Social science - Assignment PDF

Running head: SOCIAL SCIENCE
SOCIAL SCIENCE
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SOCIAL SCIENCE
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The Economist published a new article regarding agriculture production that was required
extensively in the African region. The article was able to display the need for government
support — the ideas that political obstacles are acting as a hindrance for agricultural productivity
(Hielscher et al. 476). The barriers include governance of the government as well. In this paper,
the article published by The Economist is subjected to critical commentary. The paper aims to
analyses the article that intends to discuss the agricultural situations of Africa.
According to Chambers, Africa’s majority of the population lives in rural areas, and they
are highly depended on agriculture for their livelihoods. The article have also mentioned the
same statement. Agriculture in Africa is crucial both human welfare as well as economic
development. Majority of Africa’s population is depended on agriculture for their livelihoods.
They live in extreme poverty and earn meagre wages. Most of the poverty and hunger in Africa
is for the lack of sufficient food production. There is insufficient income generator from the
small-scale farming. Farmers in the small scale are poor and fail to afford necessities for proper
production of food such as water supply, pest control, inequitable land distribution and many
more. All these conditions of African farmers and agricultural situations give insights on the
importance of agriculture in Africa. The reason these information is shared is to highlight the
importance of agriculture in Africa.
The article ‘How does your garden grow?’, published in The Economist have provided
some insights on the same issue. The article begins giving a brief description of the past situation
of Butajira and Gullu. The land that was fertile earlier has become opposite in recent days.
According to Getahun Shumulo, crops can be grown more if a farmer follows what the
government says. Similar to Getahun, there are several farmers that are anticipating
transformation. The more money they have to spend on agriculture the more profit they can

SOCIAL SCIENCE
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make. However, on the other hand, the people in the rural place are on the verge of letting go
farming as profession and moving out of the rural area to town. They tend to be more productive
spending longer hours than the hours they spent in the field.
Since 2002, the per cent of African workers engaged in agriculture has decreased from
66% to 57%. However, the percentage of agricultural production has grown to at an average
level of 4.6% a year. Even though there is an increase in percentage, the region is lagging
behind. Through research, it has been found that most of the production has come from increased
land and not improved productivity, which should have been the actual source of the increase in
production (The Economist).
The process of increasing the agricultural yield that is observed mostly in rural areas of
the world is improved productivity. However, the process does not seem to occur in Africa. The
government has been a sort of obstruction in this process. It is the role of government that is
most important in this situation. The most important partner is the government. However, it has
not been the way it is in other countries, and Africa is the weakest link.
According to Collier and Dercon, the government is the one that should be enduring the
responsibility of public goods including research and roads, and perform regulation of market
lightly as well as in a fair manner. Therefore, in Africa, these essential duties are not entirely
performed in the right way which creates a significant problem. Farmers are reluctant and
uninterested in investing in their agriculture as there is hardly any profit made by them due to
awash market. For some farmers getting the crops to market are even more robust due to bad
roads.