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BACKGROUND AND KEY FINDINGS

Press Briefing with Teleconference Call-in
12:00 p.m. EST (1700 Hours GMT), Thursday, March 30

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Global Leaders Launch Effort to Turn Around Africa's Failing Agriculture

New Study Reports Three-Quarters of African Farmlands Plagued By Severe Degradation

The very basis of food production in Africa—the continent's soil—is rapidly being depleted of nutrients essential for growing crops and protecting the environment, a new study will report at a press briefing on Thursday, March 30. The report tracks the soil health on the continent from 1980 to 2004.

The "soil health crisis" is a major cause of poverty and hunger in sub-Saharan Africa, where one in three Africans is undernourished. Soil depletion and population growth in farming areas also leads to environmental challenges, as African farmers often abandon infertile fields to clear forests for cultivation, thus threatening Africa's endangered wildlife and forests.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, Chairman of the Implementing Committee of the African Union's New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), is calling on African heads of state, ministers, donors, industry leaders, farmers' organizations, and others to support the transformation of African agriculture, beginning with a summit to address the soil health crisis and adopt strategies to revitalize African agriculture.

One of every three people in sub-Saharan Africa is undernourished. More than US$4 billion worth of soil nutrients are lost from Africa's soils every year. With African soils exhausted and unable to sustain food crop production, African leaders consider the upcoming Africa Fertilizer Summit an essential part of NEPAD's Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme, which aims to raise farm yield by 6 percent annually by 2015 and cut food insecurity by half.

More than 60 percent of Africa's population is directly engaged in agriculture. But crop productivity has remained stagnant, while cereal yields in Asia have risen three-fold over the past four decades. Increasing productivity on African farms is critical to feeding a population that is expected to grow to 1.8 billion people by 2050.

Major Findings: Soil Depletion Increasing Across Continent

The new research shows substantial soil decline in every major region of sub-Saharan Africa. According to the new report, during the 2002-2004 cropping season, about 85 percent of African farmland (185 million hectares) had nutrient mining rates of more than 30 kilograms per hectare of nutrients yearly, and 40 percent had rates greater than 60 kilograms per hectare yearly. The report is authored by Drs. Julio Henao and Carlos Baanante of the IFDC, an International Center for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development, a public nonprofit international organization.

According to the report, "the evidence leaves no doubt that the very resources on which African farmers and their families depend for welfare and survival are being undermined by soil degradation caused by nutrient mining and associated factors, such as deforestation, use of marginal lands, and poor agricultural practices."

Other findings:

• About 50,000 hectares of forest and 60,000 hectares of Africa's grasslands are lost to agriculture yearly, due to low levels of soil fertility and increasing population pressures.
• In addition to removal by crop harvests, other contributing factors to nutrient depletion are loss of nitrogen and phosphorus through soil erosion by wind and water, and leaching of nitrogen and potassium.
• The highest rates of depletion are in Guinea, Congo, Angola, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda at more than 60 kilograms per hectare yearly.
• About 33 percent of the sub-Saharan population is undernourished, and most of the undernourished live in East Africa, where nutrient mining rates are high.
• Africa imported about 43 million metric tons of cereals at a cost of $7.5 billion in 2003. The sub-Saharan African countries (excluding South Africa) imported 19 million tons at a cost of $3.8 billion. Assuming that the current situation in agricultural land management will not change dramatically, Africa is projected to import about 60 million tons of cereals, at a cost of about $14 billion, by 2020. The sub-Saharan countries (excluding South Africa) will import about 34 million metric tons of cereal at a cost of $8.4 billion by 2020.
• Fertilizer use in Africa is the lowest in the world, at less than 10 percent of the world average.

The report calls for policy and investment strategies to reverse the mining and subsequent decline in soil fertility. These strategies must make the use of mineral and organic fertilizer, and other improved technologies, available to farmers.

Summit Aims for Action

The Africa Fertilizer Summit will be convened by the African Union and hosted by the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and chaired by His Excellency, Olusegun Obasanjo, President of Nigeria and Chairman of the NEPAD Implementation Committee.

The Summit's ultimate objective is to reverse the hunger and under nutrition that plagues more than one-third of those living in sub-Saharan Africa, by significantly increasing farm production. To do so, the Summit will identify concrete actions to improve markets for the rural poor, including measures to lower fertilizer costs (now four-to-six times the world average); train a rural network of small retailers; expand financing for private sector importers and distributors; and create conditions for investment in fertilizer manufacturing within Africa.

The Summit will also identify and promote the best practices to boost yields while safeguarding the environment.

Today soil depletion combined with population pressures on farmland creates a major environmental problem. African farmers often abandon infertile fields to clear forests or plow the savanna. For example, approximately 70 percent of deforestation in Africa is a result of clearing land for cultivation.

The Summit will promote techniques that combine the use of manufactured and organic fertilizers, and that focus on precisely applying minimal amounts of fertilizer, to both raise farm incomes and rebuild the soil. Environmental awareness will be integrated into all Summit sessions and initiatives, to address both resolving current problems related to nutrient depletion, as well as avoiding future ones.

In addition to President Obasanjo, the Summit is backed by an advisory panel of world leaders in African development that includes:

• Lennart Bage, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development
• Norman Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize winner
• Joaquin Chissano, former president of Mozambique
• Jacques Diouf, Director General of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization
• Abdoulie Janneh, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa
• Donald Kaberuka, president of the African Development Bank
• Alpha Oumar Konaré, chairman of the African Union Commission
• Firmino Mucavele, chief executive of the NEPAD Secretariat
• Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Sponsors of the Africa Fertilizer Summit include: The Rockefeller Foundation, the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, The World Bank, the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, the United States Agency for International Development, the International Fertilizer Association, Agriterra, Sasakawa Global 2000, and the Arab Fertilizer Association, among others. It will be implemented by the IFDC.