News

After decades of decline, aid to African agriculture is back on the international policy agenda in the context of climate change, the current food and energy price crises and the consequent demands for hundreds of billions of dollars in new investment in agriculture.

The third African Green Revolution Conference took place in Oslo on 28 - 29 August 2008. High level representatives of banks and industry, most of them engaged in seeds and chemical fertilizers, were meeting to discuss action for an African Green Revolution. While IFOAM was welcoming the attention for the agricultural situation in Africa, it expressed its deep concern about the direction the talks in Oslo were taking: back to the past instead of looking at the future, neglecting recent scientific and societal findings. Moses Kiggundu Muwanga, IFOAM world board member and coordinator of the National Organic Agricultural Movement of Uganda (NOGAMU), said that: the global food crisis had inter-linkages with other man-made crises and that one should search for solutions that responded to them systemically.

In July, World Trade Organization director general Pascal Lamy organized a mini-ministerial to complete the Doha Development Round, and couched it as a necessary means to address the food crisis. Not surprisingly, negotiations collapsed over ongoing disagreements about whether WTO members have the right to protect their food security and "livelihoods" from import surges.

Agricultural production will be increasingly constrained by the declining availability and degradation of water in the countries of Asia and the Pacific with implications for food production, says a report which puts development at heart of Asia-Pacific security.

Regenerative farming practices, local knowledge and regionally appropriate technology favored over biotech and industrial agriculture.

Science has provided the souped-up seeds to feed the world, through biotechnology and old-fashioned crossbreeding. Now the problem is the dirt they're planted in.

As seeds get better, much of the world's soil is getting worse and people are going hungry. Scientists say if they can get the world out of the economically triggered global food crisis, better dirt will be at the root of the solution.

Is small the new big when it comes to agriculture in Southern Africa? As rising food prices place this sector firmly in the spotlight, there are compelling examples at hand to make the case for greater investment in small-scale farming.

It is the poorest people who are most in danger from increasing food prices, says chief scientist Robert Watson. Yet, with our knowledge and technology, we can drive the agricultural revolution needed to end world hunger.

Forget the 2008 food crisis. It is merely a distribution problem. The real tragedy is yet to come. Between nine and ten billion people will inhabit the world in less than 50 years, and they will have to nurture themselves from an increasingly exhausted planet. Global warming will have devastating effects on the soil’s ability to yield, the fight for fresh water will increase, less and less land will remain arable and biodiversity is dwindling at a rapid pace.

According to 400 scientific experts who have spent the past four years probing the future on behalf of the World Bank and UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, agriculture is going to mean vastly more to civilisation than merely tucker on the table. The world's two billion farmers are the guardians of much of what is left of the natural landscape, holding in their hands the fate of thousands of threatened species as well as the world's remaining forests. Agriculture uses three-quarters of the world's fresh water. Its run-off has degraded Earth's main rivers, estuaries and even seas. It occupies 40 per cent of the world's free land surface. It is responsible for 30 per cent of global greenhouse emissions. And it represents seemingly intractable poverty, disadvantage and suffering. That is the true cost of the cheap food many of us still enjoy. For the time being.