The Forgotten Entrepreneurs: How Africa’s Subsistence Farmers Can Feed the World and Save the Planet
By Benjamin Murphy; Edited by Andrew Ma
Introduction
Many of Africa’s most vulnerable entrepreneurs are subsistence farmers. For Africa’s subsistence farmers, food produced through agricultural activity is the main source of food for the farming household, with little to no surplus available to sell. Subsistence farmers are stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty without the resources to increase their land’s productivity or their family’s income, tilling the land not for profit, but for survival. Many of these entrepreneurs rely on tools such as hoes, cutlasses, and fire to cultivate their land, achieving a fraction of their potential crop yields and in countries such as Ghana earning an average income of $1.25 per day.
This cycle of low productivity and poverty not only limits economic opportunity, but also harms the environment. Traditional farming methods contribute to soil degradation, carbon emissions, and deforestation. However, with access to improved tools, financial support, and sustainable practices, these farmers could become central players in a regenerative agricultural movement that increases food security and combats climate change.
Africa's Untapped Agricultural Potential
Africa holds nearly 60% of the world’s remaining uncultivated land. Its agricultural market is projected to reach one trillion dollars by 2030. Yet the continent still imports almost 80% of the products consumed locally. Despite abundant land, favorable climate conditions, and a growing population, African agriculture remains underdeveloped.
One reason for this underdevelopment is the propensity of smallholder farmers in Africa, who grow 70% of the total food produced in Africa. In West Africa, many subsistence farmers use methods such as slash and burn, hand hoeing, and monoculture farming. These techniques degrade soil quality by destroying nutrients and causing erosion, ultimately leading to lower crop yields. The productivity gap is stark: some farmers in Sierra Leone harvest just 500 kilos of rice per hectare, whereas farmers in Argentina produce nearly 8,000 kilos on the same amount of land.
The environmental cost of African agriculture is also rising. Between 2000 and 2020, greenhouse gas emissions from agrifood systems decreased in all parts of the world except for Africa and Asia, where they grew by 35 and 20 percent, respectively.
This trend can be reversed. A study by Bain in collaboration with Nature United found that regenerative farming practices can increase income and reduce emissions. When farmers utilize regenerative farming practices, emissions can be cut in half for every hectare of land farmed. Ghana provides a compelling example of both the challenges and the opportunities for transformation.
Ghana: A Case Study of Challenge and Opportunity
Ghana is a booming agricultural economy. Agriculture made up almost 21% of Ghana's gross domestic product in 2021. Key crops include maize, rice, cassava, yam, plantain, cocoyam, oil palm, rubber, cocoa, citrus, pineapple, and taro. Between 1975 and 2000, agricultural land use increased from 13 to 28 percent of the total land area in Ghana.
Despite this growth, 72% of Ghana's farmers are considered to be subsistence farmers with an average income of $1.25 per day. Emiliano Mroue, the founder of Warc, a social enterprise focused on agricultural transformation, explains the daily challenges these farmers face. For example, clearing two hectares of land with manual tools may take days, but burning the land takes only a few hours. Tilling the soil by hand may take a month, and when rains come, exposed soil erodes quickly, reducing future productivity. Thus, many farmers opt for burning, which is a faster, but comparatively more harmful method that releases carbon and depletes soil health.
Many subsistence farmers are trapped in a cycle where they lack the cash flow and assets needed to access traditional loans for purchasing key agricultural inputs that would boost their productivity. Yet without access to these inputs, they cannot increase their productivity, and thus remain unable to improve their cash flow or build assets.
The Role of Social Enterprises
Warc and other organizations are proving that scalable solutions exist. Warc provides bundles of agricultural inputs on loan to these subsistence farmers, including seeds, fertilizers, mechanization services, and guidance on sustainable crop rotations. These inputs allow farmers to increase their crop yields by 3 or 4 times and their income by 5 to 10 times.
These inputs benefit the environment as well. Warc promotes no-till farming, which protects the soil, reduces erosion, and improves long-term land health, allowing farmers to improve productivity and protect the environment.
The results are promising. In Ghana’s Talensi District, a dryland region where 80% of residents rely on agriculture, fisheries, and forestry for employment, a farmer-managed natural regeneration project that utilized regenerative agriculture practices helped restore degraded land. Among participants, 64% saw an increase in soil fertility, and there was more than a 10% drop in households experiencing crop failure.
A Path Forward for People and the Planet
Profit and sustainability can go hand in hand. Supporting Africa’s subsistence farmers in adopting regenerative agriculture offers a rare opportunity to address poverty, food insecurity, and climate change at once. With the right investment, Africa’s forgotten entrepreneurs can do more than survive. They can nourish their communities, drive the continent’s agricultural transformation, and safeguard the planet for future generations.
