Agriculture

This year, AGRA, the donor-funded agricultural development initiative formerly known as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

AGRA’s slogan is “sustainably growing Africa’s food systems”, but for years, researchers and farmers have warned that the policies it promotes are having a negative impact on African agriculture.

Our new research provides more evidence to that effect. We have documented how AGRA’s Green Revolution, with its well-funded promotion of commercial seeds, fertilisers and other inputs, has failed to spur the “productivity revolution” promised by its founders.

Worse still, its promotion of monocultures, such as maize, has led to the massive expansion of land dedicated to them. At the same time, more resilient and nutritious local crops, such as millet, are losing ground.

Funding the loss of traditional crops

Hunger continues to increase in Africa, driven by climate change, desertification, conflict and disruptions to international supply lines from international conflicts like the Ukraine war. The Green Revolution promoted by AGRA does not seem to have made much of a difference.

In countries where AGRA has had significant presence, the number of undernourished people has increased by about 60 percent – roughly the same rate as the rest of the continent.

The United Nations is calling for greater attention to “affordable healthy diets”. For Africa’s small-scale farmers, who grow what their families and communities eat, that means more, not less, crop diversity, which is the opposite of what the Green Revolution has produced.

In countries that have participated in AGRA projects, crops such as maize are promoted and funded with billions of dollars in subsidies and investment. Despite that, yields for maize have grown only modestly, just 40 percent over 18 years, well below the 100 percent improvement promised by AGRA.

Some countries, like Malawi and Ethiopia, have seen stronger yield growth for maize, but some, such as Kenya – where AGRA’s headquarters are located – have seen yields decline.

Maize production has soared across participant countries, driven mainly by the massive expansion of plantings as subsidies drive farmers to plant maize on new land.

In contrast, our research shows that traditional African staples such as sorghum, cassava, and groundnuts have lost land and investment. Since AGRA was launched in 2006, 13 countries that have participated have seen a decline in productivity of 21 percent for cassava and 10 percent for groundnuts in total.

But millet – a climate-resilient, nutritious grain – is the crop that has suffered the most. Before 2006, millet was as prevalent as maize in these countries. Since 2006, millet production has fallen 27 percent, while maize production has more than doubled. Millet yields have fallen 17 percent with the lack of investment. And as land allocated to maize production increased 71 percent, land for millet fell 12 percent.

Millet is not some backward crop waiting to be replaced by maize. For generations, it has fed communities across some of Africa’s driest regions. It can withstand heat and drought, grow with relatively few external inputs, and provide nutritious food where other crops struggle.

In 2023, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) celebrated the “Year of Millets”, highlighting the multiple benefits of the crop to the environment and social welfare.

The same is true of many of Africa’s traditional crops – sorghum, fonio, cowpeas, cassava, indigenous vegetables and many others. They are part of the biological diversity of African farming, but also of our cuisines, knowledge and cultures.

At a time of climate change, pushing such crops aside makes particularly little sense. Farmers need more options in their fields, not fewer. A diverse farm spreads risk: when one crop suffers from drought, pests or disease, another may survive. Rotation and diversity of crops help keep soils more fertile.

Valuing diversity

Rhetorically, AGRA now professes to value the very crops that its Green Revolution helped push to the margins. It speaks of diverse, nutritious and climate-adapted crops, and its seed programmes include millet, sorghum, cowpea, groundnut and others.

We welcome serious investment in these crops. It is overdue. But there is no indication that AGRA and other Green Revolution proponents will abandon their chosen monocrops, such as maize. AGRA’s current seed strategy still emphasises improved varieties, certified seeds, faster variety turnover, commercialisation and market-oriented seed systems.

Investment needs to support farmers’ rights to save, use, exchange and develop their seeds, protect crop diversity and indigenous knowledge, and ensure that farmers and communities – not seed markets alone – determine which varieties survive and spread.

African farmers do not need saving, but their crops – millet, sorghum, cowpea, fonio, and other traditional crops need to be rescued from Green Revolution crop-breeders.

When a traditional crop disappears from farmers’ fields, we can lose locally adapted seed varieties, knowledge about how to grow and prepare them and foods that are central to local diets and identities.

This is why the decline of millet should concern us far beyond the millet field. Africa is already dangerously exposed to climate shocks and volatile international food and fertiliser markets. Diversity is one of our greatest protections against those risks. Yet we are subsidising its disappearance.

It is not enough for the UN to call for greater access for all to nutritious diets. For the majority of Africa’s rural populations, who are also among its least food-secure, crop diversity is key to diet diversity. It is time for AGRA, the African Development Bank, foreign donors and African governments to stop subsidising and promoting the crops that are driving the loss of such diversity.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Amid the grapevines that once provided a steady income for her family, 56-year-old Palestinian farmer Theeba al-Sabaa spends much of her day guarding her home and farmland in the occupied West Bank from settlers.

From dusk till dawn, she works on her land in the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron, known by locals as “Jabal Sabaa”.

Theeba is engaged in a daily battle against the encroaching settler outposts that have emerged among the rolling hills that surround her, and which block access to sections of her land.

“By God, the land has taught me patience, and to cling to my right, for as long as I have a right, I must take it and never let it go,” she told Al Jazeera.

“I will never leave it because I worked hard on it, I toil and sweat on it, so I will not leave my toil and sweat, or the toil of my children and my husband, to go to someone else.”

Weaponising livestock

Since mid-2024, when settlers established new outposts on the nearby hills, every one of Theeba’s moves has been monitored.

Settlers frequently approach the perimeter of her home and deliberately release livestock into the cultivated fields.

“They enter with their sheep into our land after we plow and fix it, grazing in it, trampling the crops, and stomping on them with their sheep, leaving nothing,” Theeba said.

“As soon as they feel any movement or anyone entering the land, you find them attacking us immediately.”

This intimidation extends to the adjacent fields, where 59-year-old Anwar Sabarneh lives with his extended family of seven brothers.

Due to the repeated settler violations, two of his brothers have been forced to abandon their land.

Sabarneh, who supports a family of 14, owns several dunams of vineyards located just 300 metres (980 feet) from his home. With aggressive settlers around, reaching them has become a dangerous ordeal.

Military complicity

Sabarneh said that the Israeli army even demands permits from Palestinians to work on their own land.

“The army came with the settlers to ask me for a permit so I can work in my home, in front of my house’s door, and on my land where I am the rightful owner,” Sabarneh said.

Farmers are also barred from building anything on their land. Sabarneh’s sheep have also been locked in a barn for over eight months due to the dangers posed by settlers.

“If they see me taking the sheep out, the settlers chase me, kidnap them, and steal them,” he said.

When Sabarneh’s children have tried to retrieve their stolen sheep, Israeli soldiers have arrested and beaten them.

A forced exodus

Repeated pogroms by settlers against Palestinian farmers reflect a broader strategy targeting agriculture across the southern West Bank.

Settlers and the Israeli troops carried out 11,074 attacks in the West Bank during the first half of 2026, according to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission. This includes 3,488 carried out by settlers.

Hasan Breijieh, a settlement affairs expert and director at the commission, told Al Jazeera that continuous settlement expansionism, alongside restrictions on Palestinian movement, are the primary reasons that so many Palestinians have been forced to flee their farms.

“Military gates erected at the entrances of Palestinian communities have tightened control over…  access to their orchards and vineyards,” he said.

Bypass roads, built by Israel, have also hindered “connectivity between Palestinian communities”, Breijieh said.

Under such restrictions, Palestinian farmers have faced a fourth consecutive season without being able to harvest olives, grapes, or guava. Their lands have been “neither plowed nor pruned”, and have been forcibly abandoned.

In the face of such oppression, Palestinian women like Theeba al-Sabaa have continued to play a pivotal role in protecting their land, particularly when men have been killed or detained by Israeli forces.

“They continue to maintain their leadership role in preserving the family’s agricultural legacy today,” Breijieh said. “This land was historically the primary source of livelihood for families, and a Palestinian cannot leave it voluntarily, no matter the sacrifices.”

He recalled his own grandfather, who went to his fields to bid farewell before dying. “Goodbye, vineyard,” he said to his land.

Wheat prices have risen sharply amid disruptions to Black Sea exports as the Russia-Ukraine war continues and as changing weather patterns cause droughts that have sharply reduced production.

Over the past month, Russia and Ukraine have stepped up attacks on each other’s grain terminals on the Black Sea. With Russia the world’s largest wheat exporter, and Ukraine among the top 10 grain-producing countries, these attacks have taken their toll on global wheat and grain supply.

Chicago wheat futures, the global benchmark for the grain market, hit a three-year high on Friday, before nudging down 0.54 percent on Monday to $7.79 per bushel by 02:00 GMT. Authorities in Russia’s Rostov region called a state of emergency on Friday after announcing that port closures and navigation disruptions in the Sea of Azov and Black Sea basin have led to a pile-up of agricultural products at farms.

Meanwhile, the rising temperatures and lack of rain have threatened to cut this year’s wheat harvest in South Africa’s Swartland, which produces about 20 percent of the country’s wheat.

Here’s what we know:

What impact is the Russia-Ukraine war having on prices?

Over the past month, strikes on ports, vessels and grain facilities amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict have disrupted grain terminals and forced shippers to delay or cancel cargo loadings during the peak export season.

While Russian missile attacks have impacted Ukraine’s grain exports, Ukraine’s drone attacks in the Sea of Azov have also sharply curtailed Russian shipments of both grain and wheat. At the same time, attacks on Russia’s Novorossiysk and Taman ports have increased shipping costs out of its Black Sea ports.

According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Infrastructure, in July, Ukraine suffered 35 Russian attacks on vessels in port, 22 at sea and 67 on port facilities. By comparison, the total number of vessel strikes for the whole of 2025 was just 14.

On Friday, Kyiv’s agricultural minister said recent Russian air attacks have destroyed around 90 percent of retailers’ food logistics. With transport of wheat curtailed, prices have risen, raising fears of food insecurity around the world.

Joe Glauber, a research fellow emeritus in the director general’s office at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said that the issue, therefore, is less the amount of wheat being produced and more about the cost of getting it to buyers and consumers.

“There’s plenty of wheat in Russia and Ukraine, and ultimately that wheat will make it out on to the market. But right now it can’t, or it comes out with a very high cost, and so wheat prices have reflected that,” he told Al Jazeera.

“There’s a lot of wheat in the world…it’s not a question of availability, it’s a question of affordability,” he added.

Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer, usually spends around $3bn per year on importing wheat. In the first half of 2026, it sourced more than 82 percent of its stock from Russia and Ukraine.

In Asia, second-largest wheat importer Indonesia bought $361m of wheat from Ukraine and $102m from Russia between 2023 and 2024, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity. Indonesia usually sources between 15 percent and 20 percent of its wheat from the two countries.

An official at Indonesia’s Flour Millers’ Association told Reuters last week that current stocks can meet immediate food-grade wheat requirements. “But we don’t have abundant or excess supply. We have to look at other origins such as Bulgaria, Australia, Romania and Argentina for cargoes that do not get shipped from Russia and Ukraine,” the official said.

How does climate change fit into this?

Besides the war in Ukraine, droughts and drier weather patterns have taken a toll on wheat production and contributed to rising prices.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), as of July 1, the US, also one of the biggest wheat exporters, is forecast to yield “46.7 bushels per acre, down 0.1 bushels from last month and down 8.2 bushels from last year’s average yield of 54.9 bushels per acre”.

“If realised, the United States yield would be the lowest since 2015,” the USDA said.

In a report updated on August 14, the department wrote: “This year’s small crop is a product of long-term decline in US wheat acreage and widespread drought impacts on HRW [Hard Red Winter wheat] production in the Great Plains States. Total wheat supplies are forecast down 13 percent from the previous year, with larger beginning stocks dampening the effect of the smaller crop.”

For Canada, the world’s sixth-largest wheat producer, the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service found that for the 2026-2027 production year, total production is forecast to be 34.6 million metric tons (MMT) – also 13 percent lower than the year before – due to reduced planted area and a return to lower-than-average yields.

Amid the heatwaves that have hit European countries over the past three months, wheat production in the bloc has also reduced. According to COCERAL, the European association of trade in cereals, oilseeds, rice, pulses, olive oil, oils and fats, animal feed and agrosupply, the excessive heat is expected to reduce grain crops in 2026 by around 9 million tonnes to 286 million tonnes.

In a report published in July, COCERAL said: “The weather has started to affect corn pollination in the southern half of France and in Hungary. More damage is expected from the forecast heat in other parts of the EU.”

The El Nino weather pattern is also expected to bring drier-than-usual conditions to the Southern Hemisphere this year, with South Africa and Australia expected to experience droughts as a result.

What can be done to mitigate all this?

While the Russia-Ukraine war continues, in July 2022, the year the war started, a Black Sea Grain Initiative was brokered to allow for the safe exports of grain, food and fertiliser from Ukrainian ports to stabilise and lower global food prices.

While that agreement held, more than 1,000 ships full of grain and other foodstuffs left Ukraine, according to the EU. However, Russia ended the agreement in July 2023.

The answer to the current crisis is far from easy, experts say.

Bringing prices down now would necessitate a major shift in war strategy by both Russia and Ukraine, while the impact of climate change could be mitigated by governments implementing policies including improving water management on farms through the use of reservoirs to support drought-affected crops and reduce the loss of production.

Moreover, Glauber explained, while alternative routes exist to ship out grain from Russia and Ukraine, they are costly, adding that a return to a possible Black Sea Grain Initiative “would help calm wheat markets a lot”.

One answer may be for other countries to step in.

According to Glauber, during the 2022 global grain price surge, other wheat producing countries such as India exported more to make up for shortages.

“India, for example, had record exports in 2022. It’s probably less likely this year, just because of El Nino and other other factors affecting them, but they could also provide more wheat. I think the world wheat market proved very resilient in 2022, and I expect we’ll see the same in in 2026,” he said.