ActionAid has brought attention to the farmers in across Africa who are daily grappling with widespread hunger and poverty with almost no resources or help from their governments.  The tagline “Farmers ‘shamefully neglected’ in fight against hunger” proclaims how serious the problem is in a continent plagued with famine and hunger.

In a New Report entitled “Fertile Ground” Actionaid has outlined how both governments and donors can work with small-scale farmers to half instances of hunger.  The research shows that agriculture can have twice the impact on poverty reduction as growth in other areas.  This is a realistic goal that involves simple re-invesments and small changes in spending patterns.

Governments in Africa currently spend a miniscule seven percent of their national budgets on agriculture (aid, infrastructure, lending etc.) despite the fact that seventy-fiver percent of impoverished people are living and working in rural areas.  Ninety percent of food grown in Africa is supplied by small-scale farmers, the majority of which are women.  They support families and without help, they are kept below the poverty line with the next generation already missing out on education and healthcare.

Melissa Hall, ActionAid policy officer, said: “Women and smallholder farmers are responsible for the vast majority of food grown in Africa but they’re being shamefully neglected by governments and donors alike in the fight against hunger.

This large number of rural workers have all the capabilities to lift themselves out of hunger and poverty, but a series of bad investment decisions and a syphoning of financial support away from farming has left them stagnant.

The problem is recent, ActionAid claims, with structural changes in the 1990s reducing farmers access to knowledge and innovation as well as credit and other financial support.  Other offshoots including soil degradation and climate change have left many developing countries dependant on food imports.  The suggested re-investments are already raising household incomes in some places and ActionAid is urging governments to implement them on a larger scale.  Where household incomes increase, the quality of life for children improves and the number of children living in poverty decreases.

There are success stories, one examples is Malawi, where smallholders have helped to end the cycle of famine and reduced the number of people needing food aid from 4.5 million in 2004 to under 150,000 in 2009 (see report for details).

To help ActionAid continue to spread these practices and give rural communities a chance to grow into health, click below.

UPDATE: Since writing this article, the the 20^th World Economic Forum on Africa, entitled, “Rethinking Africa’s Growth Strategy” has taken place in Tanzania.  One of the issues on the agenda was farming aid and how to make sure funding reaches those in need.  This action is bringing attention to the plight of farmers in need.