BANKERS expect smallholder farmers to repay loans at a particular interest. For economists, African smallholder farmers are supposed to master return on investment.
Nutritionists expect smallholder farmers to be food scientists just as agronomists and livestock specialists expect smallholder farmers to think and act like scientists. NGOs promoting farmer field schools see farmers as learners in a classroom. As if that is not enough, smallholder farmers are expected to produce food, store it, process it, transport it to the market and make a profit.
Wait a minute
What is everyone else doing if the smallholder farmer is expected to dominate the entire value chain?
There are so many examples showing how the elite burden smallholder farmers with enormous expectations, most of which have not been fully verified. Smallholder farmers are even expected to be statisticians, data scientists and to manufacture their own fertiliser, the list of expectations is endless. Yet the food system is so burdensome to be left to smallholder farmers with everybody else taking lighter duties.
When farmers have produced food, they have done their part. Other people should take over and work hard to preserve the food and transport it where it is needed.
Banks and micro finance institutions should not expect farmers to repay loans without full investment in understanding the entire food system. Young Africans who spend time online can make a difference if they invest their time and energy in mastering African food systems that have more than 100 diverse commodities waiting to be converted to entrepreneurship ecosystems.
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Whereas the elite think the formal economy should grow using bank loans, indigenous commerce expressed through African mass food markets reveals how internal investments and networks are fundamental to innovation and business growth.
An entrepreneur who runs out of capital can use relationships to rebuild and restock from other traders and farmers.
Some of the food system-related opportunities that are going begging in many African countries include agroecology, community-centred nutrition, food sovereignty and healthy eating. While these can be easily packaged and promoted from the demand side linked with territorial markets, one major weakness of transformative strategies in many African economies is top-down implementation which tends to impede local buy-in. Involving smallholder farmers, traders, women, youth, MSMEs and other actors who patronise African territorial markets presents opportunities to build consensus and galvanise attention around agroecology, African food systems, food sovereignty and sustainable development.
How the market is being redefined
More important than the physical structure of a market are soft issues like relationships which the elite often overlook. Many African countries are witnessing rapid decentralisation of business centres in ways that dismantle and redefine the notion of a growth point.
For instance, the fact that milling is an essential service, it has moved from growth points to households. While other services can be found at growth points, many other services are moving close to households two to three kilometres from the growth point. Some pensioners are setting up enterprises at their homesteads, for instance, drilling boreholes to produce abundant horticultural commodities at home.
That means instead of consumers buying vegetables at the market, they go straight to the homestead which has become a new farm-gate market. These emerging market trends are sparking the evolution of household enterprises within communities as opposed to the colonial notion of sole traders.
Transport costs can contribute to price differences in diverse commodities such that in distant areas, prices of commodities can be 30% more than in some areas. These factors should be considered by well-meaning interventions like cash transfers or food distribution to vulnerable communities.
The fact that communities are not just waiting for food aid or cash transfers but engaging in diverse survival strategies implies a fluid knowledge capturing framework should be in place to track activities as they happen. For instance, communities are already engaging several activities including use of manure without thinking about environmental consciousness.
The onus is on experts to package what communities or household enterprises are doing and have been doing for years.
The power of tangible products
In many African communities, mass markets are quietly building food basket for different climates and age groups but such trends are not monitored. Ideally, the Health ministry should be interested in what constitutes a food basket for particular communities and cities including distribution patterns per given time.
Where stunting surveys are done in rural areas, there is need to compare with cities in assessing food baskets and capacity of local people to access food. That is how stunting can inform decisions to repurpose resources from cash crops to nutritional crops.
While young African graduates are more interested in selling services, trends in the world show that it is those who produce and sell tangible products that are taken seriously by investors and consumers.
African food systems can be a source of diverse tangible food products and recipes. Whether consumers like the Japanese or not, they cannot ignore Japanese products like the Toyota vehicle and other products dominating the world.
Consumers may complain about the quality of Chinese products but those products are solving problems in tangible ways across the world.
Charles Dhewa is a proactive knowledge broker and management specialist.
