African governments should allocate at least 25 percent of their budgets to agricultural and rural development,according to an FAO report released at the 21st Regional Conference for Africa that opened on Monday in Yaounde,Cameroon. The report argues that increased public expenditure spending could reduce the problems for Africa's small-scale farmers and trigger a greater flow of private investment to the rural sector. Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of total employment in sub-Saharan Africa,FAO said,but received less than 10 percent of the national budget in most countries between 1961 and 1997. Even in countries where significant investments were made to develop public agriculture capital goods, government often failed to maintain roads and irrigation systems, according to FAO. In addition, public resources were often allocated to a single cereal crop, such as rice, maize and wheat, and not enough to traditional crops like roots, tubers, pulses or oil seeds. END ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------