Jennifer Austin
2 May 2006
Kampala — A recent study names Uganda as one of six countries experiencing the worst farmland degradation in Africa. Nutrients are being depleted from the soil at an alarming rate as farmers struggle to feed the rapidly expanding population on a finite amount of land.
The study found that 75% of the farmland on the African continent is severely depleted, almost double the 40% that was depleted ten years ago.
The study, released by the International Fertilizer Development Center, a non-profit agricultural aid organisation, predicts that if this trend is not reversed, African farmers' productivity could fall by as much as 30 percent in the next 15 years, exacerbating a food shortage that already affects over 240 million Africans.
Yields on Africa's farmland are already less than one third the average yields in Asia and Latin America.
In the past, farmers would rotate crops through their fields and leave some unplanted for years at a time to allow the nutrients to naturally replenish themselves.
However, the need to feed more people with the same amount of land space has forced them to use the land continuously, depleting it of all its nutrients. Fertilisers can be used to replenish the nutrients, but they are too expensive for most African farmers to afford.
The study suggests that to reverse the trend of nutrient depletion and bring a green revolution to Africa, infrastructure improvements need to be made: roads need to be improved, farmers need access to credit so they can invest in fertilisers and farmers need to learn proper methods of crop rotation, fertiliser use and irrigation.
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