Tracing the history of farming across Africa gives clues to … – MENAFN.COM

Tracing the history of farming across Africa gives clues to … – MENAFN.COM

(MENAFN - The Conversation) Agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa is under-performing, leaving 30% of people in the region food insecure. Food insecurity means that not all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs. Many reasons have been put forward for this state of affairs. These have ranged from the continent's biophysical environment to the ineptitude of its farmers. Several aspects of Africa's environment present challenges for its farmers. Rainfall patterns are extremely varied and unpredictable. African soils are geologically very old, and most are infertile and respond poorly to mineral fertilizer. Fertile soils are mainly found in the East African Rift Valley, and on the floodplains and deltas where silt is deposited, and require careful agricultural water management. But, based on our extensive involvement with agriculture and Africa for many years, we thought it would be useful to try to identify the underlying – and real – reasons for the under-performance. We did this by digging into the historical literature . This included material on the historical development of agricultural systems in Africa and changes of the economic drivers of production, among