2023-05-18 18:00:35
Encircled between dunes and the Atlantic coast, green plots dot the coastal village of Mboro, a locality where the population practices horticulture. This Niayes region, in the northwest of Senegal, is the country’s main market gardening area. Agriculture is intensive and intensive in mineral inputs (pesticides and fertilizers). This is where the Senegalese mangoes and green beans exported to Europe come from.
For the past year, Khalifa Seydi Ababacar Ba, a market gardener from Mboro who grows potatoes and onions, has been faced with a problem: “I can only buy two bags of fertilizer compared to three before because the prices have exploded”, he laments, sitting under a tree preparing the attaya, the mint tea. In a few months, the price of a bag of urea (a nitrogen fertilizer) has increased by 60% and that of NPK (generic fertilizer composed of nitrogen – N –, phosphorus – P – and potassium – K) has multiplied by three. An outbreak due to the recovery in demand after the Covid-19 pandemic and which was accentuated with the war in Ukraine, a source of tension and shortages on the world fertilizer market.
“For a few months, urea, mainly imported from Ukraine and Nigeria, disappeared from the Senegalese market”, reports Pape Yoro Touré, manager of a consignment store for mineral inputs in Mboro, who has lost around 50% of his income since the start of the war in Ukraine. “Many farmers have not reached their production target because yields were affected,” explains Mamadou Ndiaye, coordinator of the Association of Market Gardening Unions of Niayes, a drop that he attributes to various factors, including the shortage of fertilizers and the rise in temperatures.
Subsidize organic and bio fertilizers
“The war in Ukraine has heightened awareness of our partial dependence on imported fertilizers”, recognizes Macoumba Diouf, director of horticulture at the Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Equipment and Food Sovereignty. He estimates the share of imported mineral fertilizers used in the country at 15 to 20%: in addition to urea, special fertilizers – for onion crops, cherry tomatoes, beans, etc. – are imported from Europe, from Turkey or Morocco. A problem that also affects organic fertilizers, which are imported – especially from Europe – at 60%.
Senegal’s quest for more autonomy in terms of fertilizers is not recent: already underway, timidly, ” In the 1980’s “ as it recalls Astou Camara Diao, director of the Senegalese Institute for Agricultural Research, has experienced an acceleration over the past four years with the advocacy for an agroecological transition carried by a network of producers, consumers, NGOs and local elected officials, the Dynamique pour une transition agroécologique au Senegal (Dytaes).
Under the impetus of this network, an Emerging Senegal Green Plan was adopted by the State in 2019, with the flagship measure of subsidizing organic and organic fertilizers (compost and manure). Concretely, the bags of organic fertilizers are subsidized up to 50% of their price, at the same level as the subsidies granted to the purchase of chemical fertilizers. But the latter remain, in volume, the first beneficiaries of this aid – only 10% of the aid for the purchase of fertilizers goes to organic fertilizers, even if the minister announced in February that he wanted to double the envelope dedicated to green manures.
If at the ministry, Mr. Diouf assures that “Senegal wishes to develop agro-ecological agriculture to protect itself against climate change and economic shocks”, the country maintains a paradoxical position: the interest is clear, but the measures taken within the framework of the program for sustainable food sovereignty adopted in 2022, such as the labeling of products or the 30% reduction in synthetic inputs by 2035, are hardly or not applied. On the ground, the results are mixed and the country remains torn between an agricultural model based on competitiveness and productivity and the promotion of agroecology.
Aid below real needs
According to a survey by the Center for International Cooperation in Agricultural Research for Development (CIRAD) on the 2021 organic fertilizer subsidy campaign in Senegal, 58% of the 218 farmers questioned were unaware of it and only 15% were able to get it. “Often, these fertilizers are distributed to farmers participating in NGO projects. If producers are out of these programs, they are largely deprived of them”, supports Raphaël Belmin, agronomist and researcher at CIRAD in Senegal.
Vegetable producer in Mboro, Thierno Gningue was able to benefit from bags of organic fertilizers at half price, by engaging in a training program. But it takes “between 10 to 15 more bags of organic fertilizer compared to mineral fertilizers for the same plot. And every year, from March, stocks become insufficient throughout the country,” he details.
The aid allocated remains well below real needs, especially since not all regions are covered. “The state justifies it by saying to focus on people engaged in agroecology. In reality, the needs of producers are struggling to go up because they are not in contact with state actors”specifies Mr. Belmin, who deplores a lack “of real political will”.
The government thus continues to largely support the use of mineral fertilisers, through the subsidies introduced since the country’s independence in 1960: over the last decade, the use of mineral fertilizers has doubled, from 84,000 tonnes in 2012 to 160,000 tonnes in 2022. Even though the average of 25 kg of mineral inputs used per hectare of arable land in Senegal is far from the world average of 146.4 kg, the soils and the environment have been degraded by this use, coupled with monoculture, the absence of fallow land as well as climate change (salinization of land, falling rainfall, etc.). According to a 2013 national estimate, two-thirds of the country’s arable land is thus considered poor or poor to average, that is, its fertility is reduced.
The market remains a niche
Despite the worrying state of arable land, the Ministry of Agriculture considers it impossible to currently switch to all organic, but believes in the development of local solutions. The situation could favor them: “As the price of mineral fertilizers increases, farmers are starting to get interested in compost. There is a future in this sector,” observes Jacques Sarr, technical adviser at La Compostière, a unit producing compost with coconut palm branches, fish waste and animal waste.
Initiatives are emerging, but the market remains a niche: created in 2019 in Mboro, the structure can produce 18 tonnes of compost in sixty days but only sold 15 tonnes in 2022. Its customers are mainly organizations which then redistribute it through support programs for the agro-ecological transition.
Other farmers, like Mr. Gningue, engaged in an agro-ecological transition after noticing soil degradation among his neighbours, want to produce their own compost for more autonomy. A hundred agro-ecological initiatives have been identified in the country by Dytaes, but the applications are still very minimal and scattered on the ground.
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