| Popis: |
Population pressures, currency devaluations, and fertilizer subsidy removal programs in many African countries have caused renewed concern about soil degradation and loss of soil fertility. Advances in food production are further constrained by the invisibility factor, i.e., women do most of the food farming in sub-Saharan Africa, but have little access to the means necessary to significantly increase output and yields. We call this the invisibility factor because agricultural experts commonly do not acknowledge that most of Africa's smallholders are women, and women's yields, women's adoption, and women's use of inputs are rarely reported. Gendered differences in wealth result in women's lowered access to cash and credit, needed to acquire both organic and inorganic fertilizers. The solution to this problem, we believe, lies in better collection of gender-desegregated data as well as better programs and policies that take into consideration the severe cash constraints women farmers face and that target women farmers with crucial inputs of production such as fertilizers. Because women lack cash, we recommend as a general objective achieving low application rates of about 25 kg nutrient ha, depending upon soil and climatic conditions. Options proposed to target women farmers with greater fertilizer inputs include fertilizer vouchers, providing fertilizer in small bags in local markets, microcredit, free grants of fertilizer, use of organic materials, biological N2 fixation technologies, combinations of organic and inorganic fertilizers, and improving women's access to cashcrop markets. As part of USAID's Soils Management Collaborative Research Support Program, we propose to test these different methods in several African contexts from 1997 to 2002. There is a new sense of urgency about achieving food security for sub-Saharan Africa (hereafter referred to as Africa; Borlaug & Dowswell, 1995). Most African countries still depend on agriculture for most of their gross national product and employment (Tomich et al., 1995). Yet Africa currently imports a large proportion of its food grains, e.g., one-third of its rice (Oryza sativa L.) consumption Copyright © 1997 American Society of Agronomy and Soil Science Society of America, 677 S. Segoe Rd., Madison, WI 53711, USA. Replenishing Soil Fertility in Africa. SSSA Special Publication no. 51. |
