Cassava is a basic food that human needs and producing enough of it to feed the growing population of developing nations is one of the biggest challenges facing the modern world. The first of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is a pledge by the international community to halve the number of people in the world suffering from extreme hunger by the year 2015, a promise that puts agriculture at the heart of the development agenda.
Three out of four people in the developing world depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihood. Indeed, for most low-income countries, agriculture — which includes livestock, fisheries and forestry — is the most important sector of the economy, generating up to one half of gross domestic product, and often the main source of foreign currency. One of the main ways in which agriculture can be made more productive is by harnessing science to increase productivity. A range of agricultural research programs are currently underway in Sub-Saharan Africa, the one part of the developing world where wide-scale food shortages are still found.
Agriculture must also be sustainable. In the past, many parts of the developing world have suffered from overgrazing and the loss of soil fertility through intensive food production. This has often led to the spread of deserts and to a growing interest in developing farming practices for use in our environments.
More recently, an overzealous application of scientific techniques, such as chemical pesticides and herbicides, has brought its own set of problems, ranging from pollution of water resources to destruction of wildlife. As these problems have grown, so have realizations that a basic understanding of the mechanisms that create and sustain biodiversity is essential and the support that it provides to the world's food production is to be preserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment