despite being from a country that has 4
million people and about 60 million
sheep up until a year ago and you pretty
much nothing about agriculture my work
is pretty much is just in Africa and
there’s what I’m going to talk to you
about could Africa be the world’s next
breadbasket so this is the question that
was going through my head when I as I
travel through the content for this
assignment format National Geographic
magazine the continent has about 62% of
the world’s remaining arable land yet
imports something like 20 billion worth
of 20 billion dollars worth of food
annually and the yields on the continent
are about a quarter of that of the US
yet there are there’s plenty of fertile
soil and a lot of available water so
it’s quite a concern that despite this
potential Africa still remains there are
the world’s most hungry continent a lot
of people believe that large-scale
farming in with foreign investment is
the solution to Africa’s food challenges
foreign investment in this and banana
plantations like this in Mozambique a
lot people believe that these kind of
farms hold the potential for feeding
Africa and potentially the world this
foreign-owned plan a banana plantation
has turned Mozambique from importer of
fruit to an exporter it also provides
thousands of jobs it was in fact the
third biggest employer in the country
not only that but these as foreign
investment has bought electricity and
roads to the area surrounding the farms
so this could potentially be a future
for the continent but not everyone
believes that large-scale foreign
investment is the way forward this is a
sim derby palm oil plantations in Libya
sym Derby is a Malaysian owned
multinational with interests all over
all over the world
palm oil is particularly interesting
because it’s about half of all the
supermarket foods that we consume but it
also causes large-scale environmental
damage landlocked Ethiopia has a greater
potential then then most other countries
in Africa there’s plenty of available
land and plenty of water and this
potential although having said that it
had a very sad history when it comes to
today issue of food security but as
potential has attracted farmers like
this Iranian farmer the locals like iris
particularly appreciate the farms coming
to her country she her mother became ill
she had to take on a on a job to support
her family despite only earning about a
dollar 30 a day it’s a well needed money
for her and for her community so this
farm is a is a success story but I’ve
said that in other parts of Ethiopia
where I went
it was the exception rather than the
rule I traveled to gambelli
in Western Ethiopia near the border with
Sudan and found that nine out of the ten
foreign farms that I visited were
failing poor infrastructure bad
management conflict with local people an
expensive rain costs all contributed
what’s worse though is that many local
people were displaced and the forest
that they relied on for their food had
been destroyed this girl is in the inner
farm owned by a large Indian group
called kuru torie and she’s picking
weeds from between the mace talks was
sure useful cooking this used to be a
forest with Easter hunt together I
followed her back to her village and was
soon as I arrived people
tell me stories about food shortages and
malnutrition so a lot of NGOs talk about
foreign investment as we heard for it as
land grabs and I think that this
definitely concerns over big foreign
companies coming to poor countries food
insecure countries growing food there
and then taking that back to their own
rich countries but there’s also a lot of
concerns about what happens for the
small holders when deals are done
between governments and investors as I
discovered this is a very sensitive
topic my career mostly focuses on human
rights issues and so I’m used to go into
countries where the government isn’t
they’re keen on having me there the
Ethiopian government were very happy for
us to come to their country to talk
about commercial farming but we’ve got
extremely upset when we wanted to find
out what the impacts were on local
people
another challenge during the story was
that the information that we were
getting from NGOs and the media and
governments and companies involved in
this issue often didn’t match what we
were seeing on the ground seems to be a
some kind of PR war the which made it
out was made it for us very well may be
very difficult I was trying to explain
to my editors here in Washington DC why
they weren’t going to begin the pictures
that we thought we’re going to get often
we found that these land grabs are on
paper only and that stories put out by
governments and by NGOs and the
companies involved were seem to be
conveniently suiting suiting their
agenda of talking about how successful
or how big the failures were it seems
that in these remote parts of the
continent there’s very few independent
voices
but not all foreign investments in
Africa in food is a land grab and not
all food produced in Africa by
foreigners taken out what by foreigners
are taken out of the country investment
comes in all shapes and sizes and what I
found is most of the food being produced
by foreigners was actually for local
markets I mentioned earlier that Africa
imports a lot of food so this is
actually really high demand for locally
produced food as well thousands of
Chinese have come to Zambia for the into
their mining and construction industry
and other Chinese have followed to
produce food now these aren’t you know
state sponsored these aren’t from big
companies or these are from lower
middle-class families in China who have
come to Africa to seek a better future
in the capital Lusaka the Chinese have
pretty much taken over the poultry
business which is great for the locals
because they get cheaper chickens but
then there are examples of Africans
doing it for themselves in a really
interesting example of this is in
Somaliland 50% of Somaliland GDP is made
up of exports of sheep and goats this is
a market in the capital hog Acer capital
of Somaliland they sell about about 3.5
million animals come through this market
every year most of those animals are
going to the Middle East
about 1.3 million sheep and goats are
exported in the period leading up to the
Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca I spent a few
days here on the on the coast here in a
port town called Berber these large
ships in the six weeks leading up to the
pilgrimage up to three or four of these
ships come a day and they can put about
85,000 sheep and goats
smells pretty bad but the reality of
agriculture in Africa looks more like
this scene from Tigre in northern
Ethiopia about 80% of agriculture on the
continent is smallholder farmers and for
a lot of them up there their farming
practices haven’t changed for hundreds
of years
Tigre was at the epicenter of the famine
in the 80s and these farmers suffered
tremendously and even today up to 3
million Ethiopians still rely on food
aid to survive
but cheap fertilizers and some
government assistance is helping to
improve food security for all these
people
this is we’ll get at this fight and it
gets him there sir they farm wheat
barley and beans in the mountain or tea
grade they don’t produce enough food to
feed their family of nine and we’ll get
there on the right has to take on a day
laboring job occasionally to supplement
their income but he says that life is
vastly improved from in 80’s when he
says it was hardly any food around at
all as beautiful as the geography and
the people are of Tigre they’re hardly a
positive advertisement for smallholder
farmers so should we forget about
smallholder farming when it comes to
talking about the feeding Africa and
feeding the world I think not
non-governmental organizations like the
one acre fund who are working in Rwanda
and other parts of East Africa approving
that smallholders can make a real
contribution with some basic training
and some small loans which allow these
farmers to get access to some
fertilizers these guys are able to quite
often double their yield in the first
year of the program
this is 36 year old Mary Mikoto Kaka and
this is a quote I’m going to read you
from Mary before joining one acre
I farmed only for food for my family and
it would only last a few days I then
joined the program for my first harvest
I was able to purchase two packs of
cement the second season I was able to
buy a goat and now I have nine of them
and I plan to buy clothes for my
children this next season so Mary is
growing enough food for herself and for
her family but she’s also producing the
surplus to be able to buy clothes and
cementum and animals so it’s only it’s
only a small thing right but for these
people she’s you know she’s able to feed
herself she doubled feed her family and
I think that in a small way she is able
to feed the world the answer to Africa’s
food challenges are complex I mean here
we can see a commercial farm next to
smallholders and perhaps this is a model
for the future not just commercial
farming not just smallholders but a a
combination of the two but Africa is a
incredibly diverse continent and what is
right for Mozambique may not be right
for Rwanda or for Ethiopia or for
Somalia
there are enormous challenges but there
are plenty of examples of Agriculture
working on the continent there are many
examples or that illustrate the
potential of Africans themselves Africa
is a diverse continent of nearly a
billion people half of them rely on
agriculture for their livelihoods it’s
in their interest and ours that the
resources and expertise be made
available to make them more productive
and perhaps these farmers can make their
continent the world’s next red basket
thank you
million people and about 60 million
sheep up until a year ago and you pretty
much nothing about agriculture my work
is pretty much is just in Africa and
there’s what I’m going to talk to you
about could Africa be the world’s next
breadbasket so this is the question that
was going through my head when I as I
travel through the content for this
assignment format National Geographic
magazine the continent has about 62% of
the world’s remaining arable land yet
imports something like 20 billion worth
of 20 billion dollars worth of food
annually and the yields on the continent
are about a quarter of that of the US
yet there are there’s plenty of fertile
soil and a lot of available water so
it’s quite a concern that despite this
potential Africa still remains there are
the world’s most hungry continent a lot
of people believe that large-scale
farming in with foreign investment is
the solution to Africa’s food challenges
foreign investment in this and banana
plantations like this in Mozambique a
lot people believe that these kind of
farms hold the potential for feeding
Africa and potentially the world this
foreign-owned plan a banana plantation
has turned Mozambique from importer of
fruit to an exporter it also provides
thousands of jobs it was in fact the
third biggest employer in the country
not only that but these as foreign
investment has bought electricity and
roads to the area surrounding the farms
so this could potentially be a future
for the continent but not everyone
believes that large-scale foreign
investment is the way forward this is a
sim derby palm oil plantations in Libya
sym Derby is a Malaysian owned
multinational with interests all over
all over the world
palm oil is particularly interesting
because it’s about half of all the
supermarket foods that we consume but it
also causes large-scale environmental
damage landlocked Ethiopia has a greater
potential then then most other countries
in Africa there’s plenty of available
land and plenty of water and this
potential although having said that it
had a very sad history when it comes to
today issue of food security but as
potential has attracted farmers like
this Iranian farmer the locals like iris
particularly appreciate the farms coming
to her country she her mother became ill
she had to take on a on a job to support
her family despite only earning about a
dollar 30 a day it’s a well needed money
for her and for her community so this
farm is a is a success story but I’ve
said that in other parts of Ethiopia
where I went
it was the exception rather than the
rule I traveled to gambelli
in Western Ethiopia near the border with
Sudan and found that nine out of the ten
foreign farms that I visited were
failing poor infrastructure bad
management conflict with local people an
expensive rain costs all contributed
what’s worse though is that many local
people were displaced and the forest
that they relied on for their food had
been destroyed this girl is in the inner
farm owned by a large Indian group
called kuru torie and she’s picking
weeds from between the mace talks was
sure useful cooking this used to be a
forest with Easter hunt together I
followed her back to her village and was
soon as I arrived people
tell me stories about food shortages and
malnutrition so a lot of NGOs talk about
foreign investment as we heard for it as
land grabs and I think that this
definitely concerns over big foreign
companies coming to poor countries food
insecure countries growing food there
and then taking that back to their own
rich countries but there’s also a lot of
concerns about what happens for the
small holders when deals are done
between governments and investors as I
discovered this is a very sensitive
topic my career mostly focuses on human
rights issues and so I’m used to go into
countries where the government isn’t
they’re keen on having me there the
Ethiopian government were very happy for
us to come to their country to talk
about commercial farming but we’ve got
extremely upset when we wanted to find
out what the impacts were on local
people
another challenge during the story was
that the information that we were
getting from NGOs and the media and
governments and companies involved in
this issue often didn’t match what we
were seeing on the ground seems to be a
some kind of PR war the which made it
out was made it for us very well may be
very difficult I was trying to explain
to my editors here in Washington DC why
they weren’t going to begin the pictures
that we thought we’re going to get often
we found that these land grabs are on
paper only and that stories put out by
governments and by NGOs and the
companies involved were seem to be
conveniently suiting suiting their
agenda of talking about how successful
or how big the failures were it seems
that in these remote parts of the
continent there’s very few independent
voices
but not all foreign investments in
Africa in food is a land grab and not
all food produced in Africa by
foreigners taken out what by foreigners
are taken out of the country investment
comes in all shapes and sizes and what I
found is most of the food being produced
by foreigners was actually for local
markets I mentioned earlier that Africa
imports a lot of food so this is
actually really high demand for locally
produced food as well thousands of
Chinese have come to Zambia for the into
their mining and construction industry
and other Chinese have followed to
produce food now these aren’t you know
state sponsored these aren’t from big
companies or these are from lower
middle-class families in China who have
come to Africa to seek a better future
in the capital Lusaka the Chinese have
pretty much taken over the poultry
business which is great for the locals
because they get cheaper chickens but
then there are examples of Africans
doing it for themselves in a really
interesting example of this is in
Somaliland 50% of Somaliland GDP is made
up of exports of sheep and goats this is
a market in the capital hog Acer capital
of Somaliland they sell about about 3.5
million animals come through this market
every year most of those animals are
going to the Middle East
about 1.3 million sheep and goats are
exported in the period leading up to the
Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca I spent a few
days here on the on the coast here in a
port town called Berber these large
ships in the six weeks leading up to the
pilgrimage up to three or four of these
ships come a day and they can put about
85,000 sheep and goats
smells pretty bad but the reality of
agriculture in Africa looks more like
this scene from Tigre in northern
Ethiopia about 80% of agriculture on the
continent is smallholder farmers and for
a lot of them up there their farming
practices haven’t changed for hundreds
of years
Tigre was at the epicenter of the famine
in the 80s and these farmers suffered
tremendously and even today up to 3
million Ethiopians still rely on food
aid to survive
but cheap fertilizers and some
government assistance is helping to
improve food security for all these
people
this is we’ll get at this fight and it
gets him there sir they farm wheat
barley and beans in the mountain or tea
grade they don’t produce enough food to
feed their family of nine and we’ll get
there on the right has to take on a day
laboring job occasionally to supplement
their income but he says that life is
vastly improved from in 80’s when he
says it was hardly any food around at
all as beautiful as the geography and
the people are of Tigre they’re hardly a
positive advertisement for smallholder
farmers so should we forget about
smallholder farming when it comes to
talking about the feeding Africa and
feeding the world I think not
non-governmental organizations like the
one acre fund who are working in Rwanda
and other parts of East Africa approving
that smallholders can make a real
contribution with some basic training
and some small loans which allow these
farmers to get access to some
fertilizers these guys are able to quite
often double their yield in the first
year of the program
this is 36 year old Mary Mikoto Kaka and
this is a quote I’m going to read you
from Mary before joining one acre
I farmed only for food for my family and
it would only last a few days I then
joined the program for my first harvest
I was able to purchase two packs of
cement the second season I was able to
buy a goat and now I have nine of them
and I plan to buy clothes for my
children this next season so Mary is
growing enough food for herself and for
her family but she’s also producing the
surplus to be able to buy clothes and
cementum and animals so it’s only it’s
only a small thing right but for these
people she’s you know she’s able to feed
herself she doubled feed her family and
I think that in a small way she is able
to feed the world the answer to Africa’s
food challenges are complex I mean here
we can see a commercial farm next to
smallholders and perhaps this is a model
for the future not just commercial
farming not just smallholders but a a
combination of the two but Africa is a
incredibly diverse continent and what is
right for Mozambique may not be right
for Rwanda or for Ethiopia or for
Somalia
there are enormous challenges but there
are plenty of examples of Agriculture
working on the continent there are many
examples or that illustrate the
potential of Africans themselves Africa
is a diverse continent of nearly a
billion people half of them rely on
agriculture for their livelihoods it’s
in their interest and ours that the
resources and expertise be made
available to make them more productive
and perhaps these farmers can make their
continent the world’s next red basket
thank you
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