Organic agriculture development strategies in Tunisia and Uganda: Lessons for African organics (original) (raw)
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Institutional Innovations For Organic Agriculture In Africa
From its roots, organic inspires science, and vice versa. Book of abstracts of the Science Forum at the organic world Congress 2021, September 8-10 2021 Rennes, France, 2021
What are the main drivers and bottlenecks that shape the development of the organic sector in Africa? Which factors can support an organic transition in Africa? In this paper, we hypothesize that in order to scale up organic agriculture, food system actors must engage not only in technological innovations in production and processing, but also in institutional innovations. A change in scale means here an increased geographical presence and organizational capacity, distributed and autonomous activities, and a strong movement to share experiences across Africa. By institutional innovations, we mean new rules of exchange for fair and inclusive markets, new technologies and practices to guarantee organic quality, and innovative public policies. Based on three national cases (Uganda, Tanzania, Morocco), we propose a methodology to explore the potential synergies among these three types of institutional innovations.
Four New Strategies to Grow the Organic Agriculture Sector
Agrofor International Journal, 2017
This paper presents four new strategies for growing the organic agriculture sector. Globally there are 51 million hectares of certified organic agriculture land and a further 39 million hectares of wild culture land. For the past two decades organic agriculture has been growing at 11.9% per annum, thereby doubling the size of the sector every six years. Nevertheless, despite ten decades of advocacy for organics, only 1.1% of the world's agricultural land is certified organic. From the outset, the strategy has been to advance the sector 'one farm at a time'. This strategy has left the organics sector well short of the vision of the pioneers of organics who saw organic farming as a universal solution and a practice suited for all farmers and all agriculture. Successful exemplars of marketing strategies of converting 'one consumer at a time' remain elusive. Recent years have seen the development of new strategies for growth of the organics sector. The strategy of 'one crop at a time' has proved successful for the Dominican Republic which now produces 55% of the world's certified organic bananas. The strategy of 'one state at a time' has seen the state of Sikkim (in India) declare itself as the first Indian organic state. Meanwhile, other Indian states are working towards all-organic status, including Mizoram, Goa, Rajasthan and Meghalaya. The strategy of 'one island at a time' has seen the Pacific islands of Cicia (in Fiji) and Abaiang (in Kiribati) commit to 100% organic farming. The strategy of 'one country at a time' sees Bhutan with the stated goal of being the world's first organic nation. These new strategies rely for success on the tripartite cooperation of government, community and commerce. In the meantime, as these new strategies play out, only 11 countries report that 10% or more of their agriculture land is organic, while 111 countries report that less than 1% of their land is certified organic, which reveals great potential for new growth strategies.
Factors influencing organic agriculture policies with a focus on developing countries
IFOAM 2000 Scientific Conference, Basel, Switzerland, 2000
Organic agriculture is frequently understood as a system of food production and consumption proper to environmentally-and health-conscious people of the developed world. The main drive of many developing countries to produce organic food and fibres is to tap market opportunities in developed nations.
African Organic Product Standards for the African Continent? Prospects and Limitations
Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal
Organic agriculture is a sustainable agricultural system with high environmental protection and animal welfare. In 2015, the world organic agriculture covered 50.9 million hectares with Oceania as the biggest regional producer with 22.8 million hectares and Africa as the least regional producer (1.7 million hectares). While organic agriculture may not be the only solution for African farming, it aligns with sustainable economic development and does not involve chemical inputs. Whereas there are different private standards, not all African countries have national organic standards and there are no pan-African organic standards. This paper discusses the need to address the proliferation of organic standards as a trade barrier through pan-African organic standards and inspire the development of harmonised domestic standards. It examines the prospects for pan-African organic standards, their limitations and makes recommendations for the making, the contents and implementation of such st...
Governance of global organic agro-food networks from Africa
2014
In this paper we examine the processes of initiation, construction and transformation of the organic cocoa network from Ghana. We address in particular how the state responded to and engaged with civil society actors in the organic cocoa network and to what extent state involvement reshaped state-business-civil society relations? While most of the literature argues that globalization and liberalization processes weakened the state's position as key player in the development and management of agro-food networks, the case of the (organic) cocoa sector in Ghana is often depicted as an exception because of the strong position the state still occupies in it. Employing a global commodity network perspective to analyze the Ghanaian organic cocoa case, this paper demonstrates that although the state is still a major player in the contemporary (organic) cocoa network some hybrid governance arrangements, involving state, transnational and national NGO-networks, and businesses, are emerging. The organic cocoa network also prompted a double process of 'dis-and re-embedding' at the local level that helped shape and strengthen the organic cocoa network.
Organic Agriculture and Food Security: The Story of Africa
Global food security problem has raise concerns on the best agricultural practices that will stand the test of time to replace the already failing conventional agriculture. Yields are reportedly decreasing despite the increasing use of imputes. In the quest of solving this problem, researches have revealed that organic agriculture can get the needed results in a more sustainable manner. Activists of organic agriculture are therefore of the view that it is the best option for food sustainability especially in developing worlds like Africa. Critics also think organic agriculture is a sort of luxurious lifestyle being champion by some few rich consumers at the expense of the vulnerable majority. It is therefore unclear whether organic agriculture is the answer to Africa’s food crisis. It was shown by literature that organic agriculture is the best model of agriculture for Africa in tackling the food needs of the continent. The superiority of organic agriculture over conventional agriculture was seen in its high yielding crops, high nutrient food produced, less energy consumption and less greenhouse gas produced during production, high drought and flood resistant crops with an overall positive impact on the ecosystem. However, challenges such as lack of national organic agriculture policies, low/no research in organic agriculture, high cost of organic certification and imputes, high illiteracy rate, and under developed markets in most African countries hampers widespread adoption of organic agriculture in Africa. Until these challenges are addressed by governments of African countries, organic agriculture cannot be the answer to Africa’s food crises.
Sustainability
The development of certified organic agriculture in Africa has been partly impeded by limited sound science-based information to tackle multifarious challenges facing the subsector along the value chains. Robust and well-articulated research strategies are key to driving this desired development. Therefore, a case study was carried out to appraise the science track of the last four African Organic Conferences (AOCs) with a view to identifying the direction of research activities in the continent across the regions and suggest areas presently being overlooked. Out of the 251 research papers evaluated, the majority were dealing with agronomy (41.4%) and socioeconomic (16.3%) aspects during the four editions of AOC. Research areas largely overlooked include organic aquaculture, policy issues, standards and certification, cross-disciplinary and participatory research methods, health and safety of organic products and research methodology. Papers presented at the AOCs were spread across ...
3. African Organic Conference (AOC), 2015
This publication, Achieving Social and Economic Development in Africa through Ecological and Organic Agricultural Alternatives, is a follow up to FAO's 2013 publication Organic Agriculture: African Experiences in Resilience and Sustainability. It follows firstly, because it reports on the progress made since the Lusaka Conference in 2012, but secondly, because it pushes forward our understanding of how ecological organic agriculture contribute not only to agricultural and ecosystem development, but also to social and economic developments. In Lagos, we learned that Ecological organic agriculture (EOA) "has a significant role to play in addressing the pressing problems of poverty, food insecurity, land degradation, market access, food safety and climate change in Africa. Ecological organic farming systems increase yields, are resilient to climate change effects and are cost-effective. Further, EOA is climate smart, preserves biodiversity, provides ecosystem services, and produces lower carbon emissions." Both of these lessons remain pertinent to our ability to meet the new Sustainable Development Goals to eliminate global hunger and malnutrition. This publication gathers together in one volume the plenary papers presented during the Third African Organic Conference that took place in Lagos, Nigeria from 5-9 October, 2015. The different chapters document the institutional support that is developing across Africa to ensure that research, markets, and policies can contribute to the positive developmental impact of ecological organic agriculture. Together, they provide information about the status of ongoing initiatives to develop continent wide policy supports, national approaches and local innovations. A core theme of the event was the value of organic trade globally and the particular importance of focusing attention towards deepening access to national, regional and global markets for ecological and organic products. The topics addressed in this volume reiterate the contribution of farmers, consumers, researchers, educators, public officials, civil servants, policy-makers, entrepreneurs, financiers and other promoters of ecological organic agriculture to reducing food insecurity and rural poverty, by making agriculture, forestry and fisheries more sustainable and productive, enabling the creation of sustainable food systems and increasing the overall resilience of farmers' livelihoods. Thus, FAO remains committed to promoting this type of work, and is in the process of placing ecological organic agriculture on the global agenda for agricultural development and policy through its series of International and Regional Symposia on Agroecology for Food Security and Nutrition in 2014-2015. In partnership with the main organizers of the conference [Association of Organic Agriculture Practitioners of Nigeria (NOAN), Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Nigeria, African Organic Network (AfrONet), African Union Commission and IFOAM Organics International] the FAO is pleased to keep the dialogue open on the importance of ecologic and organic agriculture in Africa and encourages all partners to continue to work towards our collective goals of social and economic development in Africa.
How is organic farming performing agronomically and economically in sub-Saharan Africa?
Global Environmental Change, 2021
The potential of organic agriculture and agroecological approaches for improving food security in Africa is a controversial topic in global discussions. While there is a number of meta-analyses on the environmental, agronomic and financial performance of organic farming, most of the underlying data stems from on-station field trials from temperate regions. Data from sub-Sahara Africa in particular, as well as detailed real-farm data is scarce. How organic farming is implemented in sub-Saharan Africa and how it performs in a smallholder context remains poorly understood. We applied a novel observational two-factorial research design, which allowed to evaluate the impacts of i) interventions for introducing organic agriculture and ii) specific organic management practices on 1,645 farms from five case studies in Ghana and Kenya, which we closely monitored for 24 months. Among the farmers who have been exposed to the interventions, we found heterogeneous adoption of organic agriculture principles, depending on the intervention. Furthermore, we found rather passive than active organic management among farmers. Most yields and gross margins under organic management remained at similar levels as the conventional values in four of the case studies. In one case study, however, coffee, maize and macadamia nut yields increased by 127-308% and farm-level gross margins over all analysed crops by 292%. Pooling our data across all case studies, we found significantly higher (+144%) farm-level gross margins on organically managed farms than on conventional farms. This indicates the potential of organic and agroecological approaches if implemented well. Based on our observations, we argue for improving the implementation of organic agriculture projects in settings with smallholder farmers. Limited capacities, lack of appropriate inputs and market access are major agronomic and institutional challenges to be addressed. Furthermore, we argue for supporting a differentiated debate about which types of organic farming are really desirable by classifying approaches to organic farming according to i) their intention to work organically and ii) the degree of following the organic principles. This will support the design and implementation of targeted policy interventions for stimulating sustainability of farming systems and rural development.