Thread by @samdknowlton

After $1B invested over 15 years, the Gates-backed Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) promised agricultural prosperity.

Instead, AGRA delivered ecological damage, farmer debt, and increased hunger, leaving target countries worse off than before the program began🧵

AGRA began in 2006 with bold targets to 2x yields and incomes for 30M smallholder farmers while cutting food insecurity in half by 2020.

Evaluations reveal what farmers already knew—AGRA did not meet its headline goal even after reducing its target from 30M to just 9M farmers.

The productivity reality falls far short—an 18% yield increase over 12 years against AGRA's promised 100%.

Many regions saw growth equal to or worse than pre-AGRA rates.

This structural failure hides behind selectively presented data and isolated success stories.

Hunger increased by 30-31% across AGRA's 13 focus countries.

The very metric AGRA was designed to improve has significantly worsened, exposing critical flaws in their entire approach to agricultural development.

AGRA's single-crop farming model caused biodiversity loss by pushing farmers toward maize at the expense of hardy local varieties.

Traditional climate-resilient crops declined measurably, with millet production dropping 24% between 2006-2018.

Research in Zambia and Tanzania shows farmers trapped in debt after taking loans for fertilizer and hybrid seeds when harvests didn't deliver promised yields.

This financial burden from input-dependency affects multiple generations of farming families.

Beyond economic impacts, AGRA's chemical-intensive approach has accelerated soil degradation across target regions.

Synthetic inputs disrupt soil microbial communities, compromising fertility and essential ecosystem functions like water storage and carbon sequestration.

The specific soil contaminants associated with AGRA's model include PCBs, PBDEs, perfluoro carboxylic acids, benzene, and bisphenol A, compounds with documented adverse effects on ecological and human health systems.

While AGRA now acknowledges soil degradation (65% of Sahel land affected), its solutions remain tied to chemical-intensive farming.

New programs like ESMS and RE-GAIN show recognition of problems without addressing their root causes.

African civil society organizations increasingly call for redirecting funding from AGRA toward agroecological systems that align with both ecological imperatives and the lived realities of farming communities rather than imposing external technological dependencies.

AGRA misdiagnosed the problems facing African agriculture

After 15 yrs and $1B, hunger increased by 30%, yields barely improved, soils degraded, and farmers accumulated debt.

Real solutions will restore ecological health while providing farmers with a pathway to prosperity