Page 44 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 16

Community

The conceptual and practical vagueness of the concept allows everybody to make their own interpretations
and avoid thorny issues such as power imbalances, socio-economic impacts and gender inequities.

Indeed, if one looks at the dominant literature on CSA, most of it is extremely oriented to on-farm pro-
duction processes only, ignoring the tremendous emissions produced by the wider farm to fork industrial
food system. Very revealing in that context are the CSA country profiles that have been developed by the
CGIAR and the World Bank giving climate smart scorecards for different countries.[3] They rank Argen-
tina’s huge soybean plantations as super climate smart, applaud farmers in Africa who use improved seeds
and controlled chemical fertiliser and give them a high “smartness level”, but fail to analyse indigenous
farming practices and the threats they face. The World Bank’s 2016-2020 Climate Action Plan commits to
climate smart agriculture investment plans in at least 40 countries “with a focus on hybrid seeds and carbon
capture practices, high-efficiency/low-energy-use irrigation programs, livestock productivity, energy solu-
tions for agribusiness, and mainstreaming of risk management.”[4]

Stuck in such discourses and business plans, Climate Smart Agriculture is not going to take us in the direc-
tion we need. We need an approach based on agroecology that builds soil carbon and fertility, combined
with policies that support small scale farmers and their harvests, local markets and the end of food dump-
ing into Africa.

The case of dairy

Twenty dairy companies based in Europe, North America, Asia and New Zealand process 25% of all the
milk produced in the world and dominate the global trade in dairy products.[1] Together these companies
are responsible for more annual GHG emissions than Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy.[2]

Many of these companies are based in Europe, which produces more dairy than any country in the world
(about 30% of the global total). Over the past decade, instead of reducing dairy production in line with Eu-
rope’s commitments to reduce its bloated GHG emissions, European dairy companies have been ramping
up production. Since consumption in Europe is stagnating, an increasing share of this production is being
sent overseas, in the form of milk powder.

Africa has become a key dumping ground for Europe’s heavily subsidised, surplus milk powder, especially
in the form of fat-filled milk powder, which is skim milk powder that is reconstituted with cheap vegetable
oils like palm oil. Africa now accounts for over a third of Europe’s exports of fat-filled milk powder, and
this low-quality product has inundated Africa’s dairy markets, wreaking havoc on local dairies and dairy
farmers.[3]

In line with its climate commitments, Europe has to reduce its consumption and production of dairy
products (and find a way to do so that protects its small-scale dairy farmers and processors). It can’t merely
export its problem. And, in this way, Africa’s growing consumption of dairy, which is still well below the
global per capita average, can be supplied by African dairy farmers and small-scale processors.

44 | we tell the true afrikan story