AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS IN SOMALIA

AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS IN SOMALIA

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 General description of Agricultural in Somalia

Agriculture is an important economic activity in Somalia not only in terms of meeting the food needs of the residents but also in terms of generating income through crop sales and agricultural labor opportunities.  Agriculture is a major section particularly for two of the main pastoral livelihood systems in the Horn of Africa country: Agro-pastoralist, mix of agriculture and livestock production based livelihood and Agriculturalist, agriculture based livelihood. The cultivated area was 1 071 000 ha in 2002, of which 1 045 000 ha arable land and 26 000 ha permanent crops, while permanent pastures covered 43 000,000 ha. The climate in Somalia is mainly arid to semi-arid, with an average annual daytime temperature of 27ºC. The mean annual precipitation is 282 mm, with 50 mm along the northern coast, 500 mm in the northern highlands, 150 mm in the interior plateau and 350-500 mm in the southwest. Somalia has one of the highest inter-annual variations of rainfall of any mainland African state, and it is this variability that has the most pervasive influence on pastoral and agro pastoral production systems. Rainfall distribution is bimodal. The rains seasons being the Gu (April to June), which has most rains and the Deyr (October to November). The dry seasons are the Jilal (December to March) and the Hagaa (July to September). The country is regularly subjected to drought, occurring moderately every 3-4 years and severely every 7-9 years.

1.2 EARLY AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES IN SOMALIA

Agricultural cooperatives play an important role in enhancing food security and creating sustainable check for youth, women and small-scale farmers. little and intermediate scale farmers increase touchable income from agricultural cooperatives that lead to food security and poverty alleviation for hundreds of thousands of urban population.

In 1973 the government accepted a law on national agricultural cooperatives in that year agriculture absorbed 10% of all available resources, but a year later this percentage had already risen to 29%. There were three types of cooperatives: multipurpose cooperatives, group farm cooperatives and production cooperatives. The common use of the factors of production was future to prepare work on the land for the more advanced and final development phase of the cooperatives, when production cooperatives were to be created.

According to Galooley, a region in the district of Gabiley in the north west of Somalia, and is the area where the first cooperatives were formed in 1973 by members of the government who made agreements with farmers. On a conference was held to promote the improvement of the cooperative business organization as compared to individual efforts and the government’s target to help the development of cooperatives on condition that farmers agreed to form their own cooperatives.

State help consisted mostly in providing tractors and a sum of 30,000 Somali shillings. These funds were used to build one single big central cooperative, which was completed in 1974 with the help of farmers. the members of this cooperative were asked to move on to the highest stage of cooperatives, the Tacabwadaag. Ideally, As there were not sufficiently large areas of land available in the Galooley area, farmers contributed by adding together a small part of their own land to the Tacabwadaag, at the same time as the state participated by donating tractors and other tools After the harvest and farmers had been paid, the additional went into a common fund. Surpluses were possible because those who worked in the Tacabwadaag businesses had their own fields and therefore were totally or partially self-sufficient. If the harvest were insufficient for the needs of the members of the Tacabwadaag, then the common preserve was dipped into to help them.

There were two projects in this field of Golooley which were particularly important: The Northwest Region Agricultural Development Project (NWAP) and the Agricultural Extension and Farm Management Training Project (AEFMET). The NWAP aimed at self-sufficiency in wheat. It built on the bonding work started by the British administration in the 1950s and U.S. Agency for International Development in the 1960s. Most of the funding for the project (72%) was provided by the World Bank which gave a loan of 10 million dollars. The objective of this project was aimed at the consolidation of the soil by building solid embankments to reduce erosion and to store water for agricultural purposes. The other project, Agricultural Extension and Farm Management Training Project (AEFMET), also financed by the World Bank, was set up in 1970 and continued until the end of regime. It was planned to overcome the lack of technical and administrative expertise at the Ministry for Agriculture. The main objective was to improve agricultural productivity, especially of small businesses, and to spread new and better farming methods. One of the target areas was situated in the region of the Middle Shabelle to the north of Mogadishu, outside the regional capital of Jowhar and one of the most evolved agricultural regions of the country, where rice was introduced for the first time and developed.

The cooperatives for national development did not concern just the agricultural sector, but also included pastoral farming, where there was a need to assurance the renewal and administration of pastoral lands. In addition to administering the land, the government organized education programs for the nomadic populations, especially for the young. Siad Barre sent children who had finished their schooling in towns to spend a year doing civil service with nomadic families to teach adults to read and write and to give a basic education to children. Attempts were also made to improve the provision of health and veterinary services.

The large drought between 1974 and 1975 hit pastoral farming badly. In the north of Somalia tens of thousands of animals died: totaling more than 7 billion Somali shillings (almost 1,000 billion lire at the time) of economic damage. From 1978 onwards in the aftermath of the calamity and with the help of the USSR, Somalia relocated about 90,000 nomadic herdsmen who had lost all their livestock to cooperatives in agricultural villages and fishing ports along the coast.

New cooperatives appeared at Dujuuma (18, 000 hectares) on the banks of the River Jubba, at Kurtunwaarey (6,000 hectares) near the Shabelle River and at Sablaale (6,000) near Kismayo. However, the finance promised by the World Bank and cooperation from Kuwait in the production of rice, maize and beans were not sufficient to transform the nomadic way of life.

At the end of the 1970s the Somali economy was suffering from the effects of both a war and a drought, but in that period the greatest damage was caused by the abnormal growth of native debt and the collapse of the industrial sector. In 1978 Somalia’s debt stood at 4 billion shillings, equal to 25 years of banana exports, the Somali economy no longer attracted foreign investment as it had done previously because of the accumulation of debt and delays in repaying it.

The financial weakness of Somalia led to the country being taken under the control and administration of international financial institutions and it lost control and management of the macroeconomic level of the system. The Somali economy had thus entered a phase of total stagnation.

1.3 LATE AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES IN SOMALIA

A cooperative means uniting people to help everybody, and this is already a social pattern in Somali culture. We felt that when farmers come together and form a group, it is easier for them to share resources like equipment, new farming techniques, ideas and access to services.

The civil war in Somalia is responsible for the missing institutions and the ‘black hole’ in governance and public administration that is the main barrier to developing sustainable agricultural practices. There is also a lack of agricultural inputs and services due to lack of availability and access. Also the knowledge and information on farming practices is very limited as well as there is lack of information about inputs. Small farmers produce nearly all types of the crops, except the fruit crops which are grown by the commercial farmers. Their production system is traditional with less improved seeds, no use of fertilizers, chemicals and other inputs.

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In the past Years, Cooperatives operated in many locations in Somalia, including both irrigated and rained areas. The government through its Cooperatives agency and run by hired government officers controlled the cooperatives. All cooperatives seized functioning when the Somalia central government collapsed in 1991. Members of Cooperatives disappeared and those remaining have been engaged in private fields since all properties of the government, including their communal lands, were looted or usurped by gun militias. In Somalia, Now farmers do not produce enough sufficient production in the country because farmers use traditional practice and not found sufficient technical and support service. So that their production is low. In addition the linkage b/w institution and the farmers do not exist. The major problems are lack of investment, limited technical skills and knowledge, improved varieties suitable different agro climate condition and post management, in efficient farming system, and poor water management.

However in Somalia, there is no any farm organization or farm cooperatives exist in the past 20 years due to lack of effective government and institutions whose supports farmers to increase their production.

1.4 CONCLUSION

The cultivated area was 1 071 000 ha in 2002, of which 1 045 000 ha arable land and 26 000 ha permanent crops, while permanent pastures covered 43 000,000 ha. And they not produce farmers enough sufficient production in the country. And we know that cooperatives create social relations that enable individuals to achieve goals that they may not otherwise be able to achieve by themselves. The cooperatives exchange ideas and information between them in order to improve food storage, cultivation and links to markets. Inside the cooperative, the farmers preserve a strong network with each other and have the right to adapt to new agricultural innovations and better crop production and farming techniques, which result in higher yields. As a group, they can access farmers and advocate larger entities and organizations also they would produce enough sufficient yields for the country after making use of the cooperatives through farming skills.

Authour: Abdirizak Ali Abdullahi

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