7. Mega Farm Case Study

This post has primarily been prompted by this article which is a report focusing upon the construction of a chicken mega-farm in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. Consequently, it is a useful article for understanding the specific farm in question and drawing some wider inferences about the impacts of unrestricted Western agricultural corporations in Africa. Furthermore, I think this article is also useful as a backdrop for a discussion about rigid Western development ideals and whether these are appropriate to impose in different countries with different practices. 

2,320 cockerels and 17,208 hens, ‘a flock of European-bred pedigree Cobb 500 chicken’ (The Guardian. 2018: N/A) have been flown to ‘a remote 200-hectare mega-farm under construction in… Mount Kilimanjaro’ (The Guardian. 2018: N/A). This number of livestock and this farm are considered to be a base camp for wider expansion and the ambition is that in a year’s time they will be sending ‘500,000 fertilized eggs a week to a sister hatchery on the Tanzanian Coast’ (The Guardian. 2018: N/A) in the hopes of selling millions of chicks to local farmers. In a few years it is estimated that the Tyson company (owners of the mega farm) will be exporting ‘50m(illion) broilers a year to neighboring Kenya, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other African countries.’ (The Guardian. 2018: N/A). 

The sheer scale of this form of agriculture has several theoretical implications and they often conflict with each other. Consequently, a variety of actor’s contest over the outcome of the expansion and adoption of mega farms in Africa. As a consequence of these implications and outcomes being contested, I thought I would look at the positive and negative impacts at a local level first before moving onto some of the wider impacts both nationally and regionally. 

The positive impact that is most commonly argued is that ‘they will improve food security in countries’ (The Guardian. 2018: N/A). The claim that these ensure food security in countries is argued to be an outcome of the sheer production scale of mega-farms in comparison to a collection of individual or subsistence farmers.  As a consequence, this increased supply means that they are more readily available to the population. Furthermore, ensuring food security is also argued to be an outcome of the breed of chickens reared within mega-farms. The breed of chicken is the Cobb 500 which has been ‘highly bred for 100 years to grow fast, bulk up their breasts and to eat only small quantities of cheap soya and maize’ (The Guardian. 2018: N/A). As a result, these chickens are cheap to purchase, provide a good source of food and a consistent supply. This further contributes to the argument that these mega-farms help to ensure food security, which is frequently argued to facilitate development. 

However, the supposed virtues of these mega-farms are frequently inverted by critics and are argued, in practice, to have negative implications. One of the primary concerns at the local level is that mega-farms and their produce will undermine local farmers and consequently lead merely to a concentration of wealth in corporations whilst the local economy will suffer. This capacity to undermine local farmers will stem largely from economies of scale facilitating an increased quantity and quality of produce, subsequently, these enter the market at a lower price undermining local produce. Furthermore, the heightened quality may influence consumer demand away from local farmer’s produce. 

There are a number of national impacts of the increasing prevalence of mega-farms in Africa’s agricultural sector. One of the key consequences is potentially an undermining of local farmers and customs as consumer preferences change. As a consequence, one potential outcome of the growth of foreign direct investment mega farms are that they produce economic enclaves wherein profits are collected and flow out of the country with little done to improve the economic standing of the surrounding areas. 

However, the other potential national impacts of the growth of mega-farms are principally an achievement of food security as a consequence of the ability to produce high quality and high quantity produce. Thus, securing food supply. Furthermore, ‘Cobb broilers are proving to have the best carbon footprint of all land-based animals’ (The Guardian. 2018: N/A). Furthermore ‘they need less land, less food and less water [than cattle and pigs] to produce the same amount of meat’. (The Guardian. 2018: N/A). Consequently, mega-farming may facilitate food security with a relatively low environmental impact and WEF impact. 

One of the challenges to mega-farms at an international level is that they are predicated upon Western ideas of development and that these may not be appropriate in other cultures and that understandings of ‘developed agriculture’ are limited by a rigidity in the ideas of ‘developed agriculture’.