The Food Security Conundrum of sub-Saharan Africa
By K. Giller. 2020
245 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract National food security in countries of sub-Saharan Africa requires an abundant supply of cheap and nutritious food for the burgeoning population. At the same time agriculture is a major contributor to the balance of payments for African economies. So agricultural production in Africa needs to increase strongly to meet the demands of both national and international markets. Yet fragmentation of land due to population pressure in rural areas, and the low prices farmers are paid for their produce, mean that in many rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa the farms are already too small to provide food security or a living income for the household. There is a high dependency on off-farm income and little incentive to intensify production. Thus rural households are often ‘reluctant’ farmers, lacking resources or the economic incentives to invest in agriculture. The conundrum that must be addressed is how to provide cheap, nutritious food to feed the growing urban and rural populations while creating incentives to stimulate increased agricultural production. This will require major transformations of the smallholder farming systems alongside creation of alternative employment.
Subfields: General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science, Soil Science
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In Sociology and Political Science
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Citations in the corpus
- Small farms and development in sub-Saharan Africa: Farming for food, for income or for lack of better options? (2021, background): “This situation, coined as the ‘food security conundrum’ (Giller, 2020), frustrates initiatives to support the sustainable intensification urgently needed (Gerard, 2020) to provide for both local and national food and income security.”
- The future of farming: Who will produce our food? (2021, background): “Approaches for investment in agriculture should be selected by the countries and smallholder farmers themselves to ensure that the local opportunities and constraints are addressed (Giller, 2020b).”