Greetings, This might be of interest to some of you, specially those of you in the field of Agriculture. regards, Momodou Camara ------- Forwarded message follows ------- Copyright 1999 InterPress Service, all rights reserved. Worldwide distribution via the APC networks. *** 15-Oct-99 *** Title: FOOD-AFRICA: Restoring Soil Fertility Key to Food Production By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON, Oct 15 (IPS) - Food production in Africa - whose population is the world's fastest-growing - cannot be substantially increased unless its soil is conserved and restored, according to a new analysis by the United Nations. The region - which is also the world's poorest - suffers severe soil degradation compared to other developing regions where the Green Revolution has boosted the production of staple crops largely by developing and disseminating high-yield varieties of rice, wheat, maize, and other foods. "The Green Revolution as it was achieved in Asia and Latin America will be impossible in Africa unless we can improve the quality of the soil on which these new varieties are supposed to thrive," says Uzo Mokwunye, director of the Ghana-based UN University Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (INRA). The stakes are high. Unless sub-Saharan Africa can boost food production in the coming years, starvation and poverty could reach unprecedented levels, according to the analysis, released to coincided with World Food Day Saturdsay. Already, an estimated 30 percent of African children today suffer malnutrition. If current trends continue, the region, which was a net food exporter in 1950, will produce enough food for only 40 percent of the projected one billion inhabitants who are expected to live there in 2025. That will be almost double the 550 million people living there today. While research centres in the developing world continue to devote substantial time and expertise to developing new varieties of staples which can be used in Africa, they face special challenges given the poverty of the soils there. "These programmes (for plant breeding and crop improvements) will bear much more fruit if we can improve the soil," says Moctar Toure, who heads the World Bank's Special Programme for African Agricultural Research. Most African soils are naturally low in key nutrients compared to richer soils in other parts of the world. "African farmers have been ingenious throughout the centuries in coaxing crops from such poor conditions," says Mokwunye. Add to that four major human influences causing soil degradation - overgrazing; inefficient farming practices, such as improper use of fertilizers, irrigation and heavy machinery; overexploitation of existing agricultural land; and deforestation through logging and clearing for new farmland. Soils traditionally have been replenished by crop residues and animal manure, but these potential sources of nutrients increasingly are being used in Africa as fodder for livestock and household fuel. At the same time, other soil fertility conservation practices - such as allowing land to lie fallow, crop rotation and inter-cropping - have broken down due to the growing demand for arable land by a rapidly growing population. In addition, more marginal land - including forests - is constantly being brought under cultivation, because it is often cheaper to bring new land into production than to maintain or improve land that already that has suffered major losses in nutrients from decades of farming. The region faces a vicious circle: increasingly desperate demand for arable land results in its faster deterioration, making it yet more difficult to increase productivity. As a result, Africa lags far behind the rest of the world in increasing crop yields. Average African farm yields for important cereals such as maize, rice, sorghum and wheat now lag far behind other regions: 1.3 tonnes per hectare, compared with 4.8 tonnes in China, 2.2 tonnes in India, 4.7 tonnes in the United States, and 3.0 worldwide, according to the analysis. Yet the situation is not irreversible, according to Mokwunye and other experts at the World Bank and the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a consortium of more than a dozen international research centres and their major donors. The United Nations estimates that African farmers could quadruple maize yields, triple sorghum yields, and more than double their rice and wheat yields if they receive the necessary support for improving soils and acquiring high-yielding plant varieties. African ministers have already developed National Action Plans that would accomplish those goals at a cost that the UN estimates at between 100 and 500 million dollars per country per year over ten years. "If its food production potential is met, Africa could again be a net food exporter," says Mokwunye. But international co-operation and support will be vital. The 1996 Food Summit at UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome launched the Soil Fertility Initiative for Africa which is designed to co-ordinate the efforts of all key players, including the INRA, the World Bank, CGIAR, and African governments. CGIAR, which has three food-crop research centres in Africa working on rice, tropical agriculture, and agro-forestry, has developed a natural resource management programmes which are designed mainly designed to address soil-fertility problems, according to Manuel Lantin, CGIAR's chief science advisor. CGIAR, with a 350 million dollar annual budget, also is devoting more of its resources to Africa. "Forty percent of the CG's total resources now go to Africa," says Lantin. The World Bank is also devoting more of its lending resources to agriculture in Africa. During the 1990's its agricultural loans to the region averaged some 180 million dollars a year. For 2000, that investment is supposed to rise to 250 million dollars. African ministers are urging the Bank, Africa's largest single source of development capital, to increase its lending to agricultural projects in the region by two billion dollars over the next 15 years to address soil fertility. Initially, the Bank should provide up to 360 million dollars between 2000-2004 for implementing new soil fertility National Action Plans in 12 countries, the Africans say. INRA, which specialises in training and facilitating African scientists and researchers, also hopes to raise 15 million dollars to conduct its work, according to Mokwunye. (END/IPS/jl/mk/99) Origin: ROMAWAS/FOOD-AFRICA/ ---- [c] 1999, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS) ------- End of forwarded message ------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------