Rural household sources of income, livelihoods strategies and institutional constraints in different commodity contexts - Institutional Constraints to Small Farmer Development in Southern Africa - page 26

10% in 2001. On the other hand, per capital food production in Asia and South America
has been going up, by between 14-15% in 1981 and by between 44-74% in the early 2000s
(Southgate et al. , 2007; Southgate, 2009). In both Asia and Latin America, agricultural
production per capita began its phenomenal growth from the mid-1970s, suggesting that
this was directly linked to the Green Revolution initiated in the 1960s. As observed by
Nweke et al. (2002) and Lele (2010), agricultural research requires long-term investments
and takes at least 10 years to begin to show results. These gains in Asia and Latin have been
sustained and have remained positive since then.
This situation has continued to be a source of serious concern among policy makers and
researchers. Coincidentally, during the same period, African governments began to cut back
on expenditures devoted to agricultural technology development and transfer. According
to a review conducted in the late 1990s to assess the impacts and lessons in agricultural
technology development and transfer in Africa, the spending on agricultural technology
development and transfer had actually declined by as much as 37% over the 20 year-period
between 1971 and 1991 (Oehmke et al. , 1997). Since up to one-third of the growth in
agricultural productivity can be explained by past investments in agricultural research
(Oehmke et al. , 1997), there is no question that some of the observed decline in agricultural
production per capita can be attributed to underinvestment in research and development.
This is therefore only one part of the picture. According to the brief posted by the African
Green Revolution network (Toenniessen et al. , 2008), the following may account for the
poor performance of African agriculture:
• population increase outstripping agricultural productivity;
• changes in consumption patterns;
• nature's curtailment;
• political neglect.
Echoing earlier opinions on this subject, notably Nweke (1978), USDA (1981), Eicher
(1982), and Eicher and Baker (1982), the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa
(AGRA) (Toenniessen et al. , 2008) has identified the root causes of rural poverty and
hunger in sub-Saharan Africa as revolving around eight key points, namely:
1. Persistent use of traditional varieties of crops in place of the improved varieties that have
been developed and introduced into the farming systems of these countries.
2. Deterioration of soil fertility due to poor soil management practices.
3. Fragmentation of land that results in plot sizes that are too small to support meaningful
economic empowerment.
4. Insufficient access to adequate water resources to support irrigated agriculture.
5. Excessive loss of crops and livestock due to post-production losses as a result of pest and
disease infestation.
6. Poor land management and administration procedures that lead to skewed distribution
of land.