Although declared a “priority of priorities” in the early 1980s, agriculture did not allow Congo to be self-sufficient and restrict food imports. The authorities now want to intensify this agriculture in order to diversify the economy of the country, which is struggling to minimize its dependence on oil revenues.
From our correspondent in Brazzaville,
In the sugar town of Nkayi, located in the La Bouenza region of southern Congo, the spaces used by fifty-year-old Joseph are isolated in the middle of large sugar cane fields in Agricultural industry for sugar refining (SARIS). This farmer does not understand why men and women of his generation are not so interested in working in the countryside.
“There are few people working in the sector. For example, only I cultivate hectares in the area. The land is very rich, but people neglect agriculture here, he regrets.
Joseph started with a hoe before getting a tractor with the help of a private company. “Originally people thought agriculture was for the poor. Nowadays it is the rich who farm. You get rich when you grow, he explains.
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An underutilized agricultural potential
The agricultural potential of the Congo is invaluable, at least 10 million hectares of arable land, rainfall is abundant. Across the country, smallholder farmers mainly engage in agriculture with their own consumption. The authorities now want to intensify the pace of agriculture.
The political commitment is clearly expressed, according to Isidore Ondoki, national coordinator of the Commercial Agriculture Development Support Project. He thinks the time for speech is over.
“We can not have a priority that is only a priority for declarations. We must move from statements by our authorities to their implementation. In other words, when you read the Congolese state budget, you should feel that the government is revolutionizing its agriculture with the funds made available to the sector, ”advises Ondoki.
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“What we need is hybrid agriculture”
On the ground, Isidore Ondoki says what needs to be done concretely. “What we mean by the intensification of agriculture is first mechanization, therefore we do agriculture by machine. Secondly, when there is the machine, we must have very large cultivation areas. Third, you need to work for performance. This is done by preparing the soil, that is, improving the quality of the soil, but also the quality of agricultural seeds, he says.
Secretary-General of the Congolese Consumer Rights Observatory, Mermans Babounga has a proposal. “What we need is hybrid agriculture where we will have industrial agriculture on one side and family farming on the other,” suggests MermansBabounga.
While waiting to change its agricultural policy, the country continues to import its food from neighboring and distant lands for 700 billion CFA francs a year. This amount corresponds to 25% of the Congo budget for 2019 or 64.6% of the 2020 budget!
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