August 28, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
According to the latest predictions from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) price volatility, climate change and crop diseases combined with poor harvests in 2010 could herald another food crisis in 2011, particularly in parts of Africa and Asia.
Floods in Pakistan and China and the summer drought in Russia, which led to a ban on all wheat exports this year, mean that stocks of wheat, maize and some other foods were not as high as in previous years.
It has already been seen that this has led to to commodity price speculation that pushed up the prices of these grains and food by 40% in a few months and food price inflation is currently running at 15% per year.
Almost certainly consumers and shoppers in most of the world will be facing higher food bills in 2011. The FAO’s November monthly report forecasts that these factors will lead to a running down of global food reserves, which are currently at around 74 days, and an increase in prices of between 10% and 20% in 2011.
The prediction is its most pessimistic since 2008, when more than 25 countries experienced food riots after price rises precipitated a food crisis that hit the poorest in many parts of the world.
Several other factors add to the problem. Current forecasts for world grain production next year are at 2% below 2009, lower than was anticipated last June, when production for 2011 was being forecast to expand.
In addition, the FAO says, climate change and the competition between food and biofuel production means that grain crops particularly command higher prices as biofuel rather than as food.
Increasingly unpredictable weather patterns attributed to climate change are adding to the situation’s volatility and the potential for further price speculation as well as the ongoing problem of some increasingly intractable diseases such as wheat rust, a fungus that can seriously affect the level of the harvest.
The report says: “The most feared disease of wheat’stem rust has re-emerged in a new virulent form, and new aggressive stripe rust strains are devastating wheat crops in several countries.” Since was first identified the pathogen, which is wind-borne and can travel up to several thousand kilometres, has continued to mutate and spread.
While reaching global agreement on tackling such issues as climate change and combating the temptation towards price speculation, protecting national economies by using import tariffs and restrictions in a global economic crisis may be moving far too slowly to have any major impact on food production and scarcity in the short term there are other strategies that could be used.
One is taking urgent action to restore degraded land around the world. There is an estimated 1bn hectares-plus of land with the potential to be restored. Another is to increase the fertility of existing land. In the context of improving fertility the use of disease resistant seeds, integrated pest management and conservation agriculture can all play a part.
The work of biopesticides developers in devising low-chem agricultural yield enhancers, biopesticides and biofungicides, all of which are kinder to the environment, soil and ecosystems could be particularly helpful to poorer small farmers in the developing world as long as there is wider agreement on speedy regulation and licensing as well as proper training and financial support for farmers to be able to access them.
Copyright (c) 2010 Alison Withers
June 14, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
NAIROBI, KENYA – In Africa, demand for the cassava plant has grown significantly over the years. The continent produces 60 percent of the crop in the world. But the crop is drastically declining in East and Central Africa due to diseases that reduce production.
More than 160 million people in east, central and southern Africa depend on cassava as a stable food and a source of income.
Production of the crop has significantly dropped due to the cassava mosaic and cassava brown streak diseases.
According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], the brown streak disease is worse since it affects the root of the crop. These two diseases are creating havoc in Africas agricultural lands.
Improvements necessary
The acting head of the FAO in eastern and central Africa, Luca Alinovi, said the agency has invested to improve the situation in the African fields, but it is not getting better.
Doing right or wrong on cassava has a huge impact on the food security of the people in this region, has such a relevance in our daily lives that we tend to forget it because it appeared in a kind of technical discussion. And I want to bring to your attention that, although it is a technical issue it requires knowledge and requires research, said Alinovi.
The head of the European Union Rural Development and Agriculture program in Kenya, Dominique Davoux, said that over the years the cassava diseases have evolved, and there is need to invest in research to fight the diseases.
We supported the cassava initially, there has been [a] stop in the support, the research slugged [lagged] behind, and the disease reinvented itself [and] propagated again. We have to re-address the issue, said Davoux.
The FAO says a minimum of $100 million is needed to support clean farm production, disease surveillance and research, and market and micro-finance development across the cassava production chain.
Experts warn failure to do so means the cassava disease likely will reach Nigeria, the biggest producer of cassava in Africa.
October 7, 2015 / como / 0 Comments
A U.N. agency says 11 million people in Africas Sahel region still face severe food insecurity. At the same time, an emergency appeal for 113 million dollars has gone largely unmet.
De Capua report on Sahel food insecurity
The Food and Agriculture Organization says the Sahel has faced food insecurity crises in 2005, 2008 and again in 2012. Those crises, it says, have eroded the capacity of the poor to maintain or restore their livelihoods.
In Dakar, Patrick David, FAOs deputy coordinator for food security analysis for West Africa and the Sahel, said, There is still a lot of people in food insecurity. The people more and more find some difficulty to recover from the past crisis even if there is a good harvest because there have been pretty good harvests in 2012.
David said many people in the Sahel depend on a few cattle and a small piece of land for survival. So, its hard for them to stock up any reserve food or agricultural supplies in the event of drought, conflict or bad harvest.
While before it would take one or two years to recover, now its longer for those people to recover. Its difficult to restock cattle, for example. Its difficult for them to access agricultural credit to have good input[s] and to have fertilizer. And in some places in the Sahel, like in Burkina Faso and Niger, there [are] some dense populated area[s] where there is degradation of land and the loss of soil fertility. That means their agricultural
yield[s] are decreasing year by year, he said.
That compounds the problems they already face as the price for grains, such as sorghum, millet and maize, continues to rise.
David said, The poor and the very poor households, as soon as theyve exhausted their little harvest, totally depend [on] the market. So they have to buy the grain at higher and higher prices. So their purchasing power is decreasing every year.
Insecurity, such as the recent conflict in northern Mali, can also boost prices because agricultural products cannot get to market.
The FAO has appealed for $113 million for its programs in the Sahel. However, its only received less that $19.5 million so far.
The intervention of FAO strengthens the resilience of the affected households. But when the affected households cannot receive the good seeds and the good fertilizer or cannot recapitalize their livestock, they stay very vulnerable and its a problem for the next year. So we definitely need additional support for the farmers and agriculture in order to decrease the impact of the forthcoming crisis, he said.
Building resilience includes improving the storage, processing and transportation of goods as well as livestock food supplements, animal health campaigns and herd restocking. The Food and Agriculture Organization programs also include fixing irrigation systems.
The FAO said it would like these programs to be in place and making a difference during the next growing season which runs from October through April