Photo courtesy of World Bank Photo Collection via Flickr. A group of women farmers plow their field.
By Lily Benn ’24
Staff Writer
“Currently, we produce enough food to feed our entire planet, right? So why are so many people still hungry?”
This was the central question that Dr. Moses Kansanga highlighted in his lecture “Reimagining the Future of Food and Agriculture in Africa,” held on Feb. 28, 2024. The talk was part of the Geography Lecture Series at Mount Holyoke College and was sponsored by the Department of Geology and Geography.
Kansanga presented statistics on food insecurity throughout the world, explaining that, compared to every other continent, Africa’s population has the highest percentage of people who are moderately to severely food insecure.
According to Kansanga’s presentation, of all the statistical predictions of the rates of food insecurity throughout different countries and subregions of the world in the next 100 years, Africa was the only location projected to have a rise in the issue.
Kansanga reported that the technological development of modern food systems, such as lab-grown food, will not be able to sustain the population of Africa, nor do we have the supply mechanisms in the world to get this food to everyone.
According to CBC, lab-grown meat that can be created and grown without killing any animals is currently being developed, though will likely not be mass-produced for sale in the foreseeable future.
Kansanga explained that he has found in his research that there are currently two conflicting future food system strategies in Africa: intensive and ecological. Supporters of the intensive model believe that “We need to overhaul small agricultural systems in Africa and make African agriculture look like how it does in the Global North,” Kansanga explained, referencing other scholars.
The ecological food strategy emphasizes Indigenous culture and technologies. According to Kansanga, this strategy involves working with established agricultural systems rather than overhauling them for modern ones.
The New Green Revolution for Africa began to address food insecurity in Africa, Kansanga explained. This program allotted funds from donations from large benefactors to intensive agriculture projects throughout Africa, but he and his team found mixed reporting and reviews. He reported statistics, which included a rise in negative reviews over time.
Kansanga explained that he and his team conducted mainly qualitative research in Ghana, which has been a hotspot for New Green Revolution projects. Throughout his study, which mostly consists of interviews with civilians living in Ghana and experiencing the effects of the projects, he found an overwhelming number of negative opinions and experiences with the aforementioned projects that the New Green Revolution funded.
According to Kansanga, one interviewee told him, “When I eat food made with corn, I don't feel the same satisfaction as I used to when millet and sorghum were being produced,” remarking on how the intensive agriculture created by the New Green Revolution neglected indigenous African food items.
Kansanga reported that another factor negatively impacting community living in Ghana was social differentiation. Those who are ineligible for agricultural subsidies must instead resort to contract farming with little profit.
Other pitfalls that Kansanga mentioned were widespread environmental degradation through mechanized plowing and the alarming rate of shea tree removal — the only sector of agriculture women work in and have absolute control over in Ghana — to give way for intensive agriculture and the reinforcement of gendered labor burdens. New technologies directly substitute tasks traditionally performed by men in agriculture, leaving women to manually keep pace with this sudden increase in productivity.
Kansanga then covered an overview of agroecology, an ecology-focused agriculture strategy he supports as a food and agriculture infrastructure in Africa. He explained that agroecology is the most popular theory and practice in Africa today, leveraging socio-ecological teamwork to promote food system sustainability. The strategy combines the concepts of ecological sustainability and social justice.
One example Kansanga provided was an agroecological case study based in Malawi, a southern country that is severely food insecure: 39.7% of its agricultural land is degraded. Its government has prioritized intensification since the 90s, according to Kansanga.
Still, people living in Malawi have created a program called Malawi Farmer-to-Farmer Agroecology Project, or MAFFA, which advocates food system transformation through agroecology.
Malawi citizens have used various strategies to implement agroecology into their lives, like crop diversification. Kansanga also touched on intercropping, an agroecological strategy which utilizes a symbiotic relationship with microorganisms like nitrogen-fixing bacteria.
According to Kansanga community-focused activities, like recipe days and farmer-to-farmer teaching were also implemented through this model. They were designed to create “performative spaces” for dialogue, social justice and disrupting gendered cultural sentiments and building intercommunity learning strategies, Kansanga explained.
Kansanga ended his presentation by supplying the audience with both the potential negatives and positives of agroecology and had them decide for themselves what they think African countries should implement to improve food systems and fight food insecurity and hunger.
Many students asked Kansanga questions at the end of his talk, with one student inquiring about the future: “Are there any current plans to fund agroecological programs anywhere else in Africa?”
Kasanga responded positively, noting plans to build better infrastructure for millet — a native food plant — while also emphasizing the importance of continued support and funding for sustainable and agroecological programs in Africa.