African Rice Farming Overview

Today, humanity is facing an acute rice crisis which can be a serious threat to keeping the social peace. This is not a surprise at all since considering the knowledge capital of men; it is really hard and impossible not to foresee such occurrence like this. In fact it was indicated on Africa Rice Center that they had predicted a 2-year rice crisis in Africa as of year 2008. Africa is accounted for the 10 to 13 percent of the world’s population but only consumes 32 percent of the world’s import with just a consumption rate of 4.5 percent every year.

The Coalition for African Rice Development has been instrumental in nurturing the national development strategies for the increase in the productivity and the production of the African rice. This step is very important towards the significant boosting of the rice production by the African smallholder farmers which will reduce the cost for their food imports and move over the continent towards food security. This group is working with the 21 African countries in order to strengthen their ability in producing this valuable commodity. Rice is indeed quickly becoming a major food for rural and urban consumers. The African production increases which have been achieved by expanding the area devoted only to rice but they are not keeping the pace with the demand. The Coalition for African Rice Development is also aiming to improve the rice productivity by promoting changes on both small scale farms as well as the off farm by advocating harvest value improvements and promoting the enabling policies.

GPS land level

The rice production situated in Africa mirrors the challenges of the general food that the country is facing right now. And the AGRA goals is to transform smallholder agriculture to development and widespread use of such modern farming technologies like GPS land leveling and modern methods like precision Agriculture, large scale changes in the soil management, and promotion of the appropriate policy for the environment. Achieving that new transformation of the African rice farming will definitely require a large number of dynamic and innovative partnerships and an increased financial support for the African agriculture.  

In fact the sectors of the South African economy and agriculture can benefit from introducing another crop grain. This is a positive development for the country since there are a lot of farmers who are interested in growing rice. As rice is a cereal grain summer crop, more grain farmers would be interested in growing rice as means to the diversity of their farming operations. The local production will also reduce the reliance of the country on importing rice. As a matter of fact South Africa is importing almost 2 million tons of staple every year.

The devastating famines of the 1970’s and 1980’s that devastated the West Africa prompted large governmental investments into an irrigation schemes that are intended for food assurance security during the droughts. The architects of the West Africa’s irrigation scheme were all willing to sacrifice the sustainability in favor of the productivity. Following the agricultural development, modern farming techniques based on the use of Earth Moving as the key to cultivation on the Africa’s bas-fond areas.