GREEN
REVOLUTION AND INDUSTRIAL DECENTRALIZATION REVISTED
Berhanu Tesfaye July 2010
Background
Since the
inception of Green Revolution by different writers in different countries has
raised the issue and have discussed it thoroughly. In the last month some
Ethiopian intellectuals are also discussing the pros and contra ideas about the
same issue (Tsegay Tegenu, Getachew Mequanent, Yemane T.and others.
Having
their ideas as a baseline for policy papers they have recommended what they
feel it is best for the country and I appreciate their ideas because they are
worried about the growth of population as well the food insecurity prevailing
in the country. Their focus is only why we need to launch a policy that boost
production through Green Revolution but they did not want to touch the core
problems in the country that contribute to low productivity socially as well in
the broader policy reorganization except focusing in the adaptation of
technology and the forward backward links of Agriculture and industry.
The core
problem could be put in one word “the dying of the mother tree” and we have to
discuss how to save the dying of the mother tree rather than painting the
mother tree to look like still living.
Based on
the above principle I will try to bring the core issues and some ideas for
discussion and mostly I use my experiences in the field and some of the words
that were spoken by different authorities in time when bonanza production were
achieved without sustained policy to back them up.
Basic
question to be asked
We all
know that almost 90 percent of Ethiopian depend in agriculture or have ties
with agriculture and the core issues are:
·
Do we have agricultural policies that
boost our production in a sustainable way?
·
Are our policies founded in researches and
incorporate the socio-cultural situation of the population?
·
Are our policies put on the farmers from
above or do they incorporate ideas from the farmer?
In order
to visit these questions we have either to go back and study the historical
development of our agricultural policies of the past that needs resources and
capabilities for the purpose of my analysis I will try to bring some of the
speeches of our authorities or the people that say they administer the country
and more influenced our policies in the past.
We were
planning to achieve to feed our people three times a day in the next 15 years but thanks to the SG2000 program we
have exported 20 000 quintals of Maize
to Kenya (Meles Zenawi). In the mean time people in Daramallo were in critical
food insecure situation and people were dying in the vicinity.
Me and
Prime Minister Meles went to Awassa and during our trip Meles was fascinated
with the trial plots that were helped by our Sasakawa Global 2000 program and
when we came back to Addis Meles Called his Agricultural Minister and told him
to launch a program identical to us throughout the country and it was adopted
as a national policy and with three years there are more than 3.6 million(1999)
participating in the program and we are focusing on post harvest processes (Jimmy
Carter after field trip to Ethiopia).
During
the catastrophic drought of 1984/85 there were settlement farms in Wollega and
Legesse Asfaw was visiting and he saw Maize with four cobs and he said look it
is the result of our party Workers party of
Mengistu
Haile Mariam was flying over a place called Sheneka and asked the then Minister
for Agriculture how about this place is it suitable for wheat? And the minister
embarked from the Helicopter and told him it is the best area for wheat and
18000 hectares was cleared and planted wheat.
Why I put
these speeches is not to pinpoint my fingers on personalities but these are
some from the Ice Berg how people that put their hands on experts and experts
are afraid to tell their minds to formulate policies.
When we
discuss the root causes of poor productivity in Agriculture as well in other
sectors one can conclude they lie in ill conceived policies with out visions
that had played role in the past as well in the future.
With the
analysis done by the writers their focus was how to utilizes under
employed hand in appropriate ways or how
to link the agricultural sector to other sectors to play a forward or backward
effect and later to accumulations of wealth and food self sufficiency. As well
recommending to “designing a green revolution which gradually get rid off small
holders in agriculture in
Getachew
wants to tell us the small fragmented plots should not be neglected and the
progress about the last 15 years in terms of promoting green revolution through
the availability of fertilizers, improved seeds, pesticides and other
complementary support systems. More over want to cites figures that the raise
of 38 in fertilizer consumption between 1997 and 2006.
As to me
the problems lies in another court and in the hands of our ill visionary
authorities and their will to stay in power as well not to learn from the
failures of prior policies and focus in ameliorating the failures rather than
demolitions what was built and starts from zero, this is true in terms of human
resources, infrastructures as well organizational set ups.
Moreover
there lies a core problem in our professionals in the field to be garbage in
garbage out like modern computers and would not like to confront their
employers to teach the reality and incorporate such issues in the policy.
The dying
of the mother tree is due to the above two policy makers’ professional gaps and
the overall prioritization ones political agenda than developmental policies or
strategies. For example without any detail researches the transitional
Government of Ethiopia abolished all the institutions that have a suffix called
“corporations” to get disbursement from the World Bank and changes their label
to the so called “
During
this time also took measures that abolish more strategic crop production such
as cotton in the
Before I
go in detail to substantiate my ideas let I put the following table to show it
clearly.
|
Military Government |
EPRDF |
|
Agricultural agents (DA) |
Agricultural agents(DA) |
|
Agricultural Input supply Corporation |
Agricultural Input supply Enterprises |
|
Peasant associations |
Peasant associations |
|
Cooperatives (fertilizer, seed, marketing) |
Regional Organizations (Ambasel, Wondo, Dinsho,Dedebit) |
|
Political cadres (WPE) |
Political cadres(EPRDF) |
|
Poor infrastructure, Human resources Farmers training centres Posts run by cadres Yelwut hawariya |
Poor infrastructure ,Human Resources Farmers training centres Posts run by EPRDF cadres Regional advisors(SNNP,Gambella, Afar, Somali region, Benshagul Gumuz |
What I
want to show here is there is no distinctive difference for the last 40 years
in terms of policy as well policy implementation except the abolishing of the
Agricultural Marketing Corporation and installation of new parapartal institutions
that deal with the marketing of agricultural inputs and produces.
The other
similarity I that we have a bulk of professionals, resources and facilities
allocated in the centre while the advice is needed not in the centre but in
local peasant associations.
If there
are people that are visionary to alleviate the problems the best bench mark to
start is the revision of the countries land policy that can allow entitlement
and endowment as well to invert what is known as an inverted pyramid in its all
aspect i.e. allocation of qualified personnel (first /second degree level),
budgets allocation for facilities (finance, transports, telephones).
To
totally abolish what the country experience now and earlier as a cadre oriented
management and replace them with professionals that focus in their specialized
background.
To
totally relieve the development workers that can be the health, education or
agriculture from responsibilities such as distributions as well collections of
payments from the farmers that a reared by the so called parapatals and the
like.
These
problem solving mechanism brings us to the wire “what has to be done for the
future in order to be productive and self sufficient?”
First and
foremost we have to take some seconds at all level to put sound policies that
did not rely in political will of our politicians that need to stay in power
till they rot and whittle like a dying leaf.
In order
to have such vision we have to think of developmental policies that could be
sustained in the future who ever comes to power because when we see our
policies they are the same old wines in new bottles: For example the land
policies we have, the development strategy that is named as ADLI (agricultural
development led industrialization) is the same policy that was run for 17 years
by the Junta as to use inputs from agriculture to fuel industrial growth (of
course I do not expect special since
both are rooted in communism).
Prior to
discussing to revisit green revolution as a measure for emancipation to our
food self sufficiency and the introduction of the same small scaled input
intensive growth models first and foremost we have to emancipate our people
from fright from the cadres and to tell them to select their mode of production
in group or lonesome and set their priorities as their wish but to avail
technical, infrastructural, financial and human resources and also to change
the up down institutional gloat with the introduction of the basic principles
of good Governance.