Suchergebnisse

Central Lanera Uruguaya was honored by the Bank of the Republic of Uruguay as the country's leading exporter for 1986 based on such considerations as total volume, growth of annual sales and entry into new markets. Here a representative of the Inter-American Foundation tells how two decades of hard work by a producer-managed cooperative federation have begun to pay off

The World Bank's policy recommendations have come under extensive and often critical scrutiny in Nigeria, as elsewhere, since the military government adopted the main tenets of the World Bank's Structural Adjustment Programme [SAP]. SAP has had a major impact on agriculture, notably as a result of the substantial devaluation of the naira through the creation of the Foreign Exchange Market [FEM] and the abolition of the Commodity Marketing Boards [CMBs]. These long overdue reforms have sharply raised prices for export crops in naira and improved the competitiveness of crops grown in Nigeria as against imports. Less attention has been paid to the World Bank's policies for agriculture, despite the extensive involvement of the Bank, through the projects it has funded.
The World Bank's 1987 Agricultural Sector Review [ASR] sustains the analysis and recommendations of previous reviews of agricultural policy in Nigeria, notably of the Consortium for the Study of Nigerian Rural Development [CSNRD], and of the Bank itself. ASR recommends the development of what it calls 'tradeable' crops, cocoa, rubber and oilseeds, as well as maize and cotton, by applying 'improved' technical packages and raising 'management skills'. These were the intended foci of the crop rehabilitation projects and of the Agricultural Development Projects [ADPs] initiated and funded by the World Bank in the 1970s. It is apparent from the report and its annexes that these projects failed to realise the expected returns, but the report itself conceals the World Bank's own involvement.

A detailed report on the marketing problems, which Sudan is facing in its various efforts of selling its dura (and cotton) harvest. Local merchants are said to be uncertain, whether they would be allowed to enter the export business and get the necessary credit facilities. To overcome the repercussions of the stringent credit policy declared by the Bank of Sudan, the government together with the bank representatives have been negotiating a series of commodity contracts with Saudi Arabia, Iran and the European Economic Community. Other measures include the expansion of storage facilities for a strategic reserve in case of future shortages or emergencies. (DÜI-Asd)

Despite the economic recession in the Middle East, executive-recruitment firms working in the region are reported to be prospering, especially in the Gulf. Middle Eastern banks trying to adapt to the new economic realities look out for experts who can help them to introduce new services. They comprise strategic and marketing planners as well as credit specialists. (DÜI-Asd)

An examination of Sudan's most successful export industry, the Livestock and Meat Marketing Corporation, which is funded by the Sudanese government, Saudi Arabia, the World Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. The question raised is, whether the increasing problems of overgrazing and of acceleration of the spread of deserts in the arid north and west of the country are not bound to ruin part of the country's rural economy. (DÜI-Asd)

IT is widely acknowledged that the origins of Africa's hunger crisis lie only partly in weather patterns. A growing number of studies have emphasised the rôle which the state plays in creating a policy environment which either undermines or promotes commercial agriculture.1Much of the fault for the latter's poor performance in many areas of the continent is assigned to short-sighted government policies of excessive intervention in agricultural markets. The cardinal sins are considered to be price controls, food subsidies, and state-run marketing boards. As the external debt of African states grows, foreign lenders and aid donors impose economic reforms deemed necessary to address the long-run structural problems. The austerity packages of the International Monetary Fund, for example, aim to reduce demand in the borrowing country by cutting government spending on subsidies, while the World Bank focuses on stimulating agricultural production through a mixture of targeted investments and advice on how to change the pricing and tax structure so as to improve incentives for farmers.2

Zimbabwe's track record is being touted as the latest 'miracle' that should be copied in promoting agricultural production. It has indeed succeeded in producing food surpluses in most years and its African smallholders have greatly increased their contribution to marketed crop production since 1980. This article seeks to explore how far it can be the basis for a 'model' for agricultural development, at least for the 'labour‐reserve economies' of southern Africa (including even a reformed South Africa). In order to do that it first explores the basis for such success as has occurred but also spells out the limits of these 'successes', what areas of necessary agrarian transformation have not yet been addressed and how these might be tackled.
It will be shown that smallholders in the former 'reserves' have responded to removal of settler colonialism's imposed barriers and to the extension to them of new opportunities of credit and inputs and of centralised (not as the World Bank would prefer 'free' marketing structures, both of which had been built up to serve large‐scale white settler farming. These benefits have been confined to a minority of regions and of better‐off peasants and have not solved the problems of poverty faced by the majority. The long‐run need to transform the technical, social and environmental limitations of the agrarian system in the smallholder ('communal') areas and to generate a more democratic, productive and sustainable system have still to be tackled. It is argued that to do so will require a second stage of agrarian reform that will be constitutionally more possible in 1990, reform that integrates changes in 'communal' agriculture with continued redistribution of the large scale commercial holdings of the white settlers. In this respect Zimbabwe can build on its 'resettlement programme' which has been a qualitative success in production terms (though one whose positive record has been denied by various vested interests) even if not yet on a sufficiently large scale.