Fertilizer use in African agriculture
Lessons learned and good practice guidelines
Authors: Michael Morris
Valerie A. Kelly
Ron J. Kopicki
Derek Byerlee
This book is written by a team of staff and consultant from the Africa region of World Bank with technical assists from U.K departmental for internal development
Africa is famous for its internal wars and poverty and many other things. One of the major problems in this area is the agricultural instability. Africa will start develop from one point in time when it has food sustainability. As we know the food sustainability is very tough to achieve by region. Now a day every field of human life is utilizing technological innovations to enhance its growth. Agricultural sector should utilize this aspect of technology and that by usage of fertilizers and pesticide. Here the authors deal with the fertilizers. They tried to conduct a deep study into the implementation of fertilizer in Africa.
I completely agree to the authors view of the inherent lack of fertility of many African soils as a major problem which has been and continues to be decreased by widespread nutrient mining, has led to expansion of the agricultural frontier and the opening up of less favourable soils for cultivation. This is a scenario for disaster over the long run, given the difficulty of restoring tropical soils to productive capacity. In many tropical soils, the restoration of organic matter—a key component in soil fertility—is a very long-term proposal, and in lateritic soils such as those found throughout large parts of Africa, restoration may even be impossible. Without nutrient replenishment, many African farmers risk taking their soil resource base beyond a point of no return. Mainly for this reason, there is widespread agreement that the improvements in soil fertility needed to boost agricultural productivity growth, improve food security, and raise rural incomes will require substantial increases in fertilizer use, in combination with accelerated adoption of improved land husbandry practices. As this problem exists there is only little doubt that we should try to use fertilizers in agricultural fields to meet it food sustainability, agricultural growth and poverty reduction.
The book is trying to help the people for better decision making in promoting fertilizers in Africa. Therefore policies and programmes that encourage fertilizer use in this region should be brought up. But these policies should make sure that it meets the concept of sustainability, technical efficiency and market friendly. But at the same time the use of fertilizer is not a kind of magic stick which gives you solutions for all of your problems and promoting fertilizers alone will have little effect on agricultural field. Many fertilizer promotion schemes implemented in Africa have succeeded in temporarily increasing use of fertilizer, but only in ways that have encouraged inefficient use of fertilizer, imposed heavy administrative and financial burdens on governments, and undermined the development of viable private sector–led fertilizer markets. Such policies and programs are undesirable because they cannot be sustained over the longer term without large inputs of financial support from the government that only few African countries can afford. The book supports the view of privatising and liberalizing of fertilizer sector markets in Africa. But in my point of view it is not desirable to completely privatise and liberalise the sector because it make the market unbalanced one and the cost control of fertilizer cannot be carried out and due to these reasons fertilizer industry may make a setback on whole of agriculture of the region. So a much detailed thinking and feasible solution should be brought up for the manufacturing and distribution of fertilizers.
One of the important lessons given from past experience in this region is there is a need of thinking how fertilizers policy will suit in to the development policies of each and every country in this region. Each and every country expects a certain percentage of its whole growth from agricultural sector. It is a clear idea that uses of fertilizer increase the growth rate. Once viewed mainly as a productivity-enhancing input for agriculture, today fertilizer is seen by many policy makers and politicians as a tool that can be used to achieve a range of broad development goals, including stimulating rapid economic growth, alleviating poverty, and erecting safety nets to protect the rural poor in times of crisis. Some of these expectations are frankly unrealistic. As part of these plays, many initiatives are taken to privatise and liberalise fertilizer production and distribution by the help of economical organisations around the world. But use of fertilizer continues to grow very slowly in most African countries. By the study of various organisations says that the reason is explained by two factors, supply side factors and demand side factors. Demand for fertilizer is often weak in Africa because incentives to use fertilizer are undermined by the low level and high variability of crop yields on the one hand and by the high level of fertilizer prices relative to crop prices on the other. The demand-depressing effects of unfavourable price incentives are aggravated by many other factors, including the general lack of market information about the availability and cost of fertilizer, the inability of many farmers to raise the resources needed to purchase fertilizer, and the lack of knowledge on the part of many farmers about how to use fertilizer efficiently. I feel the same way that authors do in n many African countries, private investment in fertilizer distribution is discouraged by an unfavourable business climate characterized by poorly defined rules of the game, weak regulatory enforcement, a proliferation of taxes and fees, cumbersome bureaucratic procedures, a general lack of security, and the widespread incidence of corruption. In the absence of an active private fertilizer industry, fertilizer marketing is left mainly in the hands of inefficient public agencies. More fundamentally—and regardless of whether it is being done by public agencies or private firms—fertilizer distribution is unprofitable in many parts of Africa because of the weak and dispersed nature of demand, the small market size, high transportation costs stemming from inadequate road and rail infrastructure, and the limited availability and high cost of financing.
To overcome the weak demand of fertilizers adoption of a long term perspective is required.
Public interventions can be used to help farmers, but they can also be used to help fertilizer importers and manufacturers, fertilizer distributors at the wholesale and retail levels, financial services providers, and other key actors on the supply side. More fundamentally, public interventions can involve not only direct budgetary payments designed to influence fertilizer prices in the short run but also a wide range of other measures that improve the profitability of fertilizer over the medium to long run by directly or indirectly influencing market prices, costs incurred, or benefits received by consumers and producers of fertilizer.
The major guidelines ideated by this group of authors are given here:
Policy reforms are needed to stimulate private investment in, and commercial financing of, the agricultural sector. Relevant options include trade policies that promote the free flow of goods, macroeconomic policies that facilitate access to foreign exchange, tax policies that do not place an undue tax burden on productive inputs, policies that promote competition by facilitating entry and exit of firms, and land tenure policies that increase farmers’ access to credit and encourage increased agricultural investment.
Institutional reforms are needed to ensure smoothly functioning commercial exchanges at all levels of the value chain. Areas needing particular attention often include development and implementation of quality controls, enactment and enforcement of contract law, prevention of excessive consolidation of market power, and creation of farmers’ cooperatives and professional organizations.
Investment in infrastructure is needed to reduce fertilizer costs, increase farmers’ share of output prices, and improve the reliability of service (both timeliness of delivery and maintenance of quality of the product).Improvement of the entire range of transportation infrastructure is fundamental to these objectives, including improvement of rural roads, major highways, railways, and ports.
Strengthening in agricultural research and extension services is needed to improve their responsiveness to the needs of farmers and to allow them to adapt with greater agility to the commercial realities of the fertilizer sector. Some rethinking about how these services are organized and funded may be necessary, including consideration of public-private partnerships. Also some realigning of the criteria used to develop fertilizer recommendations may be needed to arrive at a cost-effective balance between farmers’ need for location- and farm-specific recommendations and fertilizer suppliers’ need to limit product variety to realize economies of scale.
Capacity building is needed to improve the knowledge and skills of farmers and commercial actors. Training needs typically differ by cropping system, level of market development, and infrastructure. Key needs include basic literacy and numeracy, business management training, and knowledge of fertilizer products. The problem must be addressed by improved public education systems, as well as through training programs that target farmers’ and traders’ needs.
Improvements in the agricultural resource base are needed to help improve the quality of soil and water resources so as to increase crop responses to fertilizer and reduce the risk of crop loss. The potential public-good nature of some of these improvements suggests that governments, possibly in partnership with the private sector, might need to be involved in irrigation and water control and in soil conservation and erosion control.
This report does not present a detailed theoretical analysis of fertilizer supply-and-demand issues, nor does it provide guidance on the amounts of fertilizer that farmers in specific locations should apply to particular crops. Rather, it sketches out a conceptual framework to guide thinking about fertilizer policy and market development. The conceptual framework is
intended to be practical, empirical, and above all useful. In addition, the book tried to find out innovative strategic interventions to improve fertilizer market performance, and it summarizes lessons from past and current efforts to increase the efficiency and sustainability of fertilizer use.This book set his target on some specific readers. The authors think that their primary audience must be government policy analyst and decision makers who are responsible for designing and implementing policies to promote efficient and sustainable use of fertilizers. And the secondary readers government officials, development agency representatives and employees of development organizations, including nongovernmental organizations, involved in the designed implementation of projects to promote efficient and sustainable use of fertilizer. In addition, the report may be of interest to representatives from the agribusiness sector engaged in producing, importing, or distributing fertilizers.
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