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Food security impacts of industrial crop production in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review of the impact mechanisms

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Abstract

A number of industrial crops have been promoted in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to meet a range of policy objectives including economic growth, rural development, agricultural modernization and energy security. The food security impacts of industrial crop production have received extensive policyattention and have been widely discussed in the academic literature. There is, however, an overall lack of a clear understanding of these impacts due to thelarge diversity of industrial crops, and their varied modes of production, expansion areas, and impact mechanisms. This systematic review synthesizes theavailable knowledge on the interface of industrial crops and food security in SSA. In particular we identify key patterns with how different industrial cropsand impact mechanisms are represented and studied in the current literature, and how they intersect to affect food security. The current literature isfragmented, as most studies focus on single or small subsets of crops and impact mechanisms. Most studies capture mechanisms related to food access andavailability, rather than to food utilization and stability. A clustering analysis identified the main literature clusters that combine mechanisms related to foodavailability, access to food, and environmental impact. The overall analysis presented in this systematic review allowed us to identify priority policy andpractice domains that need to be targeted in order to improve the food security outcomes of industrial crop production in SSA.

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Notes

  1. Some major staple food crops in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) such as maize and cassava can also be considered as industrial crops in some contexts, as they can have non-food uses (such as for ethanol). However, these other uses are minor for maize as it is by far the main staple food crop across most of SSA. For other staple crops with industrial uses such as cassava, very few papers track the final end use. Hence it is difficult to understand whether these crops are used for industrial uses in a given context. In SSA, industrial crops are essentially cash crops, as they are cultivated overwhelmingly for income generation rather than household use.

  2. Different interpretations and definitions of food security have been proposed (Clay 1997; Gibson 2012; Jones et al. 2013). For this systematic review we adopted the four-dimension definition proposed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO 2006), namely food availability, stability, access, and utilization. Food availability generally relates to the food supply side, and addresses issues of food production, stock levels and trade. Access to food (both economic and physical) reflects the sufficient supply of food at the local, national and international levels. Food utilization relates to nutrient utilization within the human body. It covers various nutritional practices such as food intake and preparation, diet diversity, food distribution and the general nutritional status of individuals. Food stability reflects the stability of the three aforementioned dimensions over time, which is necessary for sustaining a stable food intake and overcome periodic risks and food insecurity. The stability dimension depends on various economic, socio-political, and environmental factors, and is occasionally considered as the dimension that integrates food availability, access and utilization (Ericksen 2008). Food security is a scale-depended multi-dimensional concept that relates to different levels such as the national, local and the household level (Pinstrup-Andersen 2009). At the national level, food security relates mainly to the supply side, and describes the availability and distribution of food to ensure healthy and nutritional diets. At the intra-household level food security represents a state where all household members have sufficient amount of food for their needs.

  3. This has also been observed in other SSA contexts, such as in urban areas (Haysom and Tawodzera 2018).

  4. Such food security trends might reflect broader national socioeconomic processes, with industrial crop expansion being one of these (de Graaf et al. 2011).

  5. Tobacco in Malawi is mainly produced in the Central, Northern and Southern regions (Chinangwa et al. 2017). Coffee is produced in many parts of Ethiopia, and mainly in the southern regions such as Sidamo, Harrar, Ghimbi and Limu (Moat et al. 2017). Cotton is grown in most regions of Burkina Faso (with the exception of the arid north regions), with the eastern cotton zone of Bobo-Dioulasso accounting for most of the production (Boafo et al. 2018). Cocoa production spans large parts of Ghana and Cameroon, and especially southern Ghana and western Cameroon. Oil palm in Cameroon was mainly concentrated in the Southwest region, but substantial recent expansion driven by informal mills occurs in the Littoral and Central Regions (Ordway et al. 2019).

  6. We exclude these observations consistent with the aim of this paper, which was to systematize the existing evidence about the different mechanisms through which industrial crop production affects food security in SSA. Observations with no effect or conclusive impact do not provide any information that could serve to understand this interface.

  7. We acknowledge that access to land is gender-differentiated in SSA and that equal access to land can have a much more direct effect on food security. However the gendered aspects of land access in national legislations and informal rules across SSA go beyond industrial crops. The reader is referred to other more comprehensive publications on the matter (Doss et al. 2015; FAO 2011).

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Acknowledgements

Authors acknowledge the financial support of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) for the Belmont Forum project FICESSA. Abubakari Ahmed was supported by a Monbukagakusho scholarship offered by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) through the Graduate Program in Sustainability Science - Global Leadership Initiative (GPSS-GLI) at the University of Tokyo. Linda Chinangwa acknowledges the support of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Sciences (JSPS), through JSPS KAKENHI Grant number JP15F15765.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Future Initiatives (IFI), University of Tokyo, Bunkyo City, Tokyo, 113-8654, Japan

    Marcin Pawel Jarzebski, Boubacar Siddighi Balde & Alexandros Gasparatos

  2. Department of Planning, University of Development Studies, Unnamed Road, Tamale, Ghana

    Abubakari Ahmed

  3. Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Studies, University of Ghana, Legon Boundary, Accra, Ghana

    Yaw Agyeman Boafo

  4. Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS), United Nations University, Shibuya City, Tokyo, 150-8925, Japan

    Linda Chinangwa & Osamu Saito

  5. Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Pretoria, South Africa

    Graham von Maltitz

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  1. Marcin Pawel Jarzebski
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Jarzebski, M.P., Ahmed, A., Boafo, Y.A. et al. Food security impacts of industrial crop production in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review of the impact mechanisms. Food Sec. 12, 105–135 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-019-00988-x

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