African Agriculture - Great Potential

Agriculture in Africa has been essentially neglected giving useless excuses but the main cause of all deficiency is corruption and mal-intent of the leaders who just sit and watch Television and wait for aids from Europeans, Americans and now from Chinese and a few Japanese salesmen.

The commodities prices fluctuations have also shaken the African cash crop farmers. What Africa needs is good and efficient governments on local level and some investment and knowhow by outsiders. Africa can not only feed itself but it can be one of the larger agri produce exporters of the world.

A history of African Agricultural economy

Around sixty percent of African workers are employed by the agricultural sector with about three-fifths of African farmers being subsistence farmers. Subsistence farms provide a source of food and a relatively small income for the family, but generally fail to produce enough to make re-investment possible. Larger farms tend to grow cash crops such as coffee, cotton, cocoa, and rubber. These farms, normally operated by large corporations, cover tens of square kilometres and employ large numbers of labourers.

The situation whereby African nations export crops to the West while millions on the continent starve has been blamed on Western States including Japan, the European Union and the United States. These countries protect their own agricultural sectors with high import tariffs and offer subsidies to their farmers, which many contend leads the overproduction of such commodities as grain, cotton and milk. The result of this is that the global price of such products is continually reduced until Africans are unable to compete, except for cash crops that do not grow easily in a northern climate.

Due to these market forces, in Africa excess capacity is devoted to growing crops for export. Thus, when civil unrest or a bad harvest occurs, there is often very little food saved and many starve. Ironically, excess foodstuffs grown in developed nations are regularly destroyed, as it is not economically viable to transport it across the oceans to a market poor in capital. Although cash crops can expand a nation's wealth, there is often a risk that focusing on them rather than staples will lead to food shortages and hunger.