The Need For AOFF Projects
With the breakdown of rural society and the decline of Southern Africa’s small farms AOFF’s mission becomes more critical everyday. The devastating decline we are witnessing is the result of unsustainable resource use and drought, dwindling farm productivity, increasing poverty, limited access to essential goods and services, the ravages of HIV/AIDS, and unstable domestic and agricultural markets. Traditional African farming knowledge –- how to produce food sustainably -- has been lost as black farmers, artificially confined to marginal lands now for generations, struggle with hardship, deprivation and inequitable conditions destabilized by socio-politcal strife and corruption.
Lack of conservation ethic deepens the plight of the small farmer – Marginal lands are typically short on soil tilth, vegetation, and rainfall. In much of Southern Africa, water is scare and contaminated when found. Yet the natural resources that exist are not used sustainably. Furthermore, wildlife is increasingly viewed as merely protein or bushmeat to sell, and with its disappearance, farmers forever lose ecosystem and ecotourism benefits. Corruption and inadequate wildlife protection means poaching is rife.
AIDS/HIV
disintegrates farm productivity and capacity to purchase food
– There is a strong relationship between HIV/AIDS and food insecurity.
The UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimates that 7 million
of Africa’s agricultural workers have died of AIDS and that 20 million
more may succumb by 2020. As farmers become ill, physical weakness leads
to declining capacity for physical labor and undermines productive capacity
and the area they cultivate shrinks, leading to declining crops yields.
Compounding this situation, AIDS/HIV also results in a generalized loss
of traditional knowledge of sustainable land and resource management practices
are not passed down through generations.
Food security is jeopardized further by the diversion of household resources to deal with people with aids (PWAs) – Rural families revert to subsistence agriculture (or no agriculture at all) and do not farm crops for cash, which results in a drop in household income and the ability to buy food. The demographic impact of HIV/AIDS in the region is serious: life expectancy has dropped significantly to between 40-50 years; child and adult mortality has risen while the number of orphans continues to rise with a consequent increase in dependency ratios. This has a direct impact on socio-economic development.
Disease and malnutrition occur in deadly cycle – Wasting disease and suppressed immune dysfunction result in malnutrition and greater susceptibility to contagious infectious diseases that affect others, like children, as well. Current diets often consist just of corn meal and infrequently meat, beans and vegetables. A more nutritious diet comprised of high vitamin, mineral, and protein foods is required to boost immune systems and combat deteriorating health that affects both physical and mental development. Currently, HIV/AIDS cripples the capacity of many villages to produce or obtain the food they need, feeding the cycle of malnutrition and disease that ends in death for many.
Women must gain skills to farm and run agro-enterprises – Rural women are increasingly responsible for all household resources. Then men often move to cities to secure employment and do not return. Women are more time-stressed than ever before and need to organize into grower groups to spread the work involved in food production. Given the additional financial burden that caring for family and community members with HIV/AIDS it is essential they shift to a farming system that does not require the purchase of inputs. Rural women also need to be trained to enhance their agro-processing and business skills to participate and increase incomes with participation in the added-value sector.
Conventional farming methods undermine natural resource sustainability – Although the transformation of soils and vegetation as a result of human use and climatic events is common to all ecosystems, the drylands, which have low and variable rainfall, are fragile. A number of areas are experiencing recurrent drought and crop failures. Starting out with these disadvantages, people in rural Southern Africa are conditioned to farm per Western standards of production, with off-farm inputs often imported at high cost, and water-intensive crop cultivars not a match for the low-rainfall climates or nutrition needs of local people. Furthermore, ranching with livestock and farming with chemicals have desertified, deforested, poisoned and stripped vegetation from the land. Ecologically, there are impacts of industrial-style farming on groundwater through pesticide and fertilizer runoff.
Farmers lack access to technical resources –
One of the most notable features of the organic sector in Africa is the
lack of integration, or even contact, between practitioners (whether in
NGOs or international donor programs) and the research community (whether
in national agricultural research institutes, universities, or the various
international research institutes located within Africa). Farmers and
other actors in the supply chain have to understand and adhere to organic
practices and Western quality standards. Separate, or at least segregated,
collection, storage and, if necessary, processing arrangements and facilities
need to be set up, as well as national and international transportation
and market outlets arranged.
Unstable and inaccessible markets disempower rural sector
– Farmers and entrepreneurs face numerous barriers that prevent
them from taking full advantage of marketing opportunities. Impoverished
women and men, working in their fields, households and small workshops,
depend for their livelihoods upon their own assets, skills and enterprise.
Usually, economic models and policies do not favor them; they have to
deal with trade distorting policies including high tariffs, quotas, specific
duties and barriers that discourage value-adding). They have little business
experience, no organization and lack information on technologies, markets,
and prices upon which to plan a market-oriented production system; and
receive little support in terms of technical advice, training, and credit.
CLICK
HERE TO SUPPORT AOFF & DONATE
"For the Philanthropist is one who desiring to maintain himself sustains others, and desiring to develop himself develops others ... "
Tzu Kung devoted disciple to Confucius c 551 - 479 B.C.
African Organic Farming Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization