End of an era: ISPAAD expires after 14 years

Mbongeni Mguni | Wednesday February 8, 2023 16:50

Assistant Agriculture minister, Molebatsi Molebatsi is speaking to a room mostly composed of smallholder farmers and those involved in the agriculture supply chain such as seed and fertiliser manufacturers. It is unlikely that communal farmers, the primary targets of ISPAAD, are in the room and thus to an extent, a “safe space” exists to detonate some truth bombs.

“We have taken a decision to commercialise agriculture, although we will still support those that need to be subsidised,” Molebatsi says.

“We are now going into something that’s is outcome based not “atlhama ke go jese”.

“You know how many billions were spent without outcomes under ISPAAD?

“Instead of outcomes and I’m sorry to be blunt, but the way the programme was, it actually benefited the inputs’ people like fertiliser dealers, tractor owners and not the output.”

He continues: “Our import bill is still in the billions and this has not made sense.”

The assistant minister is at a pitso called by Business Botswana, the Botswana Investment and Trade Centre as well as his own ministry to review the horticultural import restrictions, first introduced in January 2022. As is typical with such contentious and emotive topics and because the industry has spent an extended period without meeting the ministry’s leaders, discussions wander and wind up beyond the scope of the agenda.

The Integrated Support Programme for Arable Agriculture Development (ISPAAD) is the main agricultural inputs programme introduced in 2008 to support communal farmers. Each season, ISPAAD provides farmers with various inputs such as seeds, tillage services, fertilisers, herbicides and others in the interests of increasing grain production and promoting food security at household and national level.

The inputs are largely provided through grassroots level contractors and suppliers who sign up with the Ministry.

ISPAAD is unique not only in Southern Africa, but across the continent, as direct input support to communal farmers is rare. However, through ISPAAD, government took the view that the expenditure supports the rural economy, boosts citizen enterprise such as the contractors and suppliers, promotes food security and ultimately reduces the weight on other state-sponsored safety nets.

Ideally, ISPAAD should lead to the attainment of broader national priorities such as reducing inequality as well as stemming rampant urbanisation and its attendant challenges.

The overwhelming reality of ISPAAD’s achievements is however far removed from those lofty goals.

Throughout its 14-year run, government pumped billions of Pula into ISPAAD, a figure that in the latter years of the programme averaged P600 million per season. However, climate change, in its various manifestations, played havoc with traditional farming patterns in the last decade, with the country more or less experiencing running droughts since the 2014/15 season.

Meanwhile, audits into ISPAAD also uncovered widespread illicit conduct and exploitation of the system, with “cowboy contractors” abusing loopholes and weaknesses in the programme to bilk government of millions each season.

As a result, the annual millions of pula spent on ISPAAD mostly gone to waste, while the perennial droughts meant after each season, government coughed up even more millions on drought relief measures.

This phenomenon is what Molebatsi is referring to when he says: “We gave funds to people and some of them still wound up going into Ipelegeng”. After providing inputs ranging from fertilisers to tillage and herbicides, weak rains conspired with poor farming methods, unsuitable seed varieties and other factors to erode ISPAAD’s outcomes. The same ISPAAD beneficiaries would be forced to move to Ipelegeng, another state-sponsored support programme.

Another part of ISPAAD’s failures stem from the failure to hinge future support on past success or performance. Generally, communal farmers could receive inputs from season to season, without the programmes’ outcomes either being clearly articulated to them or being made a requirement for future support.

“ISPAAD assumed that everyone was a farmer,” Molebatsi says.

Only in its later years did government tighten its criteria for providing inputs, to include soil tests, limits on types of crops to be supported and more demands being made of farmers’ plans for the season.

After tightening ISPAAD funding and eligibility in 2021, government subsequently announced that it was doing away with the entire programme, replacing it with a more focussed, outcome-based intervention.

Known as Temo Letlotlo, details on the “new” ISPAAD have been kept under wraps out of deference to the official launch by President Mokgweetsi Masisi in a few months’ time. However, from hints by Masisi himself and others, the new programme is focussed on improving commercial agriculture in the country, a sector or activity more aligned to measurable outcomes and targets.

“Due to operational challenges, Temo-Letlotlo programme which is to replace the ISPAAD programme will now be implemented during the 2023/2024 financial year,” Masisi said at the State of the Nation last November.

“Temo-Letlotlo is intended to improve productivity and promote commercialised arable farming.”

Molebatsi is tight-lipped when asked or details about ISPAAD’s successor.

“What I can say is that the new programme e monate, nate, nate.

“Temo Letlotlo is trying to correct the way we were doing thing,” he says.

The clearest picture of what type of animal Temo Letlotlo is, can be gleaned from the Economic Recovery and Transformation Plan (ERTP), which spelt out exactly what government’s strategists wanted and weren’t getting from ISPAAD.

“Care has to be taken not to repeat past mistakes whereby the substantial resources and support that have been provided for agriculture have largely been wasted,” the ERTP reads.

“Performance has been measured in terms of inputs rather than output, and there has been no significant improvement in productivity in key target sub- sectors such as beef and food grains.

“Agricultural support policy has been focused on small-scale subsistence farmers rather than medium and large scale commercial farmers.”

The ERTP continues: “This needs to change, so that support is provided for agriculture to become more commercial.

“This means that proposed interventions need to demonstrate positive economic returns.

“It is, therefore, proposed that support should be progressively availed to increasing the scale of production and commercialisation, with a different and social support approach to subsistence farming.

“Also, the proposed interventions need to be assessed to evaluate their commercial feasibility.”

The ERTP planned to redirect ISPAAD’s millions towards medium and large scale producers, rather than the communal subsistence sector.

“The financing gap can also be filled by reducing expenditures, such as rationalising subsidies to the agriculture sector to target support for medium and large scale producers and cluster infrastructure and services, but ensuring that subsidies do not become indefinite or unsustainable and away from subsistence farmers,” the draft reads.

Although the ERTP promised that the redirected funding would be replaced by a “different social support approach” to subsistence farming, no details have yet emerged on how Temo Letlotlo will do this.

Information dug up by Mmegi provides further clarity on ISPAAD’s successor. Temo Letlotlo will not be a Ministry of Agriculture “baby” but rather the programme cuts across ministries, which each contributing on how to support the growth of commercial agriculture in the country.

Mention has been made of transforming the National Development Bank into a strictly agriculture bank, while the Finance Ministry could be involved in providing seasonal loans to qualifying farmers. The eligibility criteria for Temo Letlotlo is expected to be naturally much tighter than ISPAAD, while outcomes will be more closely monitored and potentially carried forward as qualifications for each season. The commercial nature of the new programme can be seen in reports that investors have approached government offering to partner in certain offerings to be made under Temo Letlotlo.

For communal farmers and the ecosystem of tractor owners and others who spent 14 years under ISPAAD, the winds of change are blowing.

“Are we ready to leave ISPAAD behind because some of us had bought tractors and set up fertiliser companies or seed companies for ISPAAD?

“Are we ready for this new animal that coming?”

Molebatsi’s question to the room of smallholder farmers is met with protests: “We don’t even know what that animal looks like. How can we be prepared for it?” the room responds.

In the next few months, the true nature of ISPAAD’s successor will go from obscure to sharp relief.