An example of why top-down schemes so often fall short of expectations
, a savannah in central Brazil. Could they be transformed by intensive farming, just as the thickets of thehave given way to fields of soya that transformed Brazil from a food importer to one of the world’s great breadbaskets? That was the thought behind Prosavana, a programme bringing Brazilian and Japanese expertise to Mozambique. Initiated in 2009, it aimed to lift agricultural production across an area of 107,000 square kilometres, roughly the size of Bulgaria.
Prosavana encountered similar suspicion. A decade on there is nothing to show for it except a small research lab and a few model farms. In a field outside Ribaue, a northern town, farmers have been helped by technicians to check market prices and start a savings group. Onions grow in neat rows. But this is merely a scratch on an immense landscape. With the main phase of Prosavana not yet begun, the project has mostly had the effect of planting the seeds of a civil-society movement.
Farmers call this argument patronising. “We are not children,” says Costa Estevao, who leads the peasant union in Nampula province. He says, accurately, that Prosavana aims to eliminate traditional ways of cultivation. He worries too about costly fertiliser and poisonous pesticides. Anabela Lemos, an environmental activist, says that governments and corporations want “to destroy the”, or peasant class. “That’s a big mistake, because they’re the ones who feed the world,” she says.
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