Economic and Sociology Strategy for Yield Transformation of Subsistence Farms.

Economic and Sociological Strategies in Yield Transformation for Sub Sahara African Small Holder Farmers

Without a synergy of the right economic and sociological factors, decades of USAID and EU assistance for boosting agricultural programs have proven ineffective in reversing disaster level agricultural yields which underlay extreme poverty in Africa. With SSA approximately 500 million people locked into incomes of less than 1.25 per day and without the necessary strategy for a smallholder synergy of economic and sociological factors for success, many countries will be like Malawi, where 50% of five year olds are stunted in brain and body through malnutrition, many of them severely handicapped for life.

Five Economic and Five Sociological Strategies are necessary to sustain yield transformation for small holder farms in sub Saharan Africa.  

1.  Five Economic Strategies for Yield Transformations

a.  Fund Knowledge Strategy:  Extension services with consistent appropriate instruction in state of the art best practices conservation agriculture

b.  Fund Water Strategy:  Drip irrigation offers the only transformative capacities on the very small parcels burdened with the livelihood needs for families of 6 or more persons.

c.  Fund Optimal inputs for high yields including seed, fertilizers, herbicides, insecticide in transition to full CA within 3 years.

d.   Fund Post Harvest Infrastructure Development of Western efficiency in markets and post harvest care

e.  Fund  Worker Nutrition: Adequate daily nutrition for workers:   5,000 calories required, filling 3,000 deficit in worker's daily diets.

2.  Transform Social Capacity for Highly Efficient High Yield Agriculture

a.  Transform the 4 existing local village government structures toward accelerated change instead of bastions of resistance to change:  chief, privy counsel, elders, and common people.

b.  Transform acquisition to knowledge application by required continuing education into the economic strategies through literacy, numeracy, and technology use in farming.

c.  Transform attitudes and motivation by tying payouts to performance in monetizing efficiency improvements in task performance and virtue driven job behavior with leveraged income increases based upon naturalistic application of technical knowledge to their farming processes and labor utilization at the family level.

d.  Transform motivation to achievement and superior farm performance as intrinsic family rewards through enhanced relationship of husband/wife positive commitments to farm success and their family goals.

e.  Advance leadership development as a function of goal attainment in women and children equal to men.