Land and water

Year after year, southern Africa is blanketed by palls of smoke. Traditional agriculture here is destructive for the soils and forests of the region and for the world’s climate. Millions of agricultural smallholders are starving, even though the land and water available to them should be more than sufficient for their needs. Governments and development agencies have made repeated efforts to modernize the region’s agriculture but have failed. Can foreign investors now come to the rescue as “saviours in the hour of need”? Or are such investors just grabbers of land and water who push Africa’s farmers even deeper into misery? Southern Africa’s agriculture is at a crossroads. Thomas Kruchem’s first-hand account breaks common patterns of thinking. It supplies a panorama of African reality, which all too frequently is obscured by whitewash or stereotypes laden with ideology.