Evaluating Food Security and Agribusines Status

Introduction

The United Nations Committee on World Food security defined Food Security by saying that all people at all times, have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food with the following conditions: their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life. Availability, affordability and quality/safety are the three core pillars that measure food security (IFPRI, 2016). In 2010, the number of people who were malnourished was 578 million, 239 million, 53 million, 37 million and 19 million in the Asia Pacific region, in sub-Saharan Africa, in Latin America and the Caribbean, in North Africa, and in developed countries respectively (Van Eeckhout, 2010).

Currently, Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) hosts about 220 million undernourished people. This means that 23.2 per cent of the population is suffering of food insecure with the highest prevalence of food insecurity in the world (FAO, 2015).

Agribusiness can transform the agricultural sector in Africa with the demand for high-value food products around the world. The production and export of these goods can represent an opportunity to achieve increases in income and employment.

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The development of agribusiness can boost the employment generation for youth in the agricultural sector. Although, some sustainable value chains have been developed in some African countries, most of them are far to accomplish the value chain sustainability (FAO, 2015).

In Burundi, the agriculture is the main source of the national and family economy and the growth for other non agricultural sectors. The main activity for almost 90% of the population is agriculture which is source of food and household income (Harre et al, 2010). 95% of household food and 90% of export earnings are coming from agriculture.

However, structural and cyclical factors have considerably weakened this sector and almost 70% of the population lives below the poverty line (less than one US dollar per day per inhabitant) and 85% of households face daily food insecurity (MINAGRIE, 2014). In the worldwide, Burundi is ranked among the poorest countries. It is ranked 184th out of 188 countries, according to the Human Development Index (UNDP, 2017). In 2017, the high rate of food insecurity was reported and the humanitarian assistance has intervened to the alarming situation.

The daily ration of a Burundian is dominated by more than 90% by voluminous intakes poor in essential elements (tubers and roots, bananas), with few foods rich in proteins, lipids and trace elements. 58% of children under five are chronically malnourished, which causes irreversible damage to the physical growth and intellectual development of children, jeopardizing their academic performance and later their social and professional development (UNICEF Burundi, 2013).

The humanitarian partners in collaboration with Government of Burundi indicated that the number of people who need humanitarian assistance was estimated at 3 million at the end of 2016 (PNUD, 2017). It was also noted that the rural economy is poorly monetized, savings mobilization is very low and access to credit is limited by the low rural penetration of credit institutions (estimated at 4% in 2002). Household incomes have fallen markedly – from US$45 per annum in 1999/2000 to US$30 in 2004/05 (PNUD, 2017).

Problem Statement

Smallholders are confronted with several challenges in their efforts to sustainably generate income from market-oriented agricultural production. Although agriculture is a predominant sector in most economies in sub-Saharan Africa (Enete and Onyekuru, 2011), the productivity remains low (Young, 2007). One of the factors explaining this low productivity is the failure of farmers to adopt high-yielding technologies and production techniques developed by agronomic research (Nkamleu, 2004; Young, 2007). However, until recently one critical gap in agricultural research and development has been its failure to link farmers to profitable markets and to increase incomes for marketing agricultural products (IFPRI, 2002; Kindness and Gordon, 2002).

In Burundi, the agricultural sector is characterized by a high percentage of smallholder farmers (80 percent) cultivating staple crops with low yield on small lands using minimal inputs leading to chronic malnutrition of a large number of the population (AGRA 2016; WEF 2015b).

Since April 2015, Burundi has faced a multidimensional crisis which results in a continuous deterioration of food security and livelihoods of populations. This situation continued to deteriorate with the aggravating factors like the climatic disturbances which have become too frequent since 1999 (Baramburiye et al., 2013)

Plant, animal and fishery productions are constantly decreasing and no efforts managed to cover nutritional needs while the population continues grow over time.This strong demographic pressure has led to an overexploitation of natural resources and marginal lands coupled with the erosion which causes the degradation of the soil fertility. The production system remains traditional with the use of family labor and few external inputs and highly dependent on precipitation. In addition, the little control of diseases and pests hampers the improvement of the crop and animal productions (MINAGRIE, 2014).

The following factors such as land division, low soil fertility, inadequate techniques, lack of marketing support services and poor access to credit, have led to poor agricultural productivity and low incomes for rural families. The use of high yielding technologies in minimizing negative environmental externalities, access to credit and oriented-market to agricultural products may increase the smallholder income. Thus, few studies have been done in Burundi to highlight what is currently hampering crop production, food security, and nutrition and income. The investigation of food security and agribusiness status is of great importance in order to highlight possible intervention schemes that will facilitate policy makers to set up strategies allowing to improve food security, nutrition and net income.

The study aims then to evaluate the food security and agribusiness status and to identify the improved technologies which susceptible to improve agricultural production, food security, human nutrition and household income.

Justification

The findings from this study will enable rural farmers, extension services of the government, Non Government Organizations (NGOs) or Private sectors operating in agricultural sector to know the status of food security and agribusiness, the best-fit technologies that can improve food security, nutrition of smallholder farmers and their income. The findings will also allow them to know the strategies to scope the harmful factors which hamper the crop production improvement. Farmers will use efficiently and effisciently agricultural inputs so that the net income is improved.

Stakeholders will be able to know high yielding varieties and their nutrient content in order to advise smallholder farmers what they can produce in their farms. This will allow to fight malnutrition and to guarantee the food security. Stakeholders will be revealed the strategies to be used to strengthen the capacity building of farmers to establish small processing units for agricultural production to have added value to agricultural products. The stakeholders will be therefore able to track outcomes from the intervention adopted. The findings of this study will also provide the baseline for future studies in food security and agribusiness programs.

Objectives

Overall objective

The overall objective of the study is to investigate the food security and agribusiness status to enable poor rural people to improve their food security and nutrition, raise their incomes and strengthen their resilience in Burundi.

Specific objectives

• To assess the food security and agribusiness status among smallholder households of Burundi
• To identify the agricultural and rural challenges encountered by smallholder farmers of Burundi
• To identify agricultural best-fit technologies to be adopted by farmers to improve crop productivity
• To evaluate among the best-fit technologies that can improve significantly crop productivity and income considering gender aspect in Burundi.
• To assess the profitability of best-fit technologies implemented in rural farming systems
• To propose the best-fit technologies that can improve food security, nutrition and income.
• To document strategies susceptible to sustain and increase the added value from agribusiness

Research Questions

Specifically, the study aims to address the following questions:

1. What is the status of food security and agribusiness in smallholder households of Burundi?
2. What challenges do farmers meet that hamper agricultural production improvement in Burundi?
3. Which best-fit practices/technologies can rural farmers use to improve their agricultural productivity in their farming systems of Burundi?
4. What among the best-fit technologies can improve significantly agricultural productivity in rural farming systems of Burundi?
5. What economic profitability to each identified best-fit technology on agricultural production in Burundi ?
6. What best-fit technologies to be adopted by farmers for sustaining and improving food security, nutrition and income?
7. What strategies susceptible to sustain and increase the added value from agribusiness in Burundi?

Research Methodology

The study will be done in three main agro-ecological zones of Burundi (Lowland zones, depression zones and Highland zones). Burundi, a completely landlocked country, lies between 2°45’and 4°28’ south latitude, and 28°50’and 30°50’ east longitude. It shares its borders with Rwanda in the north, the United Republic of Tanzania to the east and south, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the west, where Tanganyika Lake is also located. It occupies an area of ​​27,834 km2. In 2002, the cultivated area amounted to 1,351,000 ha, including 986,000 ha of arable land and 365,000 ha of permanent crops. From the morphological point of view, the country includes most of the reliefs of Africa eastern. The Imbo, a collapse plain filled with sediments, stretches north of the Tanganyika Lake. The Congo-Nile ridge mountains border the Tanganyika moat at east of it, while a multitude of hills dissect the nilotic slope of Ridge.

Those agro-ecological zones were chosen because they represent the almost whole country of Burundi.

Thus, the status of food security and agribusiness may change from the agro-ecological zone to another zone. The best technologies could also change from one zone to another zone. Some technologies may therefore work better in one zone and other technologies in another zone. Food security and agribusiness status and agricultural challenges encountered by farmers of Burundi will be assessed by interviewing key informants and smallholder farmers. Primary data will be collected from smallholder farmers and secondary data from key informants. Semi-structured questionnaire and checklist with open-ended and closed-ended questions will be used respectively for smallholder farmers and key informants. The questions in the checklist will be structured to elicit information through government agencies, NGOs/private sectors and group discussions about food security and agribusiness status and agricultural challenges.

The multi-stratified sampling approach will be used to determine the sample of farmers to be interviewed. Data will be collected using multiple data collection tools including questionnaire, checklist for key informants and focus group discussions. The best-bet technologies will be documented in the literature review which technologies will be tested at the farm level to identify the best technologies that can improve significantly the agricultural production. The same approach will be used to document the strategies to enhance the agribusiness in Burundi. Farmer practice will be considered as a control.

The profitability will be also assessed using the young approach which says that if the ratio between the value of production and the cost of production is greater than or equal to 2, in this case there is profitability (If Production value/Production cost ≥ 2).

Regarding to data analysis, quantitative data will be statistically analyzed using computer soft ware programs such as social Sciences (SPSS), Genstat and R to generate some statistics for comparison and establishment of nature of relationship between variables and correlations between variables.

References

1. International Food Policy Research Institute: Food Security. www.ifpri.org>topic>foodsecurity
2. Van Eeckhout L ( 2010). La faim a un peu reculé dans le monde. Le Monde. 2010.
3. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2015). Regional overview of food insecurity African food security prospects brighter than ever. Accra: Author. Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4635e.pdf
4. AGRA (Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa) (2016). Africa Agriculture Status Report: Progress towards Agricultural Transformation in Africa. Nairobi, Kenya.https://agra.org/aasr2016/public/assr.pdf.
5. WEF (World Economic Forum) (2015b). The Global Competitiveness Report 2014–2015. Geneva.
6. UNICEF Burundi, Analyse de la malnutrition des enfants au Burundi, 2013.
7. Ministère de l’agriculture et de l’élevage (2015). Plan National d’Investissement Agricole (PNIA).
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10. MINAGRIE (2014). Etats Généraux de l’Agriculture et de l’Elevage: Evaluation de la mise en oeuvre des politiques agricoles nationales : défis et perspectives d’avenir. République du Burundi, Bujumbura.
11. PNUD (2017). Plan de réponse Humanitaire au Burundi Janvier-Décembre 2017.