Focusing on the majority - rethinking agricultural development in Mozambique.

Abstract

This chapter examines if the huge majority of small farmers can be effectively reached by and benefit from policies and efforts to enhance their productivity and market access. With the recent large increases in international prices for a wide gamut of crops, agricultural investments will be more profitable and less risky, especially for organic fertilizers, animal traction, small-scale irrigation, and improved seeds and storage. This bodes a big change in farmers' receptivity to advice by extension officers if backed by project credit to promote irrigation, animal traction, improved storage and cooperative marketing for farmers organized in associations. Receptivity alone is, however, insufficient. Escape from the low-level production trap requires large, synchronized infrastructural and industrial investments to facilitate commerce and create value chains. Villages also require capital investment: focused, moderately sized, short term and preferably rotational, so that the funds move on to other farmers and villages. The vision and the effort must be big, also at the level of the village. If not, the majority will be ignored and impoverished--for generations.