser company had stated that in parts of Africa the adequate supply of certain plant nutrients was more vital than support for any one farming system. Subsequently a columnist in a wide-ranging discussion emphasised the fact that organic farming systems often produce lower yields than ones where essential nutrients are topped up with concentrated fertilisers. Willis played down the importance of these lower yields, writing in the Cape Times that maximising crop yield is not a prime concern for Africa, so we can ignore the fact that yield is often lower than in conventional systems. He suggested that the lower yields might in fact be a good thing, as if people were not fed so well they might not reproduce as much, and this might reduce population growth rates.

Quite apart from the fallacy, this is not an acceptable approach. Better informed, better supported and better fed people make better decisions about family planning. Medical people were shocked, even more so that by implication Willis associated Cambridge University with such a view. He followed with another letter, using emotive words:

the chemical armoury used by conventional farmers … would have been concocted … chemical-based agriculture … there are well over 100,000 man-made compounds in commercial production … and we would be deluding ourselves if we imagined that the nice men in white coats had tested them thoroughly to make sure they were safe …

Then he returned to the yield (efficiency) question, concluding with the assertion that “Organic agriculture wins hands down.” Quite apart from impugning the professional competence and responsibility of the agricultural science profession, his blanket assertion is foolish.

I wrote to the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University protesting at the intrusion of their “industry program director” into such an agricultural debate, and had an interesting exchange about whether advising people like Willis not to stray from their own territory would be limiting academic freedom (freedom to cause starvation?). Though there was never any public indication, I can only hope that my efforts had some internal impact.

These forays into the media by well-intentioned but ill-informed people illustrate some of the difficulties we have in getting adequate systems established to increase yield in Africa. Foolish notions live on, warping decision making (like some others in the debates at home—see my paper in the April issue). We need to remind people of the verities of plant growth and production, which are just about as immutable as the laws of gravity and motion. We need to remind people constantly of the need to act on the basis of evidence, the need to remember the basics, ask questions, test and measure, and promote better practice. We need to tell them the stories of historical success.

Adherence to “isms” or absolutes is the most dangerous enemy of yield increases. Absolute allegiance to fixed systems—such as organics and insistence on traditionalism in farming—has been a major factor contributing to static yield. This is not to malign the people who so fervently urge these—they too are frustrated by the lack of increase in yields, but they need to be better informed on basic science and agronomy and to understand the African situation better. Many of these people have seen organic systems succeed moderately in Europe where so much enriched organic material is available from livestock sheltered and fed in barns in winter months, and there is also waste material from intensive animal production. In Africa there is a paucity of material with significant levels of key nutrients.

Take the argument for adherence to “traditional” agriculture. Much of the field work has been done using cast-iron hoes (with blades worn round and blunt). However, they have not been used forever—presumably they were adopted some time in the last 1000 years. Further, in many places more than ten different crops are grown, which presumably arrived at various times over the centuries. Thus “tradition” has included change.

Even in Africa, there is a tradition in agriculture of adapting and adopting. Proponents of a traditional static system resist the dramatic changes of mechanisation and the use of chemical pesticides, and one can accept that these are not necessary everywhere. But their blanket insistence on staying the same has perhaps held Africa back. Appropriate is a better term than traditional agriculture, assuming continuing change, gently, perhaps for the time being eschewing mechanisation and widespread use of chemicals. Examples are: new varieties of present crops, new light-weight steel hoes, concentrated fertilisers to raise levels of critical elements like phosphorus especially to promote legumes and hence more nitrogen, and sulphur, and a better arrangement of their work—what we in Australia might consider a “farming system”—where an activity is not seen as isolated, but linked to what happens before and after.

The G8 initiative might work if we could insist on this chain of events: use seed that has been stored in the best possible conditions, using varieties with genes that suit the environment, including pest avoidance or resistance; sow the seed at (tested) optimal depth of cover, spacing in the row and spacing of rows; control weeds by hand with minimal soil turnover, using lighter tools; provide adequate nutrition, phosphorus and nitrogen especially, as indicated by simple local test plots; control the goats; harvest the crop at maturity. There is no doubt yields would be increased—perhaps doubled, or more.

Most of these actions are well within the control of the local farmers. They must shake off the “I am helpless, help me” mentality, and help themselves much more. While there are some obvious needs for inputs that cost money, the amount is small.

Supply chains must be established. Return per unit of expensive fertiliser should be a prime target. John Dimes’s work with as little as a bottle top of fertiliser per plant has shown that small quantities can have a big impact.

It sounds simple to achieve, but it isn’t. In 2005 I met the staff of a warehousing firm in Rwanda who told me they handled consignments from Australia for World Vision. I dreamed of getting them to include five-kilogram bags of concentrated phosphate for use in test plots. Back in Australia, I raised the matter, but at the mention of fertiliser, they regretted they could not help, as handling fertilisers would offend their partner in East Africa, Kenya Organics.

Greater yield has some self-evident results—self-sufficiency in food the most obvious. But there is much more. Increasing yield per unit of land, especially that in reasonable proximity to the village, means less time walking to and fro, and doubling yield would mean half the area needed for the same amount of food, and, perhaps nearly as importantly, half the work. Increased yield per unit of human endeavour by using lighter, sharper hoes with a longer handle (or even just planting sticks) could give the women more time and energy to care for children. (Although various groups have advocated better hoes, major aid agencies have given little support.) There is virtually no use of fossil fuel, so efficiency of that input is not a consideration.

Women still do most of the field work, with hand tools. That the toil in the fields is women’s work makes it more than an agricultural problem. It is important to increase the return from the women’s effort—in effect, to create conditions where the women are less fatigued and have more time at home. Better yield per unit of women’s labour (effort and time) may matter enormously, as it can affect women’s and children’s health and well-being. At an international conference the late Susan Holmes, one-time Head of Small Business in Victoria, developed the idea of budgets for other things—energy, time, caring, enthusiasm—and of women making savings and reinvesting them.

Take the reinvestment of the saved energy of women—in addition to better family care there may be the possibility of some women’s energy going into small cottage industries. In the example to be discussed below, on the island of Idjwi, six sewing machines were provided for making clothes for families and barter, and men have a workshop to make simple furniture, using the eucalypts (from Australia!) growing nearby. Next is a passionfruit plant issue unit supplying ten plants each to 4200 farmers with guaranteed juice buyback. A honey industry is developing using wooden hive-boxes (honey and wood from the eucalypts) instead of hive-destructive collecting, as was traditionally practised.

Where do sewing machines, eucalypts, carpentry tools, and lightweight steel hoes fit into traditional agriculture? This further supports the notion of continued evolution, albeit sensitive to tradition.

The benefits claimed for organic farming—stress on having high levels of soil organic matter and very nutritious food and absence of injurious chemicals—are laudable, but are not peculiar to it and have been stressed in many other systems. The use of organic material is valuable and normally accepted, but it must be used knowingly and with some care: for example if the material used has too high a carbon-to-nitrogen ratio it can cause a nitrogen deficiency. In many cases it must be analysed to find the levels of critical nutrients, otherwise it simply cycles material deficient in these (hence the frequently lower yields), and to make sure there are no undesirable chemicals or biological entities.

It is the argument for total and exclusive adoption of systems used elsewhere—be they organic or other—that is dangerous. Yield increases in most other places have come from “precise and knowing” systems suitable to conditions, and adapting as conditions change. Remarkably, the “appropriate” system evolved to suit the southern Australian environment is demonised by organic people as “chemical” or even simply “conventional”, despite the fact that it has evolved to be fairly close in many emphases to the organic model. Its chief difference is that it is supported by evidence-based decision making—a “precise and knowing” culture.

Critics of the organic movement rightly point to the lack of precise knowledge, that it is difficult, often impossible, in some climatic regions and commercial realities, to achieve adequate plant nutrition with organic material as the nutrient source unless the material has been produced by importing a lot of key elements. Thus in Europe, where there is a lot of manure from caged chickens and pigs fed on special foods, the organic wastes may have enough of these nutrients, and there is a problem of disposing of wastes, rather than the reverse. In addition, there are substantial “nutrient flows” as food is traded around the world—even nutrients from developing countries arriving in developed countries.

It is vital that the fundamentals of plant nutrition are understood and that the need to do tests for all nutrients, but especially phosphorus, is accepted. There urgently needs to be systems of procuring nutrients at the local level.

Strict adherence to organic systems or insistence on “traditional” farming is likely to be the greatest obstacle to the G8’s dream.

The island of Idjwi, in Lake Kivu in the eastern Congo, with an area of about 1000 square kilometres, is home to some 200,000 people, dependent on simple agriculture, with no electricity or reticulated water and few wheeled vehicles. It is economically isolated, with little internal commercial activity. There would once have been a limited range of crop plants—yet today many are grown, most of them originating elsewhere in the world (and now grown throughout the tropics): cassava, banana, pineapple, sweet potato, haricot bean, soya bean, groundnut, sugar cane, cabbage, sorghum, tomato, taro, quinine, mango, coffee, avocado and lemon. The tools have changed too: once they relied on the digging stick, then at some time, probably the Middle Ages, the heavy cast-iron hoe arrived, and has been widely adopted.

The agriculture on Idjwi is not “traditional” in the pure sense of the word. But some might still argue that it is “tried and proven”. Proven? Poor yields, seed stocks carrying virus diseases, excessive human energy inputs, women’s health affected by toil in the fields, frequent food shortages? The systems might be tried, but are they proven?

With improved medical services, there are now more people, and the constant cry, “We need more land.” Yield increase would help. The burden of arduous field work for women could be eased.

The move out of Sachs’s pre-commercial stage will almost certainly be long in coming. As they edge towards it, can more small industries, both cottage and agricultural, be established to enable barter even if not cash earnings? Six sewing machines are already in use, making clothes for home use and barter. (By the way, it is inappropriate here to measure poverty by total cash income. Much of the island’s life operates without cash. Some people can be comparatively well off with little cash flow.) There is a small bakery, fitting into the small amount of cash flow. Soap is made from the dregs of the palm oil plant.

Their farming needs the supports we had in Australia: demonstration and test plots; dissemination of ideas; simple, appropriate, outside connections, like warehousing of seeds and fertilisers and perhaps pest control chemicals.

While in Australia we have in recent years encouraged the setting of attainable yield for a particular area and soil type, including the work of associated research workers and farmers, in Africa a useful concept is achievable yield—by the farmers’ own efforts. They can then assess their performance against this, discerning the reasons for falling short, asking questions like “What is the greatest number of beans you have picked from a plant” and “Why has this bean plant got fewer?”—resulting in a teasing out of factors determining yield and a clear challenge to do all the things they can to improve yield. This must lead to, “Which of these factors are under my control?” and “What could I have done better?” This contrasts with so many situations where giving food aid has developed a culture of simply calling for outside help.

There are many factors within the farmer’s control in seeking higher yields:

Before sowing: Seed has been ripened under good conditions, stored carefully, and has had any available disease prevention treatment.

At sowing: Seed is planted at best depth and spacing.

After sowing: Goats are kept away, weeds are removed.

There are some factors where the farmer may need assistance:

Before sowing: The most robust and prolific varieties of seed for the area have been supplied.

At sowing: Fertiliser has been applied, perhaps chemicals for disease control.

After sowing: Supplementary nutrients and pest control have been applied.

So, much of the performance of the crop plant is in the hands of the local farmer. Where there is a clear and unambiguous need for external help, such as supply of fertiliser and new varieties, there is still in these an element of self-help in their efficient use: experiment and demonstrate. Counting, eye assessment and scoring (which improves with practice and several people averaging) can be learned.

Production efficiency, as measured by the land area needed for a given amount of yield, depends on how near the achievable yield the actual yield is. Though the amount of labour will be closely related to the land area used, even allowing for more work to apply additional inputs there is the possibility of further reductions with better tools and management.

Tillage takes two forms: digging over the soil to bury residues before planting, and later working to control weeds in the crop. All is now done with the heavy short-handled, worn-out cast-iron hoes. Thus we suggest a “farming” system—defined as a system that efficiently integrates two or more tools, two or more people, working at two or more times. First, a person works through one day with a light, wide, sharp hoe, slicing weeds just under the surface (rather than turning over the soil), keeping well away from crop plants—inter-row weed control. The hoe handle length and angle should be such as to allow the person to work nearly upright and use much less energy. Second, two days later a second person, possibly working from a kneeler, uses a short, light, precise tool to clean up all weeds near the plants without damaging any, and watch out for any missed between the rows. Such a system means lower losses of crop plants, slightly higher yields, but most of all, less fatigue and the possibility of women returning home earlier. (The kneeler must be light and narrow enough to use between rows but wide enough to make a seat when turned up; slightly sloping to work uphill, with a hook for the tool and a loop for a water bottle, pest control material, even a little fertiliser.)

Such a system has a social impact. Over many decades there have been attempts to replace the old hoes or to have women work less, but there is a tradition that if they finish early the men will give them more work to do. This must change—perhaps by the women themselves realising they have other worthwhile things to do. On Idjwi, one move has been to introduce sewing machines so they will look forward to creative work. Another vital step is to provide “crocs”—plastic sandals—which the children must be supervised to wear after school, in order to reduce hookworm and river blindness. A further matter, stressed directly with the women, is to have a daily rather than spasmodic check on the mosquito nets, in order to reduce malaria. And there is supervision of homework. A system that eases the burden on women will improve the lives of children—not only giving them better care, but also sparing them from demands to do burdensome work.

The lighter hoe is the key to many things. The catch is in supply—but the heavy iron hoes are coming through some supply chain, so surely we can establish supply lines for the improved version. It is a case of identifying critical inputs, rather than giving aid that is too broad and risks increasing dependence on food aid. Supply chains must be reliable—there is so often a lack of integrity—hence the stress on discipline in what was called the Green Revolution.

Unfortunately, most people—and this includes local advisers and NGOs—do not appreciate how important phosphorus is. Phosphorus compounds are moderately soluble, and over long periods tend to drain off old lands into the seas. Thus lands with soil parent material perhaps only moderately supplied by the parent rocks soon show deficiencies under cropping. Examples are Australia and much of Africa. In contrast, Europe and North America have vast areas of soil formed from glacial till, higher in phosphorus, and younger and less leached anyway. (In the case of Australia the phosphorus has entered the sea food chains, and been deposited by the birds on refuge islands—such as Nauru and Ocean Island. In using phosphorus fertilisers made from the guano of these islands we have in a sense completed the cycle.)

Losses are increased when human food crops are removed and wastes, mainly human excrement, are rarely fully returned to the crop site. In any case no amount of assiduously collecting our own wastes will completely return this phosphorus. The other source of phosphorus is the breakdown of parent rocks, but in most situations it is far too slow to make up for the steady losses. Where organic matter in the soil is low, the use of composting and increasing certain types of soil micro-organisms may release some phosphorus that has been tied up in the soil, but this will eventually tail off. Thus any long-farmed area is likely to need additions, now or soon.

The advocates of composting and those misnamed biological fertilisers speak as though they believe their system actually “makes” plant nutrients, but the best they can do is release some—and some micro-organisms accelerate this process. Moreover there is often the opposite effect: a build-up of organic matter in the soil, as contrasted to litter at the surface, needs a supply of carbon, nitrogen, sulphur and phosphorus. Advocates of totally organic systems need to understand these aspects of soil chemistry above all else.

Thus in Africa one of the prime tasks is to establish supply chains of integrity, giving access to phosphorus from accumulated sources, either from bird or other activity. There are several huge deposits, one on the coast of Morocco near Agadir, and another near the Red Sea in Egypt. One key task may be to mobilise these for the good of Africa—rather than export it all.

Once we have decided to do this, what form should we use? Those associated with the organic movement rail against industrial, or manufactured, or chemical fertiliser. The problem is that raw rock phosphate—untreated ground rock so often favoured by the organic movement—has low solubility and availability and may take years to benefit most soils. It is difficult to see any alternative in Africa to treatment of the rock phosphate to increase availability and concentration—especially when freight costs are so important.

What are the alternatives? Near big cities there may be some way of getting phosphorus-rich materials. Africa is a bit like medieval Europe with its dunghills, where despite thorough collection and field application, there was still famine, which only ended with the advent of concentrated inorganic fertilisers.

The answer generally is to find deposits of the minerals needed and turn them into a form which will do the least harm to the ecosystem, set up a way of distributing it, and encourage careful plot testing. As the deposits may often derive from historic leaching and washing into oceans, into the marine food chain and accumulated as bird guano, turning this into fertiliser is then simply completing the cycle.

I fear Dr Ho, with her composting, advocates a delusion for the Ethiopians, which will only take them a short distance in the search for yield—and we need to educate journalists like Phillip Adams to be more searching. Dr Ho was also dangerously astray in generalising that there is enough food in those countries and that it is only a matter of redistribution. Sometimes there is; sometimes there isn’t and famine is widespread, not localised. There are at times (with decreasing frequency) food surpluses in some parts of the world, but for much of Africa the food has to grown more locally, and will need basically the same approaches to unit area production as we have in Australia.

On the question of producing and using new varieties, Dr Ho was also unhelpful to the poor farmers in developing countries. Nothing has been more devastating to small farmers—in many parts of the world—than putting a lot of human labour into a crop then sitting impotently by and watching it destroyed by rust or some insect pest. New races of rusts and other diseases develop all the time, and are distributed on the wind or other means. “Peasants” may be able to select for resistance, and slowly build up seed as we have in Australia. But departments of agriculture were formed to speed up and improve the process, with seed wheat farms in every region. This development of resistance may take three or four years, so surely it is better to shorten this time by using science and new technology—and save a lot of frustration and starvation.

There is no question of clinging to any fixed system. Our challenge is to continue the tradition of incorporating new things, not rushing into mechanisation, but simple things: new varieties of present crops, new lightweight steel hoes. On the question of the divide between organic farmers and others, we must agree that all farming must be concerned with minimising residues and environmental damage, and that all must be precise and knowing. I imagine that is what Patrick Francis, writing in the Australian Farm Journal last December in an article titled “Food Bowls Diminish as Environmental Policies Prosper”, means when he calls us to put organic farming on a scientific footing.

Though we acknowledge the contribution of organic production advocates in helping define some hoped-for outcomes—such as virtual absence of “nasties” in food, and minimal damage to soils—they remain so often imprecise and unknowing, normally resulting in lower yields per unit area, and in Africa especially per unit of effort by working women. Where yield really matters, as in most of Africa, we must have a blend of systems uninfluenced by ideology.

In the meantime it may be useful to ask a fairly brutal question. Over the generations of our caring and trying, who has been responsible for hunger, stunted children, even deaths, in these areas? The countries who do not increase cash aid? The trade negotiators who don’t free up trade? A university that accepts lower yields and hungry people? Aid agencies that will not handle fertilisers? Or scientists who have not adequately educated the public?

We have all had a hand in the suffering.

Dr David F. Smith AM works in the School of Agriculture and Food Systems, Melbourne School of Land and Environment, the University of Melbourne. He is a former Victorian Director General of Agriculture, and has had experience in many developing countries.