| Where does Tanzania miss a point in agricultural interventions? |
| Thursday, 08 December 2011 12:12 |
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One
of the areas of misconception in agriculture in Tanzania is the failure
to recognise that agriculture is not a permanent economic activity. Agriculture is a transition occupation towards more stable occupations. As such good strategies put forward to develop the sector should aim at speeding up the process of people leaving the agricultural sector. Unfortunately most agricultural strategies in Tanzania and many other developing countries seem to aim at sustaining life in agriculture by making life bearable for the farming communities. Consider a multi billion project providing one or two chicken for a couple of families, or a goat, or construction of a small assembly market, or a small control dam to irrigate 15-20 acres, or just supplying tap water. These cannot bring any meaningful transformation of rural livelihoods. In short most agricultural interventions in Tanzania are not ambitious. The goals set can be easily achieved without any aggressiveness. I do not think if our partners in the west developed their countries by having such simple goals. The Netherlands wouldn’t have expanded their country by one-third by pushing sea water away. Europe wouldn’t have built the highways and construct water canals we see today. That’s why we benchmark with poor performers in our development plans and analysis. Learning from success stories, transforming agriculture should not take more than 20 years. For Tanzania it is now going to beyond 50 years. Europe after World War II was facing more or less similar problems Tanzania is facing; food shortage was a common problem. They decided to solve this problem once and for all. Within 15 years food shortage became a thing of the past. Another example is Mexico and India. In Mexico the Green Revolution started in 1943. By then Mexico was importing half its wheat; in 1956, the Green Revolution had made Mexico self-sufficient in wheat; by 1964, Mexico was already exporting half a million tons of wheat. Similarly, in India famine was once accepted as inevitable; in 1961 the country was on the brink of mass famine and began its own Green Revolution programs. By then rice yields were about 2 tons per hectare. By mid-1990s, the yields had risen to six tons per hectare and India became one of the world’s most successful rice producers, and is now a major rice exporter, shipping nearly 4.5 million tons in 2006. The second oversight is that agricultural interventions are not focussed. They try to address almost all the crops in the country. Fortunately or unfortunately, by virtue of its location (0 - 2,000 m above sea level), Tanzania can produce almost all types of crops under the sun, both temperate and tropical ones and can support livestock of almost all species. Tanzania can produce cabbage, carrot, paprika, coffee, cotton, vanilla, pepper, cardamom,oranges, maize, wheat, clove, etc. Instead of this being a blessing, it is turning out to be a curse. The interventions by government attempt to address all these, but resources are always meagre to meet that desire. As a result, interventions tend to spread thinly with no significant impact on the ground. Countries that are located in semi arid areas such Egypt and Israel have managed to transform their agriculture because they focus resources on a few crops that they can produce better using small amount of water at their disposal. Egypt, depending on River Nile alone, can produce and export surplus wheat and rice. Israel produces and export a variety of fruits by utilising water tapped from Galilee Sea. For that matter, intervention by the government need to be focussed on a few carefully selected crops. from http://thecitizen.co.tz/magazines/31-business-week/17742-where-does-tanzania-miss-a-point-in-agricultural-interventions.html |
