The challenge is to double farm output between now and 2050 to meet global consumption requirements, said Ajay Vashee, president of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) at the Agri SA conference held on 9 and 10 October in Pretoria. IFA P has formulated a plan to offer some solutions to the looming global food and energy crisis. Output xvwill have to be doubled on essentially the same land area using less water, while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “It’s a big challenge, especially in the context of the global financial crisis,” added Vashee.
The plan is made up of three parts including humanitarian assistance to 923 million people suffering from hunger and preventing that number from increasing next year. The last part of the plan addresses sustainable development of world agriculture. Vashee said providing humanitarian assistance to feed the hungry is the job of the World Food Programme (WFP). The WFP is prioritising purchasing food locally and that means mainly in Africa. This creates opportunities that need to be exploited. If smallholder farmers can receive contracts from the WFP it would provide collateral for loans and an incentive for them to invest. “The WFP operations were severely hampered last year by export embargoes on food, including in Africa.
It had to make significant emergency food purchases in Africa to send to Liberia, however, because of export bans, it ended up going to Turkey for supplies,” he explained. Vashee said that, in an attempt to prevent the number of hungry people from increasing next year, the UN’s FAO is channelling half of its technical cooperation budget into buying seed and fertiliser, and he implored farmer organisations and government to place water policy and supply issues much higher on their agendas as irrigation is a key part of raising farm productivity. “Africa needs to invest a lot more in water capture, water conservation and drip irrigation systems,” he added.
The third part of the plan focuses on the sustainable development of world agriculture, replacing the old notion that the world would be fed by the most efficient agricultural countries with more localised production strategies. Vashee believes the solution has to be based on investment in local food production through infrastructure investment, well-functioning markets and incentive-based agriculture production. H e said farmer organisations need to use windows of opportunity to get governments to adopt a new attitude towards agriculture and build a long-term strategy with agricultural organisations. e said governments must make an effort to first give higher priority to agriculture and secondly promote entrepreneurship and increased competitiveness. – Rudi Massyn
