The problems of smallholders’ poverty and food insecurity associated with community farming in Africa can be effectively managed through the strategy of “block farming”.
Community block farming is a kind of rural farming strategy where farmers in large contiguous blocks of land are provided with all that they require to farm successfully, ranging from land preparation to inputs, harvest and access to the market.
“African smallholder poverty and food insecurity are problems that are solvable with the efficient distribution of our wasted agricultural land put to use through block farming,” said Dimieari Von Kemedi, managing director, Alluvial Trade & Development Limited.
Kemedi describes this system as an inverted contract farming, where the farmers are provided with inputs and services on credit while they are under contract to make repayments by yielding a portion of their produce to the input providers as compensation for those inputs and services provided.
“With the strategy of block farming, one can expect profitability and efficient land use that will transform the continent’s ability to feed itself and export to the rest of the world,” Kemedi said at a conference in Washington, DC, on “Agricultural Investment, Landholders, and Food Security in Africa”, sharing experiences from working in different parts of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.
Alluvial is an innovative business that provides comprehensive support to smallholder farmers in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, in collaboration with Tata Group, the UK government-funded
Stakeholder Democracy Network and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), an NGO constituted by the World Bank and United Nations Development Programme.
Narrating his experience from Ogoja, northern Cross River in Nigeria, Kemedi noted that land there belongs either to families or communities, while permission for use of the land could be granted over a period.
To test out the full model, he said the company worked successfully with farmers in Aviara, Delta State.
The conference was aimed at bringing together for exchange of ideas three types of people who rarely have opportunity to meet each other – agricultural investors, advocates for Africa’s smallholder/landholding family farmers, and food security policymakers.
Kemedi noted that the talk about effective communal land management is an issue that has been prevalent in Africa simply due to the continent’s perception that communal land is an ancestral heritage, no matter who has been permitted to use them in the time being.
In Nigeria, for example, he noted the clash between farmers and herders in the middle belt region has left many dead, with properties destroyed and thousands of residents displaced, plummeting growth in the agricultural sector, which in turn hindered food sufficiency in the country.
A report by Amnesty International showed that the clash between farmers and herders has killed more than 3,600 people since 2016, most of them in 2018, Kemedi said.
He explained that the community block-farming model works because, unlike most out-grower programmes, the level of involvement in farm activities is very high.
“We control almost all of the factors of production. The land belongs to the community but it is under lease to us for reallocation to farmers who manage adjoining plots,” he said.
Kemedi explained that practising the block model on a small scale might not be profitable but noted that, on a much larger scale, the community block model tends to be very profitable.
“Our model has forced us to plan on a very large scale because doing this in 500 to 1,000 hectares is not profitable enough. It has to be done in tens of thousands of hectares for farmers to enjoy the benefits of scale and for the service provider to be profitable,” he said.
“To implement this model, we set up different business units – mechanisation with tractors to provide land preparation services, input supplies through relationships with agrochemical and fertiliser manufacturers, and market access for their produce,” Kemedi said.
MICHEAL ANI
