William G Moseley

Neoliberal policy, rural livelihoods, and urban food security in West Africa: A comparative study of The Gambia, Côte d'Ivoire, and Mali

This study examines the impact of two decades of neoliberal policy reform on food production and household livelihood security in three West African countries. The rice sectors in The Gambia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mali are scrutinized as well as cotton and its relationship to sorghum production in Mali. Although market reforms were intended to improve food production, the net result was an increasing reliance on imported rice. The vulnerability of the urban populations in The Gambia and Côte d’Ivoire became especially clear during the 2007–2008 global food crisis when world prices for rice spiked. Urban Mali was spared the worst of this crisis because the country produces more of its own rice and the poorest consumers shifted from rice to sorghum, a grain whose production increased steeply as cotton production collapsed. The findings are based on household and market surveys as well as on an analysis of national level production data.

African evidence on the relation of poverty, time preference and the environment

Abstract It is typically argued in the economics literature that the poor operate with a higher rate of time preference than their wealthier counterparts. The poor, it is suggested, have a higher rate of time preference because they are more concerned about present survival than they are about saving for the future. Such thinking is also central to the economic growth for environmental conservation and the poverty induced environmental degradation arguments. According to these assertions, wealth allows people to consider the future and invest in environmental conservation; and poverty leaves people with no alternative but to exploit the environment so that they may feed their families today. Evidence from the food security and famine early warning fields suggests that households in many African contexts behave quite to the contrary. During periods of food shortage, poor households will often undertake extreme measures in the present, including depriving the family of needed calories, in order to preserve productive capital for the future, such as a plough, oxen or seed stock. This evidence suggests that poor African households may, in fact, have very low rates of time preference. This calls into question our general assumptions about discount rates for developing countries, for which rates of time preference are a theoretical determinant.

Interrogating the technocratic (neoliberal) agenda for agricultural development and hunger alleviation in Africa

This paper introduces a special issue that critically examines the dominant technocratic, neoliberal agenda for agricultural development and hunger alleviation in Africa. We briefly review the history of African agricultural and food security policy in the post-colonial period in order to contextualise the productionist approach embedded in the New Green Revolution for Africa, a strategy comprising the use of hybrid seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides to boost crop production. This approach is underpinned by a new and unprecedented level of public–private partnerships as donors actively work to promote the private sector and build links between African farmers, input suppliers, agro-dealers, agro-processors, and retailers. On the consumer end, increased supermarket penetration into poorer neighbourhoods is proffered as a solution to urban food insecurity. The papers in the special issue complicate understandings of this new approach and raise serious questions about its effectiveness as a strategy for increasing food production and alleviating hunger across the continent.

Fair Trade Wine: South Africa's Post-Apartheid Vineyards and the Global Economy

Abstract The history of unfair labour practices in South Africas wine industry is as old as the sector itself, dating back to the seventeenth century. The situation, however, has begun to slowly change since the fall of Apartheid in 1994. While the South African wine industry is still largely white owned, the countrys major wine production zone (the Western Cape) is now dotted with a variety of black-owned and black co-owned vineyards that are Fair Trade certified or marketing their wines as worker produced or black owned. This study explores these various arrangements (Fair Trade, worker produced, and black owned), and their connections to local and international wine markets. In particular, it explores the potential of these arrangements to create real change in labour conditions and the welfare of historically disadvantaged farm workers. In comparison to other agricultural sectors in South Africa, the wine industry is an especially interesting case because of its economic importance, growing export potential, and history of white dominance. A Chinese version of this articles abstract is available online at: www.informaworld.com/rglo

Neoliberal agricultural policy versus agrarian justice: Farm workers and land redistribution in South Africa's Western Cape Province

ABSTRACT South Africa revised its land redistribution policy at the start of the Thabo Mbeki Administration in 2000, moving away from a model aimed at poverty alleviation, towards one promoting a class of small black commercial farmers. The broad goal of this article is to explore the competing agendas of neoliberal agricultural policy and agrarian justice in the Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) Programme in South Africas Western Cape Province. In order to address this goal, the study examines three inter-related phenomena in the Western Cape Province: 1) the dynamics of commercial farming; 2) the background and knowledge of black and coloured farm workers regarding agricultural landscapes and their management; and 3) the pace and quality of land redistribution efforts. The findings are based on fieldwork in the Western Cape Province during the June 2005 to January 2006 period. Case studies suggest that the current model of market oriented land redistribution is highly problematic in the Western Cape. The goal of creating a class of emerging black commercial farmers is seriously challenged by a commercial agricultural landscape that has become intensely competitive and subject to global market forces. Furthermore, the targeted beneficiaries in the Western Cape, mostly farm workers, have a narrow (although important) range of skills and a deep sense of disempowerment. Rethinking land redistribution in terms of smaller scale and less commercially oriented options will be critical for its future success.

Conceptualizing Hunger Dynamics: A Critical Examination of Two Famine Early Warning Methodologies in Zimbabwe

Abstract In the wake of droughts in the African Sahel in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, international organizations, bilateral donors, African governments and non-governmental organizations set up a number of early warning systems to monitor food security. The objective of this paper is to assess the strengths, weaknesses and conceptual validity of two new famine early warning systems that are being applied in Zimbabwe – the Save the Children Fund–United Kingdom’s household food economy approach and the US Agency for International Development Famine Early Warning System’s maize equivalency approach. The paper suggests that both approaches are part of a ‘third wave of innovation’ in the development of early warning methodologies. While both systems share much in common, there are also important differences between them in the way they assemble information and conceptualize hunger. When the two methods were employed in Manjolo Communal Area of Zimbabwe for the 1996/97 period, they produced significantly different food deficit estimates. The divergent deficit predictions are explained by conceptual differences between the two programmes, including differences in unit of analysis, selection and relative weight accorded to data parameters, income group disaggregation, and distinctions between purchased and non-purchased food.

FIGHTING FIRE WITH A BROKEN TEACUP: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SOUTH AFRICA'S LAND-REDISTRIBUTION PROGRAM*

ABSTRACT. Since the rise of its first democratically elected government in 1994, South Africa has sought to redress its highly inequitable land distribution through a series of land‐reform programs. In this study we examine land‐redistribution efforts in two of South Africas provinces, the Western Cape and Limpopo. By analyzing a cross‐section of projects in these two locales we develop a political ecology of stymied land‐reform possibilities to explain the limited progress to date. Given South Africas ambitious goal of redistributing 30 percent of its white‐owned land by 2014 and the incremental and flawed nature of its redistribution program, we argue that the process is like trying to put out a fire with a broken teacup. Our results are based on interviews with policymakers, commercial farmers, and land‐redistribution beneficiaries, as well as on an analysis of land‐use change in Limpopo Province.

Implications of supermarket expansion on urban food security in Cape Town, South Africa

The rapid rise in supermarkets in developing countries over the last several decades resulted in radical transformations of food retail systems. In Cape Town, supermarket expansion has coincided with rapid urbanization and food insecurity. In this context, retail modernization has become a powerful market-driven process impacting food access for the poor. The introduction of formal food retail formats is viewed simultaneously as a driver of food accessibility and as a detriment to informal food economies established in lower income neighborhoods. Through a mixed-methods approach, this article assesses the spatial distribution of supermarkets within Cape Town and whether this geography of food retail combats or perpetuates food insecurity, particularly in lower income neighborhoods. Spatial analysis using geographic information systems at a city-wide scale is combined with a qualitative case study utilizing semi-structured interviews and observational analysis in the Philippi township in order to illuminate the limitations of supermarket expansion as a market-oriented alleviation strategy for food insecurity. While supermarkets have been successful in penetrating some low-income communities, they are often incompatible with the consumption strategies of the poorest households, revealing the significance of the informal economy in Cape Town and the limitations of a food desert approach toward understanding urban food security.

West African environmental narratives and development-volunteer praxis

ABSTRACT. Environmental narratives in Africa have been examined in a flurry of publications since the mid‐1990s. In this article we seek to offer insights into the role and motivations of volunteer development workers in perpetuating environmental narratives. We examine the factors that led to the questioning or nonquestioning of environment‐development discourses and their influence, if any, on the actual work undertaken by volunteers. As former development volunteers, we also explore the role that the development‐volunteer experience subsequently played in shaping our own research as academics. Our analysis is based largely on our tenure as U.S. Peace Corps volunteers in Mali from 1987 until 1989 and our later experiences as academics. We draw on our memories, interviews with former colleagues, and training materials to describe how volunteers were introduced to, and encouraged to act on, environmental problems in the West African Sudano‐Sahel. We adopt a reflexive approach to explore briefly how our experiences as volunteers influenced our research and writing as academics.

An equation for the replacement value of agroforestry

This article examines some of the existing analytical tools which quantify both the ecological and economic aspects of intercropping decisions. The characteristics of tree crops are evaluated to determine how a specific tool, the replacement value of intercropping (RVI), could be modified to better interpret agroforestry improvements to bush fallow farming systems. The modified equation captures some of the potential production improvements associated with agroforestry by accounting for the fraction of time that a field is actually in production over the long run. The result is an improved estimate of the average annual difference between a tree/crop polyculture and a monoculture system which employs fallows.