Interview with Fanomezantsoa Lucien Ranarivelo, Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries (MAEP), who is driving accelerated economic growth in rural areas through a transformational vision of agriculture, livestock and fisheries.
What investments are needed to develop the Malagasy agricultural sector?
As stated in the President's vision, the agricultural sector aims first and foremost for food self-sufficiency. We must catch up with the sector and raise it to a higher level of performance for the benefit of the entire value chain. To achieve this, we need investments in agricultural mechanization, new land developments, agricultural perimeters, processing units, capacity building, and training for all stakeholders, particularly producers on the very numerous family farms in Madagascar. As you know, while Madagascar has significant agricultural potential, less than 10% of this potential is being exploited.
Regarding rice, the key indicator of food self-sufficiency, we must move from an importing country to a net exporter for the region and the African continent. We must ensure a substantial increase in our rice cultivation, that is, invest in the development of new irrigated areas and upgrade all existing areas in Madagascar. The objective is to develop 100,000 hectares of new agricultural land. All sites have already been identified, and this major project is being finalized. Currently, after only two years of the President's term, 20,000 hectares of new rice-growing areas have been developed.
For the south of the island, we must adapt to the consequences of climate change. With drought becoming increasingly frequent, we must therefore develop adapted resilient agriculture. The development of technologies, such as water-saving drip micro-irrigation systems, will make it possible to compensate for this lack of rainfall without transporting water. It is imperative to efficiently use the little water available, whether it is irrigation water from boreholes or pipelines from the wetlands of southeastern Madagascar.
How do you plan to promote the blue economy?
We have 5,000 kilometers of coastline and 1.5 million square meters of Exclusive Economic Zone (SEZ). Unfortunately, our oceanic zone is less rich than the maritime regions of Mauritania or Morocco, but the fact remains that we must exploit this opportunity. And this is topical because we are in the phase of a major reform of the management of our fisheries resources so that this sector contributes to the development of the country, in transparent management, good governance and sustainable development management of resources. This in-depth reform will increase the sector's contribution to the economy, particularly in terms of royalties and access to our resources. To ensure that this sector becomes attractive, we will invest in the entire value chain from fishing to processing to lead to job creation. Vessels fishing in our economic zones must be able to land in Madagascar and process their products in the local fishing industry. We will therefore invest in building infrastructure to attract investors to work in our territorial waters with good governance and transparency and to land their fishery products in Madagascar. This will also support the local population and the downstream industry throughout the value chain.
How do you encourage agribusiness?
In fact, the problem facing agro-industry in Madagascar lies in the availability of raw materials. For processing, agricultural products do not currently meet the criteria of quantity, quality, and regularity of supply. This is due to the fact that a large part of agricultural production—whether for agriculture, livestock, or fishing—is carried out by small, somewhat fragmented and insufficiently organized family entities.
We want to finalize a win-win partnership between agro-industrial units sourcing from small producers and the latter. We are currently in a phase of developing a legal framework so that this partnership contributes to the development and promotion of contract farming, which we call the agricultural aggregation model. In this model, agro-industrial investors support small producers in their production activities, and small producers supply agro-industrial units while respecting quality rules and the regularity of product quantity. This is the idea behind the reform we are implementing. There are, of course, some producer groups, but they are still few in number. One of the problems is that cooperatives do not see the point of grouping together as long as there is no guaranteed market. Vanilla is a very important sector, a benchmark for Madagascar, but there must also be a win-win partnership between producers and agro-industrialists.