Global shortage renews fertilizer debate in Africa amid rising hunger

Kenyan farmer Mugambi Kathuni is determined to pay for his children’s schooling with his own income within five years instead of depending on the unreliable government-supported grant program. The goal feels a long way off. Kathuni grows a mix of crops such as maize, beans, avocados, and the lucrative cash crop of coffee. But in the past few years, low rainfall has left him struggling with declining harvests. Now, he has a new problem to cope with: soaring fertilizer prices. Until recently he used a chemical fertilizer to boost yields at his three-acre farm, which is often degraded by soil erosion. But the price of a sack of fertilizer has now tripled from about 2,000 Kenyan shillings ($17) per 50-kilogram (110-pound) bag last year to a high of 7,000 Kenyan shillings in August, due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He simply can’t afford that, he said. “This fertilizer problem is breeding new problems every day. I do not know how this is going to end. But it does not look good,” Kathuni tells Devex from his farm in Nthima village, central Kenya. And at those prices, school fees may be a luxury. The government six months ago gave a stimulus of 5.73 billion Kenyan shillings to subsidize fertilizer costs countrywide. But Kathuni says retailers at his local shopping center have failed to cut the price of seeds and fertilizers. Then just last month, new Kenyan President William Ruto made 1.4 million bags of fertilizer available at the subsidized price of 3,500 Kenyan shillings per 50-kilogram bag, down from 6,500 Kenyan shillings. Rising food insecurity on the continent has increased the urgency of ensuring Africa can feed its population with what it produces. But smallholders will struggle if they cannot access affordable fertilizer. The crisis for farmers in Africa since the war in Ukraine has drawn renewed attention to a longstanding debate about fertilizer use on the continent: Should it be made more affordable and available to farmers, or should Africa shy away from dependence on imported chemical fertilizer in favor of organic fertilizer that is more environmentally friendly? “By not using fertilizer, farmers are not producing enough food so what they do is they start to open up the forest to get the virgin land. ... They destroy the environment and expose themselves more to climate change.” --— Tilahun Amede, head of resilience, climate, soils, and extension, AGRA Sri Lanka’s recent experiment — which outlawed chemical fertilizers and contributed to the country’s political and economic collapse — is a cautionary tale for why all organic farming is not viable, say proponents of chemicals. Others argue the move could have been successful if there had been enough time for farmers to transition methods and if they had been given more support in doing so. ‘A very low base’ Farmers worldwide, but particularly in Africa, face the same problems as Kathuni: chronically depleted soil lacking enough nutrients to produce sufficient yields or crops with decent nutritional value — both detrimental to food security. Chemical fertilizer helps restore nutrients to the soil so farmers can maximize yields. “It’s just like a bank account. Eventually, you cannot withdraw — deplete your soils of those nutrients and you will get lower and lower yields. That’s where the need for fertilizers comes in, to replenish the nutrients that have been taken out from the soil,” said Upendra Singh, vice president of research at the International Fertilizer Development Center, a public organization that focuses on improved soil health and food security. “One may ask: Can we not use something else other than fertilizer? The answer is yes. If you can recycle manure, and others, like seaweed sludge and so forth, that can provide some of the nutrients back to the soil. But the problem there is that you will require very large quantities because the nutrient content in manure is maybe equivalent to about one-tenth of what you’ll get from fertilizer or less.” While organic farming has historically been the norm in Africa, the practices cannot support the current global population on the same land, he said. Gates’ self-fertilizing crops Average fertilizer usage in Africa is already way below that of other continents, according to Enock Chikava, interim director of agricultural development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. African farmers apply an average of just 20 kilograms per hectare, well below the 135-kilograms-per-hectare global average and the 200-kilograms-per-hectare average in Europe. “Twenty kilograms is nothing; it’s little. Africa should be applying much more,” Chikava said. “You may have the same technologies, access to the same high potential in terms of the yield, but unless you are planting that in soils that will provide nutrients for that plant you won’t be able to get to the yields. That’s the first thing we miss in the conversation. Africa is already starting at a very low base.” Africa currently consumes only 3% of global fertilizer production, according to Chikava. The Gates Foundation is working on “the next generation of crops,” Chikava said — ones that manufacture nitrogen through their roots, effectively creating their own fertilizer. Crops such as ground nuts, soybeans, and cowpeas have this inherent ability, while staples such as maize and cereals don’t. This means using these new crops could be years out — requiring chemical fertilizer use in the interim until crop development advances, he said. AGRA — which has been criticized for its partnership with the Gates Foundation in the promotion of a so-called Green Revolution that promoted industrialized agriculture focused on yields and was found not to deliver on promises made to increase food security — insists its support of fertilizer use actually supports conservation. “If you really ask deep where does [the] alternative come from, they have no answer. If you say ‘go organic,’ you need tons of organic [material]. Where is it in the system?” said Tilahun Amede, head of resilience, climate, soils, and extension at AGRA. “By not using fertilizer, farmers are not producing enough food so what they do is they start to open up the forest to get the virgin land. They open up wetlands. ... They destroy the environment and expose themselves more to climate change.” Echoes of colonialism But some contend expanding fertilizer use in Africa is a continuation of colonialism, making farmers dependent on an imported product whose price has skyrocketed. They also argue that chemical fertilizer is bad for the environment on a continent already subjected to climatic shocks, such as widespread drought in the Horn of Africa. “We are the best-placed people to solve our problems. We need Afrocentric solutions to problems and our problems ought not to be settled or resolved by people external to the continent,” said Leonida Odongo, co-founder of the Haki Nawiri Afrika initiative. “What we need is an ecologically produced method of food production that is healthy and culturally appropriate.” Mary Njoki, a field assistant at the Grow Biointensive Agriculture Center of Kenya, said the adoption of organic manure is both economically and environmentally viable because it can be prepared remotely. Farmers collect waste such as the leftovers of a harvested crop, animal dung, and even waste food from the kitchen, assemble it together, and wait for it to decompose naturally. The resulting material which is mixed together can then be applied on the farm as organic fertilizer, she says. “With organic farming, a farmer does not need to rely on imported inputs. It helps farmers with small parcels of land to harvest more and can be used as case studies to teach more farmers in a locality,” said Njoki, whose organization works with farmer groups in the country. But proper support must be given to farmers to do so, or a country could face a situation similar to Sri Lanka’s crisis. Timothy Wise, a senior adviser at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, criticized the AGRA approach, which focuses on increasing yields. His 2020 study of the organization’s work found that productivity in AGRA’s 13 countries increased just 29% over 12 years for maize, the most subsidized and supported crop. “The entire Green Revolution is dependent on fertilizers. There is no Green Revolution without those fertilizers. The seeds are bred to respond to fertilizers. They are useless without fertilizers in adequate supply, and I don’t think we’re going to see fertilizer prices come down for quite a while,” Wise said. “It really brings home the point that this is just not a smart path to put Africa on at this point.” Methods such as green manure that cover cropping and intercropping are being used by 10 million farmers across Africa, Wise said, which has tripled maize yields while not increasing costs for smallholders. Ultimately, farmers need to find a balance that works for them, Chikava says. “We are trying to provide smallholder farmers with all the knowledge and tools so that they can decide what is best for them. They will know if this is my soil, this is what I don’t have in my soil. If I use manure, I will be able to replace this amount. It’s not sufficient, I need to supplement that with inorganic fertilizer,” Chikava said. “At the end of the day, our work is to empower the smallholder farmer by giving them the tools they need so that they can make appropriate business decisions based on their context.” David Njagi in Kenya contributed reporting.