Agricultural Policy

Foreign farmworkers, many of them undocumented, face unique risks due to the coronavirus pandemic. Their struggles reveal vulnerabilities in the U.S. food system.

Arjun Reddy is an intern with the international economics program at the Council on Foreign Relations.  In the 1960s and 70s, India—and much of the developing world outside of sub-Saharan Africa—underwent an agriculture transformation called the Green Revolution. The development of high yield varieties of maize, wheat, and rice combined with the introduction of chemical fertilizer, expansion of irrigation infrastructures, and use of modern management techniques led to an explosion in agricultural productivity, arguably saving a billion lives. Today, the agricultural industry only contributes 15 percent of India’s GDP. Other sectors, especially services, have made up much of the growth in the Indian economy over the last few decades. The agricultural industry remains so important in India because it employs around 44 percent of India's working population, forming, by far, the largest industry in terms of employment. In 2018, farmers around the country protested the low food prices, export curbs, and anti-inflation policies that were devastating their livelihoods. Waves of farmer suicides also drew attention to mounting agrarian distress. The inefficiencies of farms in India is well documented, but the ways that farmers go to market also presents opportunities for improvement. The government’s original solution for farmers to move their produce down the supply chain was through selling to ‘mandis’—a Hindi word for market. In most states, mandis were created after various states wrote their own Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) acts. These acts created physical marketplaces where farmers (or private actors who purchased from farmers) could bring their produce to sell to licensed agents. These agents were supposed to be paid on commission by bringing goods to auction for traders in the mandi who, in turn, eventually sold to distributors. In practice, however, traders at these mandis notoriously employ methods to cheat farmers, through means such as rigged weighing machines, poor auction transparency, and unauthorized charges. Agents also often act as creditors and purchase crops at low prices from farmers as a form of repayment, thereby skirting the regulations. This, combined with high input costs, often trap farmers in debt spirals, with farmer debt-to-asset ratios increasing 23 percent between 1992 and 2013. Mandis also have poor storage infrastructure and high participation fees representing costs passed on to both farmers and end consumers. Due to weak government oversight, mandis—which were set up to help farmers—instead often act as a cartel-like monopsonists, extracting profits from farmers and consumers alike. Beginning in the early 2000s, these abuses led many states to attempt to reform the mandi system. The nature and efficacy of the reforms have varied widely, and have included allowing private mandis, bulk purchases, and contract farming. For example, short-term success was seen with PepsiCo setting up pre-agreed contract prices and access to drip irrigation techniques, access to land management experts, and financial tools for potato farmers. The farmers made less risky money and became more efficient; Pepsi received cheap potatoes for its Lay’s brand chips. However, this arrangement eventually soured when PepsiCo sued farmers in Gujarat over the non-sanctioned use of patented potatoes. Though these reforms did not solve the underlying problems farmers face, they represented a step in the right direction. In India, the average farm is less than three acres (versus a U.S. average of 442), and farmers are often unable to negotiate properly due to their fractured organization. Amongst a slew of possible solutions—such as deregulating ownership laws to facilitate consolidation or intensely investing in agricultural infrastructure—there is one model that has already had great success in India: the co-operative. For instance, the dairy industry is led by large brands like Amul and Nandini, consortiums of dairy farmers developed during the “White Revolution” in the 1940s. These co-operatives originally functioned with farmers providing milk at collection points where they are issued a receipt. The co-op can then sell to traders, vendors, or directly to consumers. Expenses like salary, transportation, storage, and marketing are paid out of revenues, with the profit being paid back to farmers proportionally to the milk they contribute, accounting for 80 to 82 percent of revenue at Amul, Gujarat’s co-operative. The access to information and negotiating power that comes from consolidation allows farmers to make more from each ounce of milk they produce. Co-operatives can negotiate directly with large purchasers of produce, or at least shorten the supply chain, thereby cutting out many layers of inefficient bureaucracy that currently plague the mandi system. For the dairy industry, this system increased both the dairy supply and farmer salaries. Such pooling also helps farmers better utilize financial tools critical to the industry. Access to credit and insurance for India’s farmers is incredibly difficult. Banks—many of which are state-owned in India—are difficult for farmers to borrow from as they have strict risk requirements and face recurring government loan waivers that hurt their balance sheet. Instead, the vast majority of farmers receive credit from private sources with very high interest rates and collateral demands. A system that does away with the same information and negotiating power disparities by operating through a co-op allows financial institutions to diversify their risk to an extent, and in time might even allow it to be done in-house. Co-operatives can also help farmers access modern agricultural technologies, lower input costs, and better management techniques. India’s success in the White Revolution resulted in an increase in dairy output, lower prices, and increased profit for farmers. India is a country where both farmers and consumers suffer. High prices, food waste, and widespread malnourishment have held back the country’s development. By cutting out a corrupted system of middlemen and traders, co-operatives might be able to feed India’s growing population and ensure that farmers don’t get caught in debt traps.

Elizabeth Munn is the Spring 2019 volunteer intern with the Africa program at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. She is a student at George Mason University, studying global affairs and African studies. Women are responsible for 70 to 80 percent of all agricultural labor in Nigeria, and according to federal and state law, they have the right to hold and inherit land. But, only 10 percent of land owners in Nigeria are women. This discrepancy is also present elsewhere in Africa and around the world. In Nigeria, it is due in large part to the application of customary law to land and property ownership, which is more likely to be enforced and respected than law promulgated by federal and state governments. Under customary law, women rarely inherit land and typically cannot obtain land rights on their own. African communities will be some of the hardest hit by climate change, but protecting women’s land rights can help mitigate its effects. Both customary law in the south and Islamic law in the north discriminate against wives and daughters in land inheritance, but there are important distinctions. According to Hadiza Bala Usman, the head of the Nigerian Ports Authority, in the north women are “conditioned to think that they’re not meant to be out there.” For example, it is typical of a daughter in northern Nigeria willingly to relinquish any land she has inherited to her brothers as a gesture of familial allegiance.  The benefits of giving women more ownership of the land they work is evident. For example, to the south, in Ogun State, a devastating 2017 flood destroyed a significant portion of Ekaite Monday's crops. A mother of three, she has since utilized a local strategy of scattering her cultivated land over a large area, thereby ensuring that some of her crops remain unaffected by flooding in the future. But she was only able to do this because she owned the land she worked. Many women in Nigeria and across Africa are not able to make such decisions.  Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change, and it is has already been feeling the effects. In Nigeria alone, 1.7 million people are food insecure because of conflict driven or exacerbated by climate change. Due to climate change and other factors, the amount of arable land is decreasing as the population grows, threatening the 70 percent of Africans who rely on the land to survive. Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest cereal crop yields in the world, which is only predicted to worsen if the region fails to adapt.  Because women perform the majority of agricultural labor in Nigeria and elsewhere, they tend to have a more intimate relationship with the land than men. Studies have shown that women in Africa often hold traditional knowledge of weather patterns and seed varieties that enhance crop biodiversity and food security. In one such study, two groups of farmers in Liberia were asked to identify fifteen different seed varieties; one group only named a handful, while the other group, comprised entirely of women, identified and described all fifteen varieties. Ekaite Monday’s resiliency demonstrates that the knowledge and skills of many rural African women allow them better to respond to climate-caused food shortages and farm more sustainably than men. Male landowners, on the other hand, are more likely to be market-oriented and therefore to grow commercialized crops that contribute to biodiversity loss. It is important to understand how little formal law influences the lives of some rural women, including those in Nigeria. In order to ensure women’s right to land, these laws must therefore be adequately enforced. In general, women’s management of land in Africa fosters a more sustainable relationship between humans and the environment and improves resiliency to climate change. If women are empowered to own the land they work on, their communities will be better off.

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With 700 million pigs, China has about half of the world’s swine population, which makes up their primary source of protein. African Swine Flu is almost 100 percent fatal to pigs, is highly infectious, and there is no vaccination against it. The virus is also difficult to destroy—it tolerates extremes of heat and cold, and can exist on surfaces or in meat for days, even weeks. The usual way to contain the disease is to slaughter immediately diseased pigs. There is concern that the disease could spread regionally throughout East Asia. Vietnam is already taking steps to contain the disease, while in Europe, Romanian producers have slaughtered 135,000 pigs in an effort to contain the disease. At present, the disease does not appear to be present in the United States, and it does not spread to humans. The outbreak of the disease in China is raising concerns that pork production will fall. China may resort to importing pork. The United States is a major pork producer, but because of the current trade war with the United States, the Chinese are likely to look elsewhere, particularly to Europe.  What does African Swine flu have to do with Africa? Speculation is that the disease entered China not from Africa but rather from Russia. According to a UN agency, the strain of the virus in China is similar to that in Russia, Estonia, and Georgia. African Swine Flu’s origin is nevertheless in Africa [PDF]. It has been endemic on the continent for many years. In the wild, it exists in a cycle among ticks, wild pigs, bushpigs, and warthogs. “Bushmeat,” frequently a part of an African diet, includes wild pigs, bushpigs, and warthogs. With the introduction of swine into Africa, the virus spread to that species. African Swine Flu Virus would appear to fit the category of an “emerging infectious disease.” However, it appears to have been identified earlier than other infectious diseases of African origin, such as Ebola and HIV/AIDS. With the rapid growth of Africa’s population, progressive destruction of the rainforest and other natural habitats, climate change, and increased movements of goods and people across borders, it is likely that other, lesser known diseases will emerge. All the more reason for increased American cooperation and coordination with African ministries of health, African non-governmental organizations, and other health providers.   

President Trump tweeted on August 22 that he has directed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures” and the “large scale killing of farmers.” In his tweet, the president quoted Fox News host Tucker Carlson that “South African government is now seizing land from white farmers.” Carlson had interviewed Marian Tupy, a senior policy analyst at a conservative Washington think tank, who recently penned an article calling on Trump to “warn South Africa on land expropriations,” comparing the new South African policy with that of Zimbabwe. Among a number of rebukes from South African media, civil society, and government, Deputy President Mabuza stated that, “as the leadership of the ANC and government, we are clear that the implementation of land reform measures must not result in social fractures and racial polarization.” The widespread killing of white farmers is a trope of AfriForum, a predominately Afrikaner organization opposed to land reform on the basis that it is a threat to South Africa’s white population. In June, an AfriForum delegation visited Washington, D.C., and met with, among others, think tanks, the office of Senator Ted Cruz, USAID, and appeared on Carlson’s show. However, the far more credible AgriSA, an industry group, indicates that farm murders are at a nineteen-year low. With respect to the land issue as well as the murder rate, statistics are generally poor. Nobody really knows how many white farmers there are, nor is there a consensus definition of "farmer" or "farm worker," which clouds the data. Furthermore, statistics as to the racial distribution of land ownership in South Africa are also in dispute. That being said, that white South Africans own a majority of land and account for an outsized proportion of economic activity is clear. There is a general consensus in South Africa on the need for land reform, but less over what it should look like. The governing African National Congress has called for constitutional amendments that could broaden or clarify the government’s current ability to expropriate land without compensation, which already exists in the constitution as it is. President Cyril Ramaphosa has stated that land reform will follow the rule of law, and that its implementation must not adversely affect economic growth or food security. The issue of land reform is being dealt with in a transparent political process now underway. Reform will likely incorporate both the “release” of public or tribal trust land for redistribution, as well as “expropriation” without compensation from private individuals.  For outsiders, the South African debate over land reform is distorted by the experience of Zimbabwe. The Mugabe regime expropriated without compensation private land using vigilante violence and ignoring the rule of law and the rulings of the judiciary. By contrast, South Africa is a constitutional democracy with a record of following the law. The constitution limits what parliament can do and acknowledges the right to private property. Whatever the outcome of the current political process, the results will likely be challenged in the courts, which have a history of standing up to the government. Its decisions cannot be ignored by the government. A recent example clearly illustrates the fundamental difference between South Africa and Zimbabwe. The political transition in South Africa from former President Jacob Zuma, accused of hundreds of counts of corruption, to current President Ramaphosa occurred within legal and constitutional bounds and even followed ANC party procedure. In Zimbabwe, by contrast, President Robert Mugabe was deposed by his deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, with the help of the military in a thinly-veiled coup. For the umpteenth time, South Africa is not Zimbabwe.  

Tyler McBrien is a research associate for education at the Council on Foreign Relations. The land reform debate in South Africa has recently reached a fever pitch following parliament’s passage of a motion that opens the door for land expropriation without compensation through a constitutional amendment. Much of the country’s right wing, notably Afrikaans-speaking white descendants of early Dutch settlers known as Afrikaners, have mobilized against the February motion.  Parliament's actions come on the heels of growing discontent over the extreme disparity in wealth between white and black South Africans, which remains virtually unchanged two decades after apartheid. Land ownership, though only part of the poverty story, has emerged as a potent symbol of this racial inequality. Called South Africa’s “original sin” by President Cyril Ramaphosa, the dispossession of black-owned land and continued disproportionate white ownership features prominently in policy agendas and newspapers alike. AfriForum, a self-described Afrikaner rights group, has positioned itself as an especially vocal critic of land expropriation, which the group views as an existential threat to white South Africans. In their campaign against expropriation without compensation, AfriForum has launched appeals abroad, raising the specter of the murder of white farmers and stoking fears of “white genocide” among American, European, and Australian leaders and media outlets.  AfriForum can be convincing. On their trip to Washington, DC, in May, AfriForum heads Kallie Kriel and Ernst Roets visited, among other people and places, the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank. Following their visit, one senior policy analyst concluded that the “explicitly racist” policies of the current South African government echoed those under apartheid. Thousands have petitioned President Donald Trump to accept white South Africans as refugees to the United States. Australia’s home affairs minister urged his government to issue emergency visas to white farmers who needed protection from a “civilized country.” AfriForum’s activism has led to headlines like Newsweek’s “A White Farmer is Killed Every Five Days in South Africa and Authorities Do Nothing About It, Activists Say” and a Fox News segment that was accompanied by “White farmers are being brutally murdered in South Africa for their land. And no one is brave enough to talk about it.”  Due to unreliable or unavailable data, calculating the farm murder rate is a tricky business, and ascribing a racial motivation even trickier. Nevertheless, AfriForum regularly presents a misleading narrative and ignores data that undermines their claims. Numerous fact-checkers have explained in detail why their numbers do not tell the whole story. Caveats to the data notwithstanding, and though horrific farm murders do happen, a recent report based on police statistics, original research, and media reports from AgriSA, a South African agricultural industry association, found that farm murders are at a twenty-year low. Even beyond their spread of questionable statistics, AfriForum members routinely engage in apparent apartheid revisionism. Its leaders have argued apartheid was not a crime against humanity and have defended apartheid symbols. Despite AfriForum’s almost three-hundred-thousand-strong membership and self-portrayal as a civil rights organization, U.S. policymakers and foreign governments in general would do well to be cautious of AfriForum’s characterization of the “plight” of white South Africans.

The predominance of white ownership of land [PDF] is taken by many—perhaps most—South Africans as emblematic of the persistence of apartheid injustice. Hence, there have long been calls for the expropriation of white-owned agricultural land without compensation. That was a central tenant of the Pan-African Congress, a liberation-movement rival of the now-governing African National Congress, and of the Economic Freedom Fighters, at present the third largest party in parliament. (It has 25 seats compared to 89 for the Democratic Alliance and 249 for the ANC.) At its December 2017 party convention, the ANC also supported expropriation without compensation and on February 27, 2018, parliament overwhelmingly voted to begin a process that would amend the constitution to allow for expropriation of without compensation. The persistent poverty of much of its black majority is the greatest challenge to South Africa’s democratic government. Inequality of wealth largely follows racial lines. In 2015, more than 55 percent of South Africans were poor. According to Statistics South Africa, less than 1 percent of the total white population was poor, while 63 percent of black people, 37 percent of coloured people, and 7 percent of Indian/Asian people were poor. The nine percent of South Africa’s population that is white holds the lion’s share of the country’s wealth. Most blacks see their poverty as the direct consequence of apartheid. While it is true that since the transition to non-racial democracy the small black middle class has grown and a few oligarchs have emerged, wealth inequality among blacks is now much greater than that between whites and blacks. Many may be asking whether South Africa is going down the road of Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe seized white-owned agricultural land and helped destroy the economy. The short answer is no. For a start, South Africa is a constitutional democracy, not a parliamentary democracy, which means that the constitution limits what parliament can do. More to the point, it specifically guarantees the right to private property, meaning that expropriation without compensation would be immediately challenged in the courts. Therefore, the constitution must be amended. This vote has begun that process, but it is difficult and time-consuming.  Cyril Ramaphosa, state president and leader of the governing ANC, publicly supports expropriation without compensation, but also stresses that commercial agriculture and the country’s food security must be protected. A businessman and an oligarch, he is also committed to growing the economy to address poverty; that requires the confidence of foreign and domestic investors that their property rights will be respected. Therefore, white-owned farms, which dominate commercial agriculture, will likely be protected in the interest of the economy. South Africa is now about 60 percent urban, and urbanization is proceeding rapidly. Further complicating forced expropriation is the fact that African small-scale farming is not popular. Of those South Africans compensated for apartheid-era expropriation of their land, nearly all of them chose financial compensation rather than the return of their land. Of the land that has already been redistributed by the state, a credible estimate is that 70 percent of it is no longer in production. Nevertheless, land reform is an emotional and symbolic issue, especially in rural areas, and it is easily exploited as an issue by populist politicians. Where the practical need for land reform is most pressing is in urban and suburban areas, where there is substantial pressure from people leaving rural areas to look for work. Hence the emergence or expansion of informal settlements, mostly on government-owned land. State-owned land and tribal trust lands provide a possible venue for land redistribution without an impact on investor confidence or agricultural production. By and large, however, tribal chiefs would not like that approach because their control of tribal lands is basic to their local power. These chiefs were an important political constituency of former president Jacob Zuma, whom Ramaphosa has driven from office. This could spell an end to vetoes on land redistribution by tribal chiefs.

In what may be the beginning of a major policy shift in land policy from Mugabe’s regime, the Mnangagwa administration has ordered the return of Lesbury Farm in Manicaland to the Smart family, which had occupied it for eighty years. Manicaland is 165 miles from Harare near the border of Mozambique and is the second most populous province in Zimbabwe. In June, the farm was seized by heavily armed riot police from the Smart family and turned over to Trevor Manhanga, a bishop of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Zimbabwe and supporter of then-president Robert Mugabe. With the restitution to the Smart family, Chris Mutsvangwa—a leader of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association and an ally of Mnangagwa—said, “Land reform is over. Now we want inclusiveness. All citizens who had a claim to land by birthright, we want them to feel they belong and we want them to build new country because the economy is shattered.”  Under the Smart family, Lesbury Farm employed at least one hundred people, providing a livelihood for hundreds more extended family members of those employed. The Smart family was popular with the local people, in part because it paid its workers on time. The wholesale destruction of the commercial agricultural sector by the expulsion of white farmers gravely damaged the Zimbabwean economy and drove up rural unemployment. If the white farmers are to return to the land, commercial agriculture might quickly recover, with reductions in rural unemployment. Further, the return of farms might reassure potential investors in Zimbabwe that the Mnangagwa government will respect property rights. Such a policy shift would be particularly welcomed by the right wing of United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May’s Tory party, which has long supported the white farmers as a “kith and kin” issue. The June seizure of the farm followed a Mugabe speech in which the president called for all of the remaining white commercial farmers to be expelled from their land. Mugabe had made expropriation of white-owned land without compensation a central platform of his regime. According to Mutsvangwa however, with the economy again in tatters, economic pragmatism is apparently trumping ideology.