Peter Mcharo's two children digging their father’s maize field in Kibaigwa village, Morogoro Region, some 350km from Dar es Salaam. Mcharo is one of the farmers who have benefitted from Conservation Agriculture. Credit: Orton Kiishweko/IPS

By Orton Kiishweko
MOROGORO, Tanzania, May 3 2013 (IPS)

Smallholder farmer Peter Mcharo, from Morogoro Region in eastern Tanzania, has a reason to smile. His fields are full of green, healthy maize plants, he has richer soil and he spends less time farming now than he did two years ago.

Viewed as one of the major solutions to food insecurity and as a mechanism to adapt to climate change in Africa, conservation agriculture (CA) is giving Tanzanian smallholder farmers like Mcharo better harvests as the country faces an acute food shortage.

On Apr. 22, Minister of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives Christopher Chiza urged farmers to use CA, as 47 districts in this East African nation face a serious food shortage. This is despite a 12 percent surplus recorded during the 2011/2012 harvests.

The regions affected include, Kilimanjaro, Lindi, Tanga, Mtwara, Coast, Iringa, Kagera, Mwanza and Singida.

But Mcharo, who is from Kibaigwa village, told IPS: “In my five seasons of using the system, I have confirmed that it is better to use conservation agriculture as my colleagues in the village cooperative have made a larger profit per half hectare (compared to when we) cultivated a bigger piece of land.” Mcharo, and the 30 farmers in his village who belong to the Umoja (Unity in Swahili) cooperative, are all involved in CA.

They are among a number of farmers in the country who have benefited from a CA farming project since the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) introduced it here in 1998. The FAO-supported project, run by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives, has benefited some 4,000 smallholder farmers, in the central and northern regions of Morogoro, Kilosa, Mbeya, Arusha, Babati and Manyara.

According to a 2007 report written by Richard Shetto and Marietha Owenya in conjunction with the FAO and other partners titled “Conservation Agriculture as practiced in Tanzania – three case studies”, agriculture is the basis of the country’s economy. It accounts “for about half of both the gross domestic product and merchandise exports. Some 80 percent of the 34.5 million country population, especially those in rural and peri-urban areas, depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.”

Conservation agriculture is a resource-efficient crop production practice that involves minimum or even zero mechanical disturbance of the soil, keeping the soil covered at all times – either by a growing crop or a dead mulch of crop residues – and using diversified crop rotation. In addition, the use of pesticides is reduced or avoided and biological control is encouraged.

The emphasis is on simple, low-cost tools such as ox-drawn planters and rippers. A Brazilian invention, the Fitarelli no-till planter, is increasingly becoming a popular CA tool.

This farming season, Mcharo used a ripper – a tool that causes minimum disturbance to the soil. He did not even till the land or use fertilisers, but the harvest from his 1.2-hectare farm has increased from barely 20kgs of maize per half hectare two years ago, to 50kgs on the same amount of land during the last harvest in November 2012. Mcharo also inter-crops groundnuts with his maize.

“I could spend well over 125 dollars in preparing my small piece of land and purchasing fertiliser and seeds but I would harvest only 15kgs of maize per half hectare, and get 106 dollars for it,” Mcharo said. “Apart from cutting down production costs, I have found this technology time-saving and less rigorous.”

The practice has also improved his way of life.

Mcharo earned 250 dollars on his last harvest – almost three times what he made the previous year. The farmer, who has a family of nine, said he was able to re-roof his home with iron sheets, buy a power tiller and add another 1.2-hectares to his farmland where he will start growing rice next season.

Agricultural engineer Mark Lyimo, from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives, ran the initial phase of the implementation of CA and farm mechanisation for sustainable crop and livestock production.

He told IPS that conservation tillage – zero or minimum tillage – is one of the practices that has proved to combat soil degradation efficiently.

“This was necessary due to soil erosion and declining soil fertility that are threatening vast surfaces of agricultural lands in Africa and consequently the existence of farms and farming families,” he said.

“The technology focuses mainly on sustainable production of crops under intensive cultivation of land where two crops, a legume and a cereal, are inter-cropped twice a year,” Lyimo said. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives, maize and legumes and beans and groundnuts are usually intercropped together in the northern and central regions.

He added that more work was needed to demonstrate that the technology can work in order to change the mindset of farmers who, for many years, were taught that it is necessary to plough and maintain a weed-free field for better crop production.

Joseph Ndunguru, a researcher at the Mikocheni Agricultural Research Institute in Tanzania, said moist soils that remain undisturbed produce good yields for farmers throughout the year.

“Besides reduced production costs, a farmer will find this technology time saving and less rigorous,” he said.

CA is credited with eliminating power-intensive soil tillage and reducing labour required for crop production by more than 50 percent for small-scale farmers, according to Lenny Kasonga from the University of Dar es Salaam.

Damian Gabagambi from Tanzania’s Sokoine University of Agriculture told IPS that the practice is good for farmers as it protects soil from vulnerability to drought by reducing water requirements by up to 30 percent.

And Mcharo said that thanks to CA, his maize is greener and healthier.

The Great Ruaha River is completely dry for three months at a stretch. Credit: Thomas Kruchem/IPS

By Orton Kiishweko
DAR ES SALAAM, Jan 8 2013 (IPS)

Avelina Elias Mkenda, a 52-year-old small-scale farmer in the Mbarali district of Tanzania’s southwestern Mbeya region, can sense a change in her environment.

A resident of the Great Ruaha River basin, she has never had trouble watering her crops and livestock.

But over the last few years, the river has been delivering less and less of the precious resource; the grass that was once plentiful is now scarce, leaving cattle hungry, while production of coffee, the region’s prize crop, has plummeted.

Referred to as Tanzania’s “ecological backbone”, the Great Ruaha River originates in the Kipengere mountains and stretches roughly 84,000 kilometres, flowing through the wetlands of the Usangu Valley and the Ruaha National Park, eventually emptying into the Rufiji River.

Its basin catchment area waters a massive expanse of the Tanzanian countryside. Over a million small-scale farmers produce a significant portion of the country’s food on the lush soil in the Ruaha basin, which also provides 70 percent of Tanzania’s hydroelectric power, according to government sources.

But officials from the Rufiji Water Basin Office (RWBO), which administers the Ruaha basin, along with academics from Tanzania’s leading Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), are now warning that the river is under “alarming stress”.

“The river has been drying up for lengthy periods of three months (at a stretch), up from the short period of three weeks,” Damian Gabagambi, an agricultural economist at SUA, told IPS. He believes the crisis is largely due to an increasing number of farmers diverting the river for irrigation purposes.

“Prior to 1993 the river was never dry,” Andrew Temu, an SUA professor, told IPS, adding that the three-month-long dry spells began in 1999. In this time period, river basin inhabitants increased from three to six million people.

“With the increasing population, there is a corresponding demand for more water,” he said. Intensive grazing and deforestation have also contributed to the looming crisis.

Furthermore, a lack of proper irrigation infrastructure means that much of the water goes to waste, Gabagambi added.

RWBO Community Development Officer David Muginya told IPS that agricultural projects by both large and small-scale farmers have failed to honour the 2009 Water Resources Management Act, which obliges all water users to deploy proper infrastructure in order to avoid waste.

A 2012 University of Dar es Salaam report released last July, ‘Vulnerability of People’s Livelihoods to Water Resources Availability in Semi Arid Areas of Tanzania’, found that water wastage is also making the one million people dependent on the water resources downstream of the Great Ruaha River extremely vulnerable to an acute water shortage.

All the signs suggest that the current management of natural resources is unsustainable and could result in irreparable damage to the environment.

“The situation has been endangering the lives of millions of people living in south-central Tanzania, who are at risk of growing poorer if the environment is left in a dilapidated state,” Gabagambi warned. Experts believe the impact on agriculture and food production will extend far beyond the immediate vicinity of the river basin, affecting a huge portion of Tanzania’s 46 million people.

RWBO officials, meanwhile, are concerned about the future of the country’s hydroelectricity supply.

Who is to blame?

Large-scale agriculturalists in the region, who say they have plans to build adequate irrigation infrastructure, charge that smaller farmers access water channels illegally and should be made to pay for their water use.

Managing director of the Kilombero Sugar Company Limited, Don Carter Brown, told IPS that small-scale farmers “stress the water resources because they are all farming and illegally drawing water without paying for these rights.”

But small farmers like Mkenda, from the Mbarali district, say they have no choice.

With changing weather patterns, more intensive sun and now a shortage of river water, her coffee crop has suffered, resulting in even lower income. “We do not have the money to put (irrigation infrastructure) in place,” she lamented.

Ironically, it is these small farmers that will be most affected by the water shortage as they struggle to eke out a living beside a dying river.

Other experts like Bariki Kaale, an environmental and energy specialist with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), blame the problem on “mankind’s destruction of water sources”.

He said the Ruaha basin used to have a plentiful water supply until all the trees were felled.

His opinion is substantiated by the findings of a report submitted to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)-Tanzania on the causes of biodiversity loss in the Ruaha catchment area, which stated, “Locals (from the) Makete District believe tree plantations (especially various species of cypress and eucalyptus) are associated with the environmental degradation that is taking place in this area.

“Due to excessive tree felling for timber, some of the areas have been cleared and exposed to erosion agents. Tree felling for timber and logs has also contributed to widespread deforestation in the area leading to soil erosion and siltation in the rivers,” the report added.

“We now don’t have water for hydropower (and) we will have no water for drinking in the near future,” the U.N. specialist warned.

(END)

Tanzanian NGO Land Rights Research and Resources Institute said that of the 1,825 general land disputes reported in 2011, 1,095 involved powerful investors. Credit: Orton Kiishweko/IPS

By Orton Kiishweko
DAR ES SALAAM, Dec 19 2012 (IPS)

From January 2013, Tanzania will start restricting the size of land that single large-scale foreign and local investors can “lease” for agricultural use. The decision follows both local and international criticism that major investors are grabbing large chunks of land here, often displacing small-scale farmers and local communities.

The Permanent Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office Peniel Lyimo confirmed that the government would limit the amount of land leased to investors in this East African nation. Previously, there were no limits.

“For a large-scale investor who wants to invest in sugar, the ceiling has been put at 10,000 hectares. (The limit for) rice is 5,000 hectares. The ceiling for sugar is significantly higher due to the fact that it may also produce electric power,” Lyimo told IPS. Sugarcane fibre is used in the generation of electricity.

According to official documents, seen by IPS, from the Tanzania Investment Centre, a government agency set up to promote and facilitate investment: “Even within a seven-year period, an investor would not be able to use more than 10,000 hectares…”

The move will come as a relief to land rights organisations that have continually called for the government to curb the land grabs here.  

In 2008 the Tanzanian government launched the Kilimo Kwanza (Agriculture First) initiative in order to increase private sector investments in agriculture.

And when the World Economic Forum took place in Dar es Salaam in 2010, the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT), a multi-stakeholder partnership to rapidly develop the country’s agricultural potential, was formed and the government began to invite foreign companies to invest in crops like sugarcane, maize, rice and cassava.

However, civil society organisations like the Tanzanian NGO Land Rights Research and Resources Institute (LARRRI) and the Oakland Institute, an independent policy think tank in the United States, called on the government to review its investment policy to limit the amount of land given to foreign investors.

“Giving tens of thousands of hectares to large-scale investors was hurting small-scale farmers,” said LARRRI executive director Yefred Myenzi.

To date, he told IPS, the government has given 80,000 hectares of land to large-scale investors.

“Land conflicts pitting poor villagers against powerful investors now number more than 1,000 reported incidents. On average, there are five land disputes daily in the country and three of these involve powerful investors,” said Myenzi.

In Tanzania’s northern Loliondo district, which is known for its wildlife, much of the land has been leased out to international hunting concessions, which has resulted in the large-scale eviction of the local population – although the government refutes this.  A major U.S. energy company, AgriSol Energy, has also been accused of engaging in land grabs in Tanzania that would displace more than 160,000 Burundian refugees, according to a report by the Oakland Institute. The report states that AgriSol is benefiting from the forcible eviction of the refugees, many of whom are subsistence farmers, and leasing the land — as much as 800,000 acres — from the Tanzanian government for 25 cents per acre.

Myenzi said that of the 1,825 general land disputes reported in 2011, 1,095 involved powerful investors.

“The country has unbearable land (disputes). This calls for concrete remedial actions. Government actions currently focus on large-scale farming, but there should be a clear plan on how they can coexist with the small-scale farmers who are in the majority,” he said.

According to Tanzania’s Ministry for Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives, small-scale farmers produce over 90 percent of the country’s food.

Of Tanzania’s 94.5 million hectares, only half – 44 million hectares – is arable land. And according to the National Sample Census for Agriculture of 2002/2003, only 9.1 million hectares is under cultivation.

“Only a few own huge land resources (in Tanzania). What is happening now is that the well-to-do from within and outside the country are in a land-grabbing race,” Myenzi said.

Damian Gabagambi, an agricultural economist at Sokoine University of Agriculture, the largest agricultural university in Tanzania, said that major investors should provide for the inflow of technological solutions and the creation of markets for small-scale farmers.

“While we encourage large-scale investors in the agricultural sector, Tanzania must limit the amount of land they can acquire, so that they rely on small-holder farmers for most of their supplies. Small-scale traders are more important for the country’s food security,” Gabagambi told IPS.

Tanzania has an estimated population of 42 million people and 12,000 villages, but only 0.02 percent of its citizens have traditional land ownership titles.

Advocate Harold Sungusia from the Legal and Human Rights Centre told IPS that in order for the government to control conflicts with investors over land, it should create an equitable balance between the interests of its people and those of investors.

He said the role of state machinery such as laws, institutions and resources have changed from protecting the majority of smallholders interests in the 1970s and 1980s, to facilitating the acquisition of land from communities by a few elite and foreign companies.

“In Tanzania from 2001 to date, the land laws have been changed eight times, for whose interest?”

However, director general Aloyce Masanja of the Rufiji Basin Development Authority, a government organisation that manages the 183,000 square kilometre basin, issues water permits to both large-scale and smallholder farmers along the basin area, and mediates in conflicts, said the government largely depends on the private sector to make SAGCOT a success.

“Land is given out to a private investor after careful evaluation. The private sector can perform better… it has strong links with other areas of economic activities that are linked to agricultural development,” he told IPS.