Editorial Africa's Food Crisis: What Is to Be Done?

1 Editorial Africa's Food Crisis: What is to be done? There is far more written about the nature, causes and effects of the agrarian crisis facing Africa than about possible solutions. Several contributions to this Issue attempt to shift the discussion to these matters of policy. Some critically review prescriptions that are on offer from the international agencies or in the literature: Bienefeld's polemic against neo-classical economics' answers to the general economic crisis that are shared by certain 'Marxists'; Gavin Williams' meticulous dismembering of what the World Bank prescribes for Nigeria's agriculture. One book review looks at the World Bank's view of Famine and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's master plan for African agriculture while another explores how far mechanisation can solve the problems of agriculture. Other articles offer critiques of actual policies in Somalia and Zimbabwe and present their own alternatives. Of course, even the growing mass of analyses of 'The Crisis' are often implicitly pointing to certain prognoses, for any specification of causes tends to simply 'appropriate' treatment. In this respect Bienefeld's contribution to a debate more general than that of the specifically agrarian crisis, starts at the right place in uncovering the shaky assumptions of the arguments that state intervention is the root of the problem and release of market forces the solution. He also challenges the factual evidence drawn from the experience of the Newly Industrialising Countries and the more specific and very selective African cases, on which this 'new orthodoxy' is premised. Although this is the main thrust of the piece, we anticipate, and hope, controversy will be provoked by his conclusion that both this establishment view and the cosy convergence with it of certain 'marxist' views about the progressive nature of capitalism in contemporary Africa have thrown aside some of the insights about medium term economic prospects and political tactics that dependency theory offers. His observation here that modes of argumentation on such issues are often couched in questionable and undialectical 'either/or propositions' is however well taken. One left perspective, in addition to the 'mechanistic Warrenite political economy' view, which Bienefeld also criticises is of the 'peasantism' of writers like Gavin Williams. How deserving our co-editor is of that label readers can judge from his piece on World Bank prescriptions for Nigerian agriculture. While clearly welcoming World Bank policies that relate exchange rates to the market and that rely on private rather than state marketing for crops (a conclusion whose 2 REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY generalisation to the rest of Africa would be challengeable on the basis of Zimbabwe's experience reviewed by Cliffe's article) Williams in other respects subjects the World Bank orthodoxy to a scorching examination. His detailed contextual critique of the World Bank's latest blueprint for agriculture shows that their emphasis on 'tradeable'crops and technical fixes is based on evidence that just cannot be sustained and arguments that are unconvincing. The importance of his contribution is not in querying the premises of the World Bank's orthodoxy, for many of us would not agree with their approach. Rather he questions the very technical competence of the work of their advisers even in their own terms, showing that the pronouncements of this body are in this instance not up to the kind of professional standards where they deserve to be considered as any kind of orthodoxy. We have invited the World Bank to respond to this examination. We shall see if they take up the intellectual challenge. It is certainly important that such purveyors of the 'New Orthodoxy' should not have the intellectual highground conceded to them by default. A further spelling out of what the major international agencies put forward for African agriculture and of the shortcomings of these treatments can be found in the Reviews section. The World Bank's discussion of 'Poverty & Hunger' and the FAO's much-vaunted blueprint for African agriculture for the next quarter of a century contain similarities and differences. The World Bank is more unambiguously an agency of advanced capitalist states and is a bank; it offers a more sophisticated analysis but in the end plumps for export-crop orientation. The FAO, on the other hand, reflecting the contradictions of the whole UN family, in a more uneven document pays some lip service to food security but when it turns to production contents itself, like the World Bank, with 'technical fix' proposals. Raikes's book, also reviewed in this issue, develops the critiques of the 'market only' emphasis and on the wrong kind of technical fix. Concentrating particularly on the impact of the European Community, the great value of his book is that he casts doubt on the appropriateness of the simple transfer of technology developed in quite different demographic and environmental conditions, and in terms of the nature and cost of labour and the scale and form of production units. A similar critique of too heavy an emphasis on an orthodox notion of 'tradeable crops' is one theme in Samatar's article on the agrarian crisis in a country that we rarely feature, Somalia. There, however, the mistake in policy was to emphasise new food crops and virtually outlaw production of kat, a very mild stimulant with a real (though informal) export potential. He sees this kind of error as symptomatic of a general tendency where 'undermining of peasant creativity to alleviate their (own) grievous material base, without.. .introducing genuinely reliable alternatives merely intensifies their vulnerability'. This is a conclusion which he also points out is true of the handling of the very real potential in arid areas for pastoralism and livestock production generally, so often ignored by national and international planners. The creativity, often ignored, of local producers, this time in the technical field, is also the theme of the Briefing on gari (cassava) processing in Nigeria. Cliffe exposes a similar blindness of conventional thinking in Zimbabwe about the place of livestock (as both product and means of production — as draught animals), the provision of land for grazing them and the organisation of their husbandry. More generally, the basis of the undoubted successes of Zimbabwe agriculture in the 1960s is explored, as are their very real limits geographically and in class terms. The need is argued for a second stage of agrarian reform which EDITORIAL 3 would include a further major transfer of land from large white settler farms to African smallholders and cooperatives. This would be done in a more flexible form than hitherto so as to integrate such 'resettlement' with a systematic but phased and democratically-controlled transformation of land tenure, land use and delivery systems in the smallholder sector. The emphasis here should ideally be on informal cooperation not state-managed 'Cooperatives', on community not state control of land use, on the widest spread of inputs and innovations to farmers, not concentration on the most productive. But as Raikes shows in his book, this kind of prescriptive list of policy suggestions lays itself open to the question of their Utopian character given present political and social realities. What then can be offered as any guidelines as to what can be done? If, as these kinds of contributions have argued, the orthodox antedotes to Africa's agrarian crisis run the risk of finishing off the poorest patients, can one say anything positive about an alternative formula of what should be done that is not too general and simplistic or politically Utopian? One step is to recognise where answers do not lie: to recognise that in agrarian policy Bienefeld's dictum of avoiding 'either/or' dichotomies holds. It is not a choice between export crops vs. food, or of free market vs. state agricultural boards, between transferring mechanisation or any other technology vs complete reliance on indigenous knowledge. The task of promoting food and agricultural production lies in flexible mixtures or syntheses between these stark alternatives chosen to fit local circumstances. But if the broader tasks of sustainable production and of meeting the needs of the poor are to be addressed and not just production growth, there is a need for creative thinking and public debate which aims at modifying and transforming farming systems and relations of production in line with the physical and social environment. In addition to the various contributions to our central theme, we also offer readers some Briefings on a range of topical and important political issues — from the machinations on southern Africa within political circles in the US, to the 1988 events in Burundi, and the struggles of Nigerian workers, plus some shorter items on issues that are likely to be crucial during 1989 — the prospects for peace in the Western Sahara, in southern Sudan and elsewhere in the Horn, and for independence in Namibia. The moves towards the resolution of conflicts in these parts of Africa are in part a by-product of detente between USA and USSR, and are of course welcome. But superpower detente may not automatically lead to solutions that will fully accord with the aspirations of the people of Namibia, Western Sahara or elsewhere. This issue, of the Africa between the Superpowers in a time of detente, is one to which we hope to return. Lionel Cliffe and Peter Lawrence Editors Note: In ROAPE no.42, the article 'Tanzania & the World Bank's Urban Shelter Project' was written by John Campbell not Horace Campbell. We apologise to them both for our error. 4 REVIEW OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY Zimbabwe's Agricultural 'Success' and Food Security in Southern Africa Lionel Cliffe Zimbabwe's track record is being touted as the latest 'miracle' that should be copied in promoting agricultural production.

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