Justification for research on potato and sweetpotato
Importance of the Commodities :There is no single set of
reliable statistics on the production of potato and sweetpotato
in the PRAPACE member countries. Both crops are grown on
a small scale by millions of small farmers, and are either
consumed in the household or are sold through informal,
unregulated markets. In only a few cases has a Ministry
of Agriculture or other government agency put special effort
into the collection of reliable statistics; most of their
effort go into collecting data on the major export crops
like coffee and tea, or into cereal crops which are easier
to monitor through the marketing chain. Extension agents
typically provide estimates of area, which are multiplied
by standard yield coefficients to calculate estimates of
production. These yield estimates are rarely based on standardized
methods for crops cuts, and tend to be far below figures
obtained in on-farm trials conducted by researchers. The
lack of consistent data complicates the long-term monitoring
of trends and of impact.
The
FAO in Rome is the only source of comparative data across
countries. See table 2.1 showing the mean data for three
years, 1995-97 for PRAPACE member countries.
Click
here for table showing mean data for production trends
for the ten PRAPACE member countries. This region has
a total human population of ....million.
Potato:
For potato the total area reported is 308,000 hectares
and the total production reported is 1.7 million tons.
This represents approximately 40% of the potato production
reported in Sub-Saharan African.
Other important producing countries are South Africa,
Malawi, Cameroon and Nigeria.
Within the PRAPACE countries, the production is concentrated
in densely populated highland areas, over 2,000 meters
above sea level.
The largest area is planted in Kenya, where the reported
average yields of 2.7 t/ha are far below normal farm level
yields of between 7 and 15t/ha. Potato are consumed in
the area of production and in cities and towns, which
provide a growing market.
Average
per-capita production includes large lowland rural areas
where potatoes are hardly consumed at all. Actual consumption
in some highland areas of central Africa has been reported
as high as 80 to 90 kilos per person per year: average
urban consumption is more than triple theses values.
Sweetpotato
: Swetpotato is a classic food security crop, grown
on small plots by most farmers. For this crop, the total
area reported is 1.3 million hectares and the total production
reported is 5.7 million tons.
This is about 83% of the total production registered in
Africa as a whole. The crop is important in the densely
populated, mid-elevation areas (1,200 - 2,000 meters)
in the countries surrounding Lake Victoria, in Uganda,
Rwanda, Burundi, Eastern D.R Congo, north-western Tanzania,
and western Kenya.
It is grown on smaller scale in Southern Africa. In West
Africa, where cassava and yams are major staples, sweetpotato
is a relatively minor crop. Yields in Tanzania are significantly
under-estimated. Rwanda has been terribly disrupted since
1990: the registered population has declined from 7.5
to 5.4 million.
In the absence of good data from Rwanda, the FAO has reported
an increase in sweetpotato production from 0.8 to 1.0
million tons; this has increased the reported per-capita
production from 108 to 195 kilos per person, which must
be an over-estimate.
Production
of both crops has increased faster than the human population
for most of the past 35 years. This is quite different
from the picture for maize and other grains, for which
production has not been able to pace with demand.
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