Angolas oil wealth no benefit to farmers
HUAMBO, 22 April 2010 (IRIN): Joaquina Chitala Jarviso, 40, a small-scale farmer in Huambo, in the central highlands of oil-rich Angola, is running out of options.
Despite careful management and clever innovation, the high cost of fertilizer and the acidity (syreholdighed) of the soil may defeat her efforts to get a good crop in the next planting season.
So far she has achieved relative success by using only a quarter of the required fertilizer, combined with crop rotation techniques, to produce a rain-fed harvest of Irish potatoes and maize on the same ground in one season – courtesy of a donation of fertilizer from an NGO that has since left the country.
The shelves of the informal shop established by a womens coope-rative she belongs to in Kalanga, about 50 km west of the city of Huambo, are barren. The shop was part of the NGO initiative that used the shop’s profits to offset the crippling costs of fertilizer.
– The need is for chemical fertilizer, but it is very expensive – it costs about 70 US dolllar for a 50 kg bag, and I need four bags of fertilizer for one hectare each season. Without fertilizer, plants grow – but they don’t grow well, she noted.
The government has claimed that it provides free seeds and fertilizer benefiting three million people; but a food analyst, who declined to be named, told IRIN the figure was difficult to authenticate because inputs risked being diverted to the commercial market, and there was no assistance for the large majority of subsistence cultivators (småbønder/familiebrug) like Jarviso.
Jarviso will use the cooperative’s team of oxen to plough the maize stalks back into the soil to help balance its acidity before planting starts in October, but her future is stark.
The arithmetic for the mother of six school-going children remains the same, no matter which way she calculates it. Some of the food she produces, including vegetable crops, is used for the family’s consumption; the rest is sold to pay for education fees, clothing, the other costs of living, and maintaining her home.
The monthly school fees for her children range from 22 dollar for the eldest to four for her youngest, while she sells a 50 kg sack of potatoes for 50 to 60 dollar. Jarviso produced 12 sacks of potatoes this year.
Her other cash crop, maize, could earn more in the capital, Luanda, but the variety that fares better in acidic soils produces a coloured product and consumers in Luanda reject it as “dirty”, preferring brilliant white maize.
Most people [small-scale farmers] do not understand the relationship of high acidity and stunted growth, and even if they did recognize it, there is no available source of lime (kalk), so they can not do anything about it anyway.
Angolas reputation as a breadbasket was forged during Portuguese colonial rule, but the almost fabled food production was a consequence of ready access to lime and fertilizer to optimize the acidic soils, and the financial credit lines available to commercial farmers.
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