Farmers Review Africa Sept/Oct 2019 Farmers Review Africa September - October 2019 dig | Page 10

NEWS
history all of Africa’s famers are now potentially able
to present the credit, expenditure, production and
income records to make them bankable.
The next step will be to, “use the data from multiple
farmers collectively, to develop new supply chains
and markets,” said van der Westhuizen.
For example, if a grain mill in Kenya requires
2000 tons of a certain crop each month and
John Deere has the data on 100 farmers in that
district each with the potential to produce 20 tons
a month, the data can be used to build a supply
chain for the mill that also provides the farmers
guaranteed off-take.
This data-driven view of the broader supply
chain also gives John Deere Financial and other
financiers the confidence to extend credit, long-
lease machinery or fertilizer to these farmers,
secure in the knowledge that the farmers will
receive an income from the mill and be able to
pay.
Moreover, “if we know that the 100 farmers have
secure off-take agreements with a local mill, we
8 | September - October 2019
can provide tractors or harvesters to start-up
agricultural service companies to plough these
farmer’s fields and harvest their crops, only
collecting payment once the farmers have been
paid by the mill,” van der Westhuizen continued.
Using data in this way could justify further
investment in irrigation systems, beneficiation
plants, canneries or other industrial investment
relevant to expanding the agricultural value chain.
Taken to scale across Africa, this kind of data
has the potential to make most African countries
food secure, freeing up the billions in hard
currency that African governments currently
spend importing food. This would, “ease
Africa’s endemic hard currency crunches and
reduce sovereign debt - releasing resources for
development, infrastructure or education,” said
van der Westhuizen.
Given agriculture’s much lower barriers to entry,
farming also offers Africa far greater potential
to broaden economic inclusion compared with,
say, “hard currency-intensive mines which only
employ a small percentage of the population, for
a short time.”
Since agriculture, properly managed and
scientifically conducted, is more sustainable, the
sector has the potential to produce food indefinitely.
This offers Africa’s mineral export-dependent
economies the opportunity to diversify into much
more sustainable exports, “with a far higher potential
for beneficiation, industrialisation and economic
inclusion,” van der Westhuizen added.
This is all taking place in a global context in
which, over time, the value of agricultural goods,
especially food, is likely to increase relative to
industrial products.
“African policy makers struggling to replicate
the industrially-driven growth successes of
many post-World War II developing economies,
would do well to re-consider the vast export and
development potential presented by agriculture
in a food-scare and largely already industrialised
world,” says van der Westhuizen.
Fortunately, the technology is finally here, “for
Africa’s policy makers to use the new data available
on Africa’s farmers to place agriculture - and Africa
- at the heart of tomorrow’s global economy.”