B. Mezgebu
25 June 2008
Addis Ababa — One way some European countries curtailed redundant crop yields or grain mountains, used to be a form of subsidy called set-aside payment. Grain mountains, and the resulting falling prices, were avoided by paying farmers to lay part of their lands, about 8% of their holdings, idle. By all accounts it worked well for the farmers of those countries for decades. A host of poor nations could have made good use of the crops not produced, but that is not the way how the world markets work.
The set-aside payment policy was significant in one other way too. It played a vital and beneficial role in the conservation of the soil resources. The actual application not only rested the land and helped it recoup the required soil nutrients, but it also minimized soil erosion by water and wind in keeping the soil undisturbed.
Times have changed. Grain mountains are what the whole world needs right now. World food prices, as we very well know, are going up inexorably such that even those countries that in the past paid their farmers not to produce to their full extent, are being affected. Economically surging countries like China and India need more and more food and that better be in animal protein. The rising population in Africa and other continents need more food too, although the question of affording it is becoming critical by the day.
The set-aside policy might be an economic incongruity these days, but agricultural policy makers in the West have not totally abandoned the conservation of land. Subsidies will continue alright, although in a slightly different manner; basically more attuned to the well-being of the natural environment.
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the main instrument for subsides in the European Union countries, will continue to pay farmers but farmers have to agree to address the issue of conservation in their fields. In fact, the whole subsidy program might be conditional on farmers undertaking concrete conservation works on their fields. Farmers will be required to metaphorically and literally leave some space to birds, butterflies, small animals and the like.
One example of this concrete step that farmers in those countries will have to take is and which could be worth the while if it were practiced here too is to leave some space or field margins between their lands and rivers, canals and streams when ploughing their fields. The logic is that if you plough the land right to the edge of a gully, before too long you land becomes a gully too. Take a walk in the countryside and see the damage done.
Somebody by the name of Paul Roberts,( don't hesitate to call him a hopeless pessimist), has written a new book entitled, The End Of Food. In the book, the writer says this, in his own words, " .the world's self-correcting cycle of food overabundance and shortage--- has nearly reached its limit as a result of global warming, and agricultural pollution, among other factors. And while food is cheaper by historical standards than ever before, 900 million people are malnourished. The most dramatic proof that the modern food economy is failing catastrophically".
What is implied here is that the land's resilience to come back after a cycle (abundance or shortage) might have been exhausted. Food shortages might be something more enduring or more recurrent than what people were used to in the cycles of the past.
The English language weekly here, Capital Sunday June 22, 2008 said this on its pages, "Swiss- based WWF, known as the world Wide Fund for Nature announced that Ethiopia is using its natural resources beyond capacity and is using up more than it produces." What does it mean, "Using up more than it produces"? As I understand it, that simply means that the farming process may not be based on sustainability anymore. We just have to check on how much soil is gone, never to be seen again after every growing season. Ethiopia's resources are in overload.
So could environmental subsidy of some sort for Ethiopian farmers be justified? A policy package that say something to this effect," We well give all the assistance and even pay you cash money for your expenses if you go along and plant so many trees around your fields, put up such and such conservation measures in you lands. From here on conservation, rather than yield will qualify you for get national prizes. That way you children will be in safe hands."
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