Generalidades

1.4.4.1 The rise of new land use actors

This overview begins with a look at the new land users and institutions that are currently entering the stage of Sub-Saharan Africa. This is important, because competition for fertile land and water will not only take place within peasant societies, but also among peasant societies and other groups of land users. Of the latter, particularly three groups are of rising importance in Sub-Saharan Africa: foreign investors, national governments and the so-called medium-scale farmers (Jayne et al. 2014a).

The large-scale acquisition of land by foreign investors may affect a big proportion of Africa’s remaining arable land. But the most novel and revolutionary trend in African rural land use is the rapid rise of medium-scale commercial holdings, which in countries such as Ghana, Kenya and Zambia already control more land that both domestic and foreign large- scale holdings combined (Jayne et al. 2014a). In other countries, they already control more arable land than do smallholders (Sitko & Jayne 2014), leading to an increase of average farm sizes in official statistics and thus masking the ongoing decrease of smallholder farm-size (Jayne et al. 2014). Currently, these medium-scale farmers are predominantly African men, whose primary occupation lies in the non-farm sector and especially the government (Sitko & Jayne 2014) and that are often relatively well educated urbanites. A smaller group is comprised of relatively privileged rural-born men who could build on a relatively large initial land endowment of above five hectare. These medium-scale farmers provide a challenge for agricultural development insofar as they tend to regard agricultural land rather as a relatively secure investment opportunity for their financial capital, and not as a resource to be put into maximal production; thus, in many cases members of this group cultivate only a fraction of the land they acquired and thus contribute to the problem of land inequality and the underutilization of the scarce but potentially available land resource. Due to the high initial land endowment that seems to be a prerequisite for developing a holding to a medium-sized commercial farm, this trend furthermore provides little chance for assisting the average smallholder. In fact, Mellor (2014) predicts that medium-scale commercial farmers will come to dominate the growth of agricultural productivity in Africa and at the same their rise will facilitate the development of a class of landless or nearly landless rural laborers. First hints at this development can be observed in the land-abundant study site Cusseque, Angola (chapter 1.6.1). They imply that large-scale land use changes may occur here sooner and swifter than what may be expected when focusing only on local population density and land users.

1.4.4.2 Does smallholder farming in SSA have a future?

Even when disregarding the danger of falling into a poverty trap, the ongoing economic development of Africa and the rise of new actors of land use may lead to wonder whether smallholder agriculture will remain a dominant livelihood source over the long run. This study has argued along the lines of a growing body of literature (e.g. Barrett 2007, Holden & Otsuka 2014, Mellor 2014, Sitko & Jayne 2014), which is convinced that smallholder agriculture will persist and that it, in fact, presents the best chance of securing the food needs of Africa’s rising population.

A first argument for this assumption lies in the specific characteristics of urbanization in SSA. As has been shown before, African urbanization does currently not succeed in boosting formal employment and thus cannot offer an alternative lifestyle for a larger part of the rural population (Jayne et al. 2014). Instead, there are nowadays indications of slum-based poverty traps in urban Africa (UN 2010). The limited success of urbanization can also be deducted from the fact that urban households still regularly depend on farming as part of their livelihood strategy and seasonal migration from urban to rural areas during the growing season is a widespread phenomenon (Jayne et al. 2014). Therefore, it is unlikely that the urbanization of Africa will result in a significantly reduced importance of farming as a livelihood source (ibid.).

A second argument for the ongoing importance of smallholder agriculture is based on SSA’s changed potential for future economic development. In past centuries, Africa underwent a resource-based development that was strongly associated with the expansion of cultivated land (Barbier 2011). Today, it is unlikely that developing countries follow the same pathway (Barbier 2014). In fact, the rural poor are not anymore the main driver of land conversion in developing countries. Instead, it are rather commercial economic activities (which are encouraged by governmental policies and which are carried out by plantation owners, large- scale farmers, ranchers or mining operators) that drive this conversion (FAO 2006, DeFries et al. 2010). Both features lead to what Barbier (2014) describes as the dualistic frontier

economy of the marginal lands. In this dualistic economy, a traditional smallholder sector

continues to convert and use land for subsistence production, while a fully developed commercial sector converts and exploits available natural resources for producing various traded outputs (such as timber from plantations or cereals on agro-industrial enterprises). Although both sectors follow dramatically different economic activities and may even be spatially separated, they are linked by labour. This allows the commercial sector to rely upon a pool of unskilled surplus labour for its commercial frontier activities while peasants are able to derive a certain cash income from this additional livelihood option. The outcome of this dualistic process of frontier expansion is the coexistence of a highly developed and profitable commercial sector with a more traditional, relatively poor peasant sector which survives on marginal lands. The rise of a (subsidized) commercial sector within a frontier region may occur rapidly and result in an impressive economic boom, with growth in traded outputs and improved rural well-being (Barbier 2014). However, this boom is typically short-lived and as soon as the frontier resources have been fully exploited or converted, a certain degree of economic retrenchment will invariably occur and rural standards of living may drop to levels similar to levels of the pre-frontier economy (ibid.). Due to these boom-and-bust cycles, it is unlikely that a sustained economic developed can nowadays be achieved by a natural resource based economic development. Smallholders may benefit from the short-term economic boom, but in the end they may have to revert to subsistence agriculture for their survival.

These two findings hint at the persistence of peasant agriculture Africa as a main livelihood source of rural (and even urban) households in many regions of Sub-Saharan. In fact, Holden & Otsuka (2014) are convinced that smallholder farming will remain the main livelihood activity for a majority or rural households in Sub-Saharan Africa under a wide range of population densities. At the same time, the absolute number of agriculturally dependent

people is expected to grow in many regions of Sub-Saharan Africa for at least four decades (Headey & Jayne 2014). This is acerbated by the fact that the most rapid population growth is taking place in those countries that are already characterized by high population densities; scarcity of farmland is becoming an increasingly critical issue in these areas if other livelihood sources are limited, such as off-farm employment opportunities, are limited (Holden & Otsuka 2014). Furthermore, as Africa is only at the beginning of its demographic transition, the share of the young population will be high for the next several decades (Jayne et al. 2014b). The enduring lack of off-farm labour opportunities in urban centers will necessitate farming to provide employment for at least a third of Sub-Saharan Africa’s young population (Losch 2012).

It has been shown before that degradation or Agricultural Involution may be more likely to occur in contemporary smallholder communities in SSA than endogenous intensification. It remains unclear which conditions may trigger a change away from farm-based livelihoods. However, the findings presented here illustrate clearly that the fate of African smallholders is and will be tightly connected to the development of the continent as a whole - it is therefore crucial to conduct research towards the development of sustainable, intensified smallholder farming systems.

1.4.4.3 A smallholder-led development strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa

Recent research stresses that a smallholder-led approach to agricultural development may provide the best available means for a sustainable increase in food production (Holden & Otsuka 2014, Mellor 2014, Sitko & Jayne 2014). The reason for this lies in the widespread occurrence of smallholder agriculture as well as in the inverse relationship between size of holdings and land productivity (which was observed in Sub-Saharan Africa – in order to meet their food needs, peasants reacted to increasing land fragmentation and decreasing farm sizes via increasing productivity; Holden & Otsuka 2014). The peasant mode of farming seems i) to be able to effectively mitigate negative effects of population growth on farm structure and ii) to allow for intensification more efficiently than other mode of production. Sitko & Jayne (2014) therefore call for sustained investments in a smallholder-led development; they explicitly caution against focusing development efforts on the emergent group of medium- scale commercial farmers, which use (or rather under-utilize) a disproportional part of arable land, yet have only a limited employment effect on traditional smallholders. They doubt that aiding this group will contribute to a wide-spread improvement of rural livelihoods and an increase in agricultural productivity (ibid.).

Mellor (2014) expresses concerns about a development strategy which focuses on large-scale farmers. In the past, this may have achieved trickle-down effects which could have benefitted the rural poor, e.g. by reducing food prices due to increased productivity. Mellor (2014) argues that today, globalization is resulting in an ongoing transition from closed economies to open economies. In this situation, a rise in the agricultural productivity of a specific country will not anymore cause an automatic decrease in food prices for the rural poor and potential trickle-down effects are greatly reduced.

SSA’s scope for a successful and sustainable smallholder-led intensification is considerably lower than it was in Asia and increasing land constraints may easily cause Agricultural

Involution. When considering the lack of alternative off-farm income source, this presents a major obstacle for both poverty reduction and intensification (Headey & Jayne 2014). In fact, as Agricultural Involution appears as likely as Boserupian intensification, policies may be needed that nudge peasants towards sustainable intensification (ibid.). To achieve such a peasant-led development, a multi-sectoral policy approach is needed as well as more effective public support for smallholder agriculture (Headey & Jayne 2014; Jayne et al. 2014a). These approaches need to be aware that impoverishment processes and factors such as land scarcity & degradation, market access, the gap between potential and realized agricultural yields, seasonal agricultural labour demand and the availability as well as the effectiveness of fertilizer use (to name just a few) are highly interconnected and cannot be regarded separately; instead, they need to be considered in a more holistic way (see Jayne et al. 2014). It may be of highest importance to consider adaptation efforts to rising land constraints as part of every future agricultural development policy for Africa (Headey & Jayne 2014).

General recommendations for increasing the likelihood of a successful smallholder-based approach often include infrastructure investments and market development (e.g. Holden & Otsuka 2014), or increased access to water as well as investments in all-weather roads and rural electrification as well as the establishment of public research institutions (e.g. Mellor 2014). However, policies also need to take into consideration whether the respective peasant farming systems operate in land constrained or land abundant conditions, as this will dramatically alter intervention-avenues. For instance, given the same (low) market access, smallholders operating in a land-scarce environment are usually more likely to adopt labour- intensive practices than those operating in land-abundant conditions (where other, less labour intensive practices may ensure basic food needs). Another example relates to the resource endowment of smallholder households: poor rural households rely mainly on two major assets for their livelihoods, i.e. land and family labour (Jayne et al. 2014a). With decreasing land availability, labour becomes increasingly important to farm management. Thus, smallholders become more likely to undertake efforts to increase labour productivity. The success of a policy intervention towards labour-saving technologies may be more likely in land-scarce than land-abundant environments.

In land constrained conditions, especially where rural households have few livelihood alternatives to farming, a land concentration among domestic or foreign investors cannot be regarded as a pro-poor development policy. Under conditions of land abundancy, it may be argued that investments in smaller-scale commercial farms may have a strong positive effect on poverty reduction (Mellor 2014). In such an instance, improving the road network or facilitating the adoption of agricultural technologies which offer increased returns to

underutilized land may in the short-term benefit smallholders more than intensification (ibid.).

Furthermore, efforts towards sustainable intensification (i.e. raising land-productivity), are more likely to fail in these land-abundant areas.