Abstract
Agricultural intensification based on smallholders is among many economists viewed as a necessary developmental path to ensure food security and poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa. Increasingly, a one-sided focus on raising productivity in cereals has been questioned on environmental grounds, with the concept of sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI) emerging from the natural sciences as a way of advancing environmental and social needs simultaneously. SAI approaches have, however, been criticized for being both conceptually and methodologically vague. This study combines socioeconomic survey data with remotely sensed land productivity data and qualitative data from four villages in Tanzania. By triangulating and comparing data collected through ground level surveys and ground-truthing with remote sensing data, we find that this combination of methods is capable of resolving some of the theoretical and methodological vagueness found in SAI approaches. The results show the problems of relying on only one type of data when studying sustainable agricultural intensification and indicate the poor environmental outcomes of cereal monocropping, even when social outcomes may be forthcoming. We identify land use practices that can be considered both socially and environmentally sustainable. Theoretically, we contribute to a further problematization of the SAI concept.
Highlights
Despite a relative abundance of land and land-based resources, population growth currently outpaces agricultural production in sub-Saharan Africa
This is a sub-sample of a larger database—the Afrint database—which contains survey data for smallholder farm households collected in 23 villages in seven regions in three African countries—Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia—at four points in time—2002, 2008, 2013/15, and 2017/18
Remote sensing data broaden the scope of intensification studies beyond the narrow focus on cereal crops found in both policies as well as socioeconomic studies. The results in this sense indicate the poor environmental outcomes of cereal monocropping, even when social outcomes may be forthcoming. Neither of these methods can tell us about the mechanisms behind certain changes, —here, qualitative data are needed to shed light on why and how land use changes occur at the level of the smallholder
Summary
Despite a relative abundance of land and land-based resources, population growth currently outpaces agricultural production in sub-Saharan Africa. Raising agricultural productivity is increasingly seen as a necessary development trajectory to stimulate a domestic surplus which can be used to wean its countries off food imports, feed growing cities, and improve rural livelihoods. Among agricultural economists as well as policy-makers, reference is often made to the Asian Green Revolution and the role of intensified, smallholder-based cereal production in alleviating rural poverty, improving food security, and lowering urban food prices. Given the concentration of poverty in the rural areas of Africa and largely equitable land-holding structures, the smallholder-based agricultural development model has been advanced as a way of reducing poverty and setting African economies on the path to structural transformation and eventually modernization [1]. The Asian smallholder model has been questioned on the grounds of environmental and social sustainability
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