Issues of resource access and control: a comment

The series of droughts in Africa and associated famine since the 1970s and the increasing reliance of most African countries on imported food are seen by many people to be key indicators of a crisis in African agriculture. At the same time there is a substantial difference between the story told by the macro-indicators of the crisis-foreign trade and grain production statistics from the formal sector, global famine statistics and environmental data-and by reports from individual village/community studies. At the macro-level there is no sense of there being an ongoing process which might provide guidelines as to how to stem the crisis. The statistics suggest a picture of decreasing self-sufficiency in food at individual and community levels, increasing malnutrition and, presumably associated with this, rising mortality rates and a rapidly deteriorating resource base. Proposed solutions are frequently dramatic to match the picture-the establishment of river development authorities to 'develop' agricultural land along the Niger and Senegal river systems in West Africa, for instance. The Niger River Basin Development Authority is one parastatal mandated to do just that in Nigeria. Agricultural researchers reading the same statistics might advocate equally drastic solutions which at the same time are expected to produce quick results. Many solutions also involve the introduction of new species and breeds with maintenance requirements far beyond the existing resource base-exotic livestock with the potential to increase milk production almost beyond the capacity of traditional herders to milk the animals and certainly with feed requirements far beyond what is available in natural rangelands or improved rice varieties which can only be grown under irrigation with fertilisers and pesticides.' At the micro-level, while few pictures drawn suggest an idyllic rural setting untouched by the apparent chaos around, it is clear that in many areas we are looking at potential if not already viable agricultural production systems. Development specialists and researchers alike frequently respond by seeking more modest production increases of existing systems which may result in equally large increases in production if implemented by the majority of producers. In this case solutions are seen to lie at least partly within the ongoing process itself, and researchers are therefore concerned to understand indigenous technical knowledge, popularly referred to as ITK.2 While this comparison may be exaggerated, there is a clear dichotomy between the two development and research approaches. Both certainly exist, even though they appear to contradict each other, and each can be justified by looking at one or the other of the contrasting pictures. Neither view is necessarily correct. Both solutions frequently ignore the impact of externalities-war and international terms of trade-on rural production and distribution systems and the consequently often limited impact of any individual strategy. It could be argued that the dichotomy itself is an indicator of the crisis and it is clear that the situation is not fully understood.