Sustainable agriculture is essential for the environment and for human life. Speaking in her keynote address at the Trialogue Business in Society Conference 2024, soil scientist and environmental sustainability specialist Dr Siviwe Malongweni spoke to the need for sustainable farming in agriculture as a means to achieve food security and addressed the challenges faced by small-scale African farmers in achieving sustainable farming practices. 

Compared to traditional agriculture, sustainable farming uses less energy, is associated with lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and promotes biodiversity. While it is the better approach, the majority of African farmers who are either small-scale or subsistence farmers face several barriers to transforming farming practices.  These include limited access to resources, limited access to knowledge and training, contradictory social norms and traditions, health and nutrition, limited access to information, climate change and environmental degradation, insecure land tenure and property rights as well as policy and governance issues.

With Africa’s population set to double in the next 30 years, these barriers to sustainable farming present a threat to food security. “We need to find ways to demolish these barriers and feed the world without destroying it,” said Malongweni.

Transforming African agriculture starts from the ground up

Successful agriculture is thought to begin with good seed. Biotechnology is being used across the world to transform crops and the similar initiatives are under way in improve African agriculture. However, better seed availability does not answer the typical challenges of African farmers who struggle to access or afford such seed, are reliant on rain to water crops, are planting in heavily degraded soils and are at the mercy of international price volatility when it comes to fertilisers.

In the face of these challenges, Malongweni argues that for African agriculture “[t]rue transformations begin with soil.”

Better soil management practices, such as covering the soil with organic residues, minimising soil disturbance, increasing plant diversity, maintaining living roots and integrating livestock into cropping system, improve water filtration and storage capacity of the soil. These practices reduce irrigation demand and increase crop resilience, both of which are essential in the face of climate change impacts.

Healthier soils also improve carbon capture capacity, improve soil biological function and diversity and improve productive capacity delivering higher crop yield.

Impediments to the healthy soil challenge

The majority of small-scale farmers lack the knowledge and training to embark on and sustain a healthy soil transformation process. Shifting from conventional tillage farming to conservation farming often comes with an initial decline in productivity that can be discouraging and that many farmers can’t afford to weather through to higher yields.

Farmers who are able to stay the course can reap additional rewards through carbon credit programmes. However, these programmes are less accessible to small-scale farmers who are disadvantaged by high-risk profiles stemming from land ownership challenges. A lack of long-term data and formal documentation to establish the benchmarks necessary to enter such programmes create further limitations.

Intervention points to drive agricultural sector transformation

Malongweni identified the following as some of the areas of intervention needed to drive sustainability in agriculture:

• Research needs to reflect practical as well as theoretical insights.
• Research organisation should collaborate with government, the non-profit sector and other stakeholders to minimise the impact of working in silos.
• Stakeholders need to be held accountable for their respective roles in driving sustainable agriculture.
• The proactive land acquisition strategy should be used to grow South Africa’s agricultural sector and increase farmer land ownership. Farmers who own land are more likely to invest in and care for their land. They would also have legal responsibility to do so.
• Non-governmental organisations should continue to strengthen market linkages and value chains for smallholder farmers so that farmers are able to access the market and receive fair prices for produce.

She reinforced the imperative of improving soil health as the foundation to establishing sustainable agriculture concluding, “Let us make sure that we husband it and it will grow our food, our shelter and our future and surround us with beauty.”