African farmers are farming blind with the cavernous hole in farmer knowledge leading to the continent’s agriculture sector being the least productive in the world.
A study of the knowledge gaps among smallholder farmers in Tanzania found that 98.7 per cent of them were unaware that there was such a thing as a beneficial insect that served as a natural enemy to pests on their farms. Closing these ‘knowledge gaps’ through learning better management practices, technology, and innovation could increase maize production by up to 75 per cent on the continent according to the World Bank.
In an examination of the challenges in farming knowledge sharing among farmers in Kenya, two-thirds of them cited challenges in gathering farmers for knowledge-sharing events (the main source of their agricultural information) because of their distances and busy schedules as being the major hindrance to the transfer of farming knowledge. Another 10.1 per cent said that the lack of a culture of knowledge sharing among farmers was the biggest drag to knowledge transfer.
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Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s after individual farmers gained property rights, intensive farming in Africa is barely two generations old unlike in most parts of the world. Whatever knowledge older farmers have is also often lost as few of them pass it down this generational knowledge to their sons or daughters.
“An over-emphasis on formal education means children spend almost no time learning how to farm from their parents,” wrote Joseph Karangathi the director of Maendeleo Endelevu Action Program– an NGO that uses participatory extension service to address the needs of family-run farms on FAO’s Family Farming Knowledge Platform.
Joseph who worked as a farmer extension officer for ten years adds that this lack of knowledge in agriculture sees most young Africans move to urban areas leaving the elderly to do the farming.
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The viability of family farms which make up most of the world’s agricultural land hinges on knowledge transfer across generations. While the agricultural knowledge of older farmers has been shown to help them produce more from their land than younger farmers, this only lasts until they are in their early 60’s (the median age of Kenya’s farmers) when a drastic loss of muscle and strength ultimately decreases their agricultural output.