Draft Fao Paper Outlines Ways To Boost Farm Production

As a follow up to the World Food Summit held in Rome last November, the Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has circulated a draft document for approval by member nations suggesting measures to boost agriculture production so that the number of hungry people can be reduced to half by the year 2010.

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi yesterday, FAO director general Jacques Diouf said the document Vision for agriculture development for year 2010 was a draft agriculture policy to be adopted by the member nations to meet the food shortage that may be faced by many countries in the coming decade due to growing population.

 

To feed the additional 3 billion people by 2010 due to population growth, cooperation was needed among governments, private sector and NGOs, as the world population would reach about 9 billion by then, he said.

FAO is planning to give a final shape to the document after taking into account the feedback from different countries by end of June this year, Diouf said.

Earlier, Diouf inaugurated a National Phytotron Facility at the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI) campus to assist plant scientists in conducting crop breeding and crop management studies under controlled environment, without any constraint of seasons and locations.

At present, there are about 800 million people worldwide of which 200 million are children without access to proper food.

Moreover, in our bid to feed this ever-growing population, we are gradually encroaching the fragile eco-system and also facing new constraints such as water logging and increase in salination of the soil, he said.

Facilities like phytotron would help overcome the limitation of environment by analysing the productivity under a controlled environment, Diouf said.

He said there was hope as long as governments realised the role of scientists and science to develop agriculture. Our role is to advise governments on various matters and we stress on the use of science and technology for development process, he said.

He expressed confidence that feeding 9 billion people by 2010 would not be a problem if a good agricultural policy with effective use of scientific knowledge was adopted by developing countries.

Speaking on the occasion, agriculture minister Chaturanan Mishra said science had no border but some people had divided scientists, too, in the name of intellectual property rights.

Science has developed so much that it can make hunger vanish from the planet. It is not the responsibility of one nation; all countries should work together to serve the cause, Mishra said.

He stressed that India had to play a leading role in overcoming the world food crisis. The country was rich in agricultural scientists.

Indian Council of Agricultural Research director general R S Paroda said the facility would also be available to regional institutions and universities.

IARI director R B Singh expressed the hope that FAO support will help India achieve global food security.