New Delhi, India
February 4, 2009
The world's farmers must quickly
switch to more sustainable and productive farming systems to
grow the food needed by a swelling world population and respond
to climate change, FAO's top
crops expert told an international farm congress here today.
In a keynote speech to 1,000 participants at the IVth World
Congress on Conservation Agriculture (CA) in New Delhi, Shivaji
Pandey, Director of FAO's Plant Production and Protection
Division, endorsed CA as an essential part of that change.
"The world has no alternative to pursuing Sustainable Crop
Production Intensification to meet the growing food and feed
demand, to alleviate poverty and to protect its natural
resources. Conservation Agriculture is an essential element of
that Intensification," Pandey said.
Conservation Agriculture is a farming system that does away with
regular ploughing and tillage and promotes permanent soil cover
and diversified crops rotation to ensure optimal soil health and
productivity. Introduced some 25 years ago, it is now practiced
on 100 million ha of land across the world.
Environmental damage
Conventional intensive farming methods had often contributed to
environmental damage, resulting in declining rates of
agricultural productivity just as the world needs to double its
food production to feed nine billion people by 2050, Pandey
said.
"In the name of intensification in many places around the world,
farmers over-ploughed, over-fertilized, over-irrigated,
over-applied pesticides," he declared. "But in so doing we also
affected all aspects of the soil, water, land, biodiversity and
the services provided by an intact ecosystem. That began to
bring yield growth rates down."
On current trends, the rate of growth in agricultural
productivity is expected to fall to 1.5% between now and 2030
and further to 0.9% between 2030 and 2050, compared with 2.3%
per year since 1961.
In developing countries, growth in wheat yields has gone down
from about 5% in 1980 to 2% in 2005. Growth in rice yields went
down from 3.2% to 1.2% during the same period while maize yields
dropped from 3.1% to 1%.
Smaller footprint
Conservation agriculture could not only help bring yields back
up but also deliver several important environmental benefits,
Pandey continued. Aside from restoring soil health, it also
saved on energy use in agriculture, reducing the footprint of a
sector which currently accounts for some 30 percent of global
greenhouse gas emissions.
It could further mitigate climate change by helping sequester
carbon in the soil and also potentially save 1,200 km³ of water
a year by 2030 since healthy soil retains more moisture and
needs less irrigation.
Only with sustainable intensification of crop production can
serious progress be made towards achieving the Millennium
Development Goals on hunger and poverty reduction and on
ensuring environmental sustainability, Pandey warned. "We are
currently headed in the wrong direction for both of them," he
added.
He urged governments, donors and other stakeholders to provide
policy and financial support to ensure early, wider uptake of
CA. Training, participatory research and building strong
farmers' organizations should be accelerated while
newly-developed CA equipment should be made widely available
and/or manufactured locally.
Delegates to the four-day Congress include farmers, experts, and
policy makers from all over the world. The meeting is hosted by
the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the
National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS). FAO, along
with IFAD and other Indian and international organizations are
among the sponsors and co-organizers of this largest global
gathering of the Conservation Agriculture community. |
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