Building Roads: Connecting Farmers and Markets

Kapchorwa Roads (Source: NTV)

In a remote but fertile region of Uganda, agricultural products such as onions that are supposed to be already consumed, unfortunately, have not made its way out of the farms. Access to markets in rural regions have been impeded by impassable roads due to heavy rain or in some cases may cause transport incidents and take up to 2 days to transport local agricultural produce to local markets. This is the fate of commercial farmers in Kapchorwa, the eastern region of Uganda who exports produce to local markets like Kampala. The video below reports how poor roads affect farmers in Kapchorwa.

On the other hand, smooth tarmac roads built that connects Kenyan farmers in Central Rift of Kenya and local markets like Nairobi have improved agricultural revenue. The next video below shows how improved roads benefits agriculture through local interviews.

The above accounts for two simple and contrasting scenarios in which well-built roads can have drastic impacts on market access. In sub-Saharan Africa, despite great potential for agriculture, many arable lands remains unused due to factors such as limited transport access (Chamberlin et al., 2014). This is advanced by Berg et al. (2018) who concludes that improving market access increases land cultivation and local GDP. The research also suggests that market access is connected with agricultural expansion and intensification. In a way, this highlights that transport developments facilitate the shift from rural or subsistence to commercial agriculture (Gollin & Rogerson, 2014)  This can be through a myriad of other contributing factors that facilitates increase productivity (Kiprono and Matsumoto, 2014) accompanying improvements in transport, improving inputs and outputs.

With only 34% of rural Africans living within 2km of an all-season road, there is a clear opportunity to improve rural access to improve rural agriculture. But is building roads just enough?

Roads serve as a double-edged sword in Africa’s agricultural developments and thus it is relevant to consider the negative impacts of road provisions. Berg et al. (2018) also noticed that increasing market access can accelerate the reduction of existing shrinking agricultural areas and postulates that these might be due to outmigration or development of non-agricultural activities. In addition, roads can have negative environmental consequences such as increased surface runoff, flooding, erosion, and impacts waste resources and hazards (Demenge et al., 2014) which in turn may affect rural communities based on case study of Tigray in Ethiopia.

With innovative solutions such as the “Roads for Water”, developers are looking to turn the tide against negative environmental impacts of roads while at the same time using roads as tools for water harvesting (Woldearegay, 2015) with proper planning to channel water away or for storage. This creates productive and resilient infrastructures that help communities in building climate resilience while addressing road damage and reducing disruptions as a result of events like flooding.

Not forgetting citrus agriculture which is a theme of this blog, a comparative case study on citrus farms in the Tanga Region of Tanzania shows that proximity of farms to roads affects farmers profits. Large and medium scale citrus farmers with close proximity to roads have greater bargaining power and better profits compared to small-scale farmers which are further (Izamuhaye, 2008). This could be due to an advantageous position providing farmers convenience and ease of exporting oranges faster before deterioration as well as reducing transport cost. Interestingly, studies also show that fruit damage on tangerines, for example, can be greatly reduced with transport over asphalt road surfaces (Bundit et al., 2005). Therefore, this emphasizes that the quality of roads also plays a trivial role in prolonging value of agricultural commodities.

Looking back at the Kat Valley case study can also help illuminate that roads also serve as essential instruments in connecting stakeholders. This is especially in the process embedded in Integrated Catchment Management. For example, it is difficult for some community stakeholders to attend Catchment Management Forums for the Kat Catchment as they face obstacles such as poorly serviced roads (Simpungwe, 2006). This may inevitably impact on the willingness of stakeholders to attend and partake in negotiations of water use in the catchment.

In examining some of the relevant narratives, I hope to elicit that roads are key to agricultural and economic development and while overall being beneficial, it also has negative aspects that can be addressed with technological solutions yielding positive outcomes. Roads are paramount for rural development that relies on agriculture as the engine of growth because roads serve the primary function as conduits for flows of agricultural goods in commodity chains. As much as increasing road access to rural agricultural communities is vital, quality and types of roads, the proximity of agricultural communities to roads and other factors(that may not be covered) are no less important. However, roads as a materialized form of agricultural investment may result in highly uneven rural landscapes where small-scale farmers or communities may be marginalized. Therefore, it is important for rural road development programs to take into account its potential development impacts on various stakeholders and users of the infrastructure.