by Wandile Sihlobo | Oct 23, 2022 | Africa Focus
I don’t know much about Kenya’s new president, William Ruto, but I already like his approach to agriculture. In the first week of October Ruto’s administration lifted the country’s ban on the cultivation and importing of genetically modified (GM) white maize.
Ruto, a scientist with a PhD, made this change in response to growing food insecurity in Kenya. The country has struggled with drought in the recent past and remains a net importer of maize.
There will be an assessment of each GM trait by the Kenyan Biosafety Authority before actual imports and cultivation can occur. Assuming some of this scientific legwork has already been done, we could see imports start in the next few months.
Just as well. In the 2022/2023 season, Kenya needs to import a substantial volume of maize, estimated at about 700,000 tonnes. This is roughly unchanged from the previous season, which also posted poor domestic production.
In the 2021/2022 season several sub-Saharan African countries, including Zambia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and SA, had ample maize harvests. This made it easy for them to meet Kenya’s import needs, with Tanzania and Zambia leading the way.
However, this year things are different. Tanzania’s maize harvest is down roughly 16% year on year to 5.9-million tonnes due to sparse rainfall at the start of the season combined with armyworm infestations and reduced fertilizer usage in some regions because of prohibitively high prices.
The fall in production and firmer domestic consumption means Tanzania will have less maize to export. The numbers I have seen thus far point to available maize for export of just 100,000 tonnes. This is well below the previous season’s exports of 800,000 tonnes, which saved Kenya when the country was most in need of maize.
The country in the region with the most abundant supply of maize at present is SA, whose maize exports for the 2022/2023 season are forecast at 3.5-million tonnes. SA struggled to access the Kenyan market for many years because of its ban on imports of GM products. But Ruto’s move has changed all that, offering a new opportunity for SA exporters (provided the Kenyan Biosafety Authority gets its ducks in a row).
In the future, the liberalization of the Kenyan seed market should benefit its farmers in the same way as in SA, Brazil, and the US. In fact, the sentiment towards the cultivation and importation of GM crops is changing worldwide, partly because of the global food crisis and countries’ efforts to boost domestic production.
For example, at the beginning of June, the Chinese National Crop Variety Approval Committee released two standards that clear the path for cultivating GM crops. Now that this hurdle has been cleared, the commercialization of GM crops in China is a real possibility. The EU is also reviewing its regulations on cultivating and importing GM crops, an essential step in a region that has long had an anti-GM stance.
As I have pointed out in these pages before, SA was an early adopter of GM technologies. We began planting GM maize seeds in the 2001/2002 season. Before their introduction, average maize yields in SA were about 2.4 tonnes per hectare. This has increased to an average of 5.6 tonnes per hectare in the 2020/2021 production season.
Meanwhile, the sub-Saharan African maize yields remain low, averaging below 2 tonnes per hectare. While yields are also influenced by improved germplasm (enabled by non-GM biotechnology) and improved low and no-till production methods (facilitated through herbicide-tolerant GM technology), other benefits include labor savings and reduced insecticide use, as well as enhanced weed and pest control.
With Kenya struggling to meet its annual maize needs, using new technologies, GM seeds and other means should be an avenue to boost production in the future.
Follow me on Twitter (@WandileSihlobo). E-mail: wandile@agbiz.co.za
by Wandile Sihlobo | Apr 26, 2022 | Africa Focus
Written for and first appeared on The Conversation.
Maize production in some of the sub-Saharan African countries that dominated maize supplies during the 2021/22 marketing year is expected to be lower this coming season. This will bring about some changes in the sub continent’s maize trade in the 2022/23 marketing year, in particular creating complications for Kenya. In the 2021/22 season, Kenya was the largest maize importer in the region.
But Kenya has a longstanding policy against genetically engineered maize. This limits the role of South Africa, the sub-continent’s biggest maize producer and exporter, in meeting Kenya’s needs.
The expected lower production comes in a season when demand for maize from countries in sub-Saharan Africa that rely heavily on imports is expected to remain strong. It’s estimated that Kenya, for example, will need to import 700,000 tonnes of maize for 2022/23. Kenya’s maize production is expected to be marginally higher, but not enough to meet the country’s needs.
Kenya is typically one of the major maize importing countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The country’s expected 700,000 tonnes of maize imports account for 21% of the region’s expected maize imports of 3.4 million tonnes in 2021/22 season, according to data from the International Grains Council. Other typical maize importing countries include Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique and Namibia.
However, in the 2021/22 marketing year, several sub-Saharan African countries such as Zambia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe (an exceptional year from the usual importing position) and South Africa had ample maize harvest. This made it easy for them to meet Kenya’s import needs. Tanzania and Zambia were the leading maize suppliers to Kenya.
Tanzania, the biggest exporter in the region in the 2020/2021 season and Kenya’s traditional major maize supplier, is unlikely to play that role this season because its maize production is forecast to fall by 16% year-on-year to 5.9 million tonnes. This is due to drought at the start of the season, combined with armyworm infestations and reduced fertiliser usage in some regions because of prohibitively higher prices. The consequence of the fall in production and firmer domestic consumption means that the country could have less maize for export markets.
Preliminary estimates by the United States Department of Agriculture are that Tanzania’s maize exports could decline from 800,000 tonnes in the 2021/22 marketing year to 100,000 tonnes in the 2022/23 marketing year.
Such a drop would leave very little for Kenya’s maize needs, leaving Zambia and South Africa as major suppliers in the region.
Zambia’s expected maize production in the current season is still tentative, and it is unclear how much maize the country could have for exports. Zimbabwe, which had a large harvest in 2020/21 season, is also in an uncertain position about its 2021/22 maize harvest and ability to export. The incoming evidence suggest that some regions in the country have suffered crop failures.
South Africa could help and has the maize production capacity to do so. Given current output projections of 14.7 million tonnes, South Africa could have 3.2 million tons of maize for exports in the 2022/23 season – about 78% being yellow maize, and 22% white maize. But it plays a limited role in the Kenyan maize market.
The barriers
South Africa’s limited participation in the Kenyan maize market is arguably affected by regulations rather than just price and consumer preferences. Kenya continues to maintain an import ban on genetically engineered products.. This limits imports from South Africa where over 80% of maize production is genetically engineered.
There are indications that Kenya is changing its longstanding policy. Regulatory agencies have recently completed all trials for the approval of biotechnology maize. But any decision would still have to be approved by Kenya’s cabinet.
Even if Kenya were to adjust its policy, South Africa would not necessarily be the only maize supplier looking at expanding its market share in the country. The likes of the US and Brazil would also be at Kenya’s doorstep. The advantage of South Africa would be its substantial white maize production, which is the preferred staple grain of Kenyan consumers.
Outside the African continent, Mexico, the US and Argentina could be among the potential maize suppliers, as there are generally few white maize producing countries in the world.
Imbalances
The sub-Saharan African maize trade generally has some imbalances. South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia are the major maize producers and exporters in the region. For their part Kenya, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Mozambique are often the importers.
At the regional level, sub-Saharan Africa’s aggregate maize imports amount to an average of 3.4 million tonnes a year, according to data from the International Grains Council. This is both white and yellow maize, with most being white maize for human consumption.
Although intra-regional trade accounts for most of the consumption needs of import-reliant countries in the region, this is also supplemented by imports from countries outside of the continent such as Argentina, Canada and Mexico.
Overall, these maize market dynamics are worth monitoring, specifically from South Africa’s perspective, as they signal that the sub-Saharan maize demand in the 2022/23 marketing year could be much larger than the previous season. This could be the case, especially if Zambia’s maize production comes out lower than the 2021/22 season, which is likely if we use the South African maize production conditions as a barometer for the region. Such a potential increase in the region’s maize imports would have implications for prices.
Follow me on Twitter (@WandileSihlobo). E-mail: wandile@agbiz.co.za
by Wandile Sihlobo | Jan 11, 2022 | Africa Focus
I’ve co-authored a piece with agricultural economists Professor Edward Mabaya of Cornell University and Lulama Ndibongo Traub of Stellenbosch University on what it will take for Africa’s agrifood systems to thrive. It is published in The Conversation (no paywall).
You can read it by clicking here.
Follow me on Twitter (@WandileSihlobo). E-mail: wandile@agbiz.co.za
by Wandile Sihlobo | Sep 7, 2021 | Africa Focus
It’s a great honour to be part of the team of researchers that contributed to the 2021 Africa Agriculture Status Report – “A Decade of Action: Building Sustainable and Resilient Food Systems in Africa.”
The full report is available here.
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by Wandile Sihlobo | Aug 1, 2021 | Africa Focus
I’ve co-authored a piece on this subject with my old teacher and friend, Lulama Ndibongo Traub of Stellenbosch University and Thom Jayne of Michigan State University. It is published in The Conversation, and you can read it by clicking here (no paywall).
Follow me on Twitter (@WandileSihlobo). E-mail: wandile@agbiz.co.za
by Wandile Sihlobo | Jul 7, 2021 | Africa Focus
South African agribusinesses aiming to expand their operations into the rest of the continent in the coming years will face different environments compared to realities in South Africa. This includes the commonly cited factor of poor infrastructure, and also a much less talked about the problem, which is low levels of agricultural productivity. With respect to the latter, a recent study by agricultural economists Thomas Jayne and Pedro Sanchez argued that sub-Saharan Africa’s agricultural output growth in the recent past has been through area expansion rather than improvement in productivity or yield per hectare. A case in point is maize, which shows a striking difference in yield levels between South Africa and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. Consider maize yields between 2015 and 2020 in Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania, which averaged 2 tonnes per hectares for most of these countries with the exception of Zimbabwe, where the yields averaged one tonne per hectare over the observed period. By contrast, South Africa’s maize yields averaged 5 tonnes per hectare over the observed period.
One of the reasons for this difference in yield levels is the difference in input use between South Africa and most countries in the content. South Africa has an advanced and highly mechanized large scale commercial farming sector, which has ready access to fertilizers, improved seed varieties, agrochemicals. By contrast, most sub-Saharan African countries are dominated by micro, small and medium-scale farmers – a majority of whom are resource poor and lack access to fertilizers and hybrid seeds. Intensive maize production systems typically require relatively higher input costs, which, with a lack of access to credit and finance, limits small-scale farmers’ uptake of these technologies is limited. Another point to consider is that in countries such as Zimbabwe, smallholder farmers tend to limit the area planted to food crops in favour of tobacco and other lucrative crops in various seasons. Still, the point of lower productivity in food crops in sub-Saharan Africa remains. A 2019 study by McKinsey researchers made a similar point that Africa’s potential lies in improving the crop yields, and not land expansion, which has been the dominant practice in the recent past.
Improving productivity should not be the only focus for sustained improvement in Africa’s agriculture. When farmers have improved their productivity, there must be a place to safely store their maize crop and reach the markets to ensure a decent return on investment. This once again is a dominant feature of the South African agricultural sector, where the value chains are mature and well-integrated, with access to markets that operated within a liberalized environment. Meanwhile, in much of the sub-Saharan African countries, the agricultural value chains are fragmented, and maize markets are subject to ad-hoc government interventions that distort market signals. Poor storage infrastructure has seen high post-harvest losses (ranging anywhere between 17% and 30% of total national maize output). Under conditions of such systemic market flaws, improved yields would not make a significant impact on markets. To some extent, Zimbabwean farmers tend to substitute maize for tobacco in certain seasons because the latter has a well-functioning marketing system than maize.
In essence, sub-Saharan Africa’s agriculture sector remains underdeveloped and has various challenges. But these could also be viewed as opportunities for expansion by agribusinesses in countries that have fairly developed the agricultural sector, notwithstanding the infrastructure constraints already mentioned. If South African agribusiness intends to expand their activities beyond the border in the continent, their strategies and approaches has to be markedly different. Productivity improving techniques are one part of the solution, but this will need “ground-up” approach. This means working with farmers to understanding value chains region by region within each country because of their fragmentation. This will enable various agro-dealers to be closer to their customers – farmers – and also aware of the off-takers or large buyers of the produce so that farming could be sustainable.
Importantly, there is a need to lobby sub-Saharan African governments to prioritize network industries investments such as roads, electricity, water, and investment on agriculture infrastructure such as silos. With that said, this is unlikely in the near term because of fiscal constraints in a number of countries. Perhaps, a workable approach would be for African governments to be open to partnerships with private sector players. An important pre-requisite for creating public-private partnerships is strict adherence to the rule of law so that private sector firms can be assured that their investment is protected and that corruption is reduced. Notably, the African governments will also have to relax regulations that hinder the adoption of improved seed varieties which are crucial for productivity enhancement.
In sum, the sub-Saharan Africa region holds potential for expansion for South African agribusinesses, but the approach to doing business will have to adapt to country-specific practices at the start. The South African model can not be copied as is because of differences in farming and market structures, seed and food regulations, and network industries underdevelopment. This also means that the returns to investments in agriculture in the continent will likely be long term, and at the start, lower than what could be achieved in well-functioning agriculture markets. With that said, given the expected increase in population in the coming decade, rising urbanization, large, underutilised land in sub-Saharan Africa, and the increased connectedness through the African Continental Free Trade Area, collaboration and long-term investment in the continent will be key. The African governments should also improve infrastructure and land governance and the aforementioned regulatory matters to attract private sector investments into the content’s agricultural sector.
The article was written for and first published on News24/Fin24.
Follow me on Twitter (@WandileSihlobo). E-mail: wandile@agbiz.co.za
by Wandile Sihlobo | Jun 21, 2021 | Africa Focus
Last night I wrote a Twitter thread about Zimbabwe’s maize production recovery. The central message of it is that Zimbabwe will not be a basket case this year, thanks to an expansion in agricultural plantings and favourable rainfall.
In a recent report, the United States Department of Agriculture reaffirmed its view that Zimbabwe’s 2020/21 maize crop could amount to 2,7 million tonnes, almost 200% from the 907,628 tonnes produced in the previous season. Notably, this is the largest harvest since 1984/85. With Zimbabwe’s annual maize needs at roughly 2,0 million tonnes, there will be enough, and the country could even export if needs be, something that would be the first since 2001, when the country last exported maize.
These expectations of a good harvest last month prompted the Zimbabwean Agricultural Marketing Authority to stop issuing import permits for maize and maize meal to local grain millers.
As encouraging this news is – from a Zimbabwean perspective – a closer look into the data reveals essential insights. For example, Zimbabwe is poised to attain 2,7 million tonnes of maize harvest in a record area planting of 1,9 million hectares. This means that the yields are still meagre, estimated at 1,4 tonnes per hectare.
For comparison, if one drives across the borders of Zimbabwe into South Africa, the area plantings for maize in the same season is 2,8 million hectares. This is 47% larger than the area planted in Zimbabwe. Importantly, official estimates from South Africa suggest that maize production in the 2020/21 production year could amount to 16,2 million tonnes. This means the national average yield is roughly 5,8 tonnes per hectare — 307% higher than Zimbabwe’s average yield.
Of course, one of the important differentiators in yields between the two countries is the seed varieties that are used. As I have recently pointed out in an article on Project Syndicate, South Africa utilizes genetically engineered maize seeds (GE) while Zimbabwe uses non-genetically engineered seeds. This is a crucial matter contributing to yield differences, although not the only one.
For background, South Africa started planting GE maize seeds widely in the 2001-02 season. Prior to that, average maize yields were around 2.4 tonnes per hectare; in the 2019/20 production season, that figure was 5.9 tonnes per hectare. As a result, South Africa managed to produce nearly 20% of sub-Saharan Africa’s maize on only about 2.5 million hectares of land.
So, the point of this blog post is to say; Zimbabwe will be self-sufficient in maize this year, and that should be celebrated in a country that has plunged into starvation for so long. Still, Zimbabwe has a lot of work to improve its yields and some lessons for that lie across the border – in South Africa – for seeds and farming practices.
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by Wandile Sihlobo | Jun 7, 2021 | Africa Focus
The COVID-19 pandemic has put the global food system under sustained pressure and has triggered various policy responses to manage supply and demand.
I’ve co-authored a paper with Tinashe Kapuya and Gracelin Baskaran exploring this theme from a Sub-Saharan Africa perspective. The article is published by the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) and accessible by clicking here.
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