Global Policy Forum

By Linus Atarah

Innovative crops offer far more hope for the development of Africa than money aid, says an expert working on new crop projects in Africa.

"Everyone is talking about helping Africa, but the talk has no substance," Dr. Dov Pasternak, director of the International Programme on Arid Land Crops (IPALAC) told media representatives here. IPALAC is a project based in Niamey in Niger in Western Africa to promote judicious use of plants in desertification prone areas. The project is funded substantially by the Finnish government. For the last ten years major donors including the World Bank have neglected agriculture, Pasternak said. Agriculture has also fallen off the radar screen of national decision makers in Africa, he said.

"Poverty reduction cannot be solved by simply transferring large quantities of money," Pasternak said. "If you want to help Africa you have to support them do what they know best, and agriculture is what Africans know best simply because close to 80 percent of the people live in rural areas, and agriculture is the main occupation in the rural areas." IPALAC was founded by Israeli scientists in 1995 to help neighbouring Islamic countries with water and food management. The project has since expanded.

Israel is a world leader in arid land agriculture and a pioneer in technologies such as drip irrigation -- a system of conducting water directly to individual plants instead of watering the entire area. IPALAC has launched a project called 'Trees from the Holy Land' aimed at planting Mediterranean crops such as olives, carobs, figs, dates and pines, Pasternak told IPS. The name is a marketing device for the Christian farmers of the region, he said. Some agricultural technologies being applied in Sahelian Africa have the potential to be widely adopted in the rest of Africa within a few years, Pasternak said.

Among these is a drip irrigation system called the African Market Garden that requires water pressure of just one metre to irrigate 500 square metres of land. So far 1,500 units have been installed in eight countries in the Sahel region. Pasternak believes another 4,000 will soon be in use in other parts of Africa. The system costs about 50 dollars for an 80 square metre area, and 500 dollars for 500 square metres. World Vision, Care International and Catholic Relief Services are among the non- governmental organisations offering credit for these units. Because the technology produces high yields, Pasternak says farmers can pay back their debts in just one season.

The India-based International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is working alongside IPALAC on several projects. It is in the forefront of introducing innovative agricultural practices that hold tremendous promise of alleviating poverty in Africa, Pasternak said. ICRISAT is conducting research on the five local crops -- peanuts, chickpea, pigeonpea, sorghum and millet -- cultivated by mostly poor farmers in semi-arid areas.

ICRISAT director Dr. William D. Dar told media representatives that the rapid three percent population growth in the region can no longer support the traditional bush fallowing system. The only alternative is to intensify agriculture. Micro-dosing technology developed by ICRISAT in Niamey means that only 20 percent of normal fertiliser usage brings the same results, because it is applied directly underneath the crop instead of being spread across the whole field.

Such innovations have meant that within the last four years more than 100 species of drought-resistant crops and fruit trees have been propagated in the Sahel region, said Pasternak. "There has to be a second green revolution for Africa because Africa missed the first one," said Pasternak. The first, he said, came mainly in Asia region because the focus was on increasing yields in wheat and rice. Africa faces a different challenge because of its large areas plagued by long spells of drought or insufficient rainfall. The new technology meets just such a challenge.

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