MALNUTRITION: Call for change in agricultural practices

NAIROBI, 10 May 2010 (IRIN) - Technological innovation is key to helping African farmers cope with the increasing challenges posed by climate change, say specialists.“Temperatures have increased and the danger is that agriculture is the backbone of [Africa’s] economies,” Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, chief executive officer of the South-African based Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN), told IRIN. “The increase in temperatures means we have less water in some places and we are already a drought-prone region.”“The technologies that we have on the shelf… like the seeds, may not be compatible with the increased temperatures,” she added. “Malawi recorded world renowned success in terms of food security because we have experienced a fairly stable climate regime over the last 100 years. The technologies that were there [such as] the hybrid seeds… could be taken in, planted. As long they were accessible to the farmers, we could then register increases in yields. “But the challenge we face now is that there will be new diseases, new vectors and pests that we have not known or seen before …. All these challenges are being superimposed on a system that has not been food-secure,” she said.Africa spends at least US$19 billion on food imports annually yet it has the capacity to be the global breadbasket, she said. “Most of our farmers are smallholders and they are in the business of subsidizing the urban population [but] for as long as we are not creating an environment where they can increase their income and step out of poverty, we will always have [more] poor people yet we have the potential to be food-secure.”About one billion people worldwide were food insecure in 2009, according to estimates, with the food price crisis hitting millions. The UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) Executive Director, Achim Steiner, told the conference, organized by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and the Earth System Science Partnership, that the response to the crisis was similar to the cause of the problem. “We are reducing soil fertility, continuing to bank on water, increasing reliance on fertilizer… the emphasis cannot just be this both from an environmental and cost basis,” he said.
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