#engineeragriculture — Public Fediverse posts

Successive Zambian administrations have been among the most enthusiastic adopters of the kinds of policies recommended by the Gates Foundation. The country is a poster-child for Agra’s drive to industrialise African agriculture, having implemented in 2009 a new subsidy programme to incentivise farmers to switch to commercial seeds and intensive fertiliser use. More than a million farmers did.
But, instead of increasing yields, the new approach simply increased farmers’ vulnerability to climate shocks like the current drought, the new report concludes.