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To Fight Food Prices, S. Africa Urges Return to Farming
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by kferaday | July 10, 2008 at 05:32 pm
294 views | 12 Recommendations | 6 comments
The latest installment of national Geographic's series on the world food crisis focuses on the role subsistence farming can play in resolving the crisis. Smaller high value farms (that is farms that have a higher yield per acre) would reduce reliance on food imports, increase per capita income in some of the poorest countries. To make it a success, farmers need access to the latest in agricultural technologies such as drip irrigation and possibly genetically modified foods (although this is still highly contentious).
Success also depends on moving to a regional model of production and consumption. Marshall highlights Madeira as an example of a region where the local land is not used to its full capacity. With population estimates ranging from 9 to 12 billion by mid-century, this is a problem we need to solve quickly.
With the global food crisis forcing South Africa's poor to struggle to make ends meet, officials have put forward a novel solution: Resume the subsistence agriculture that used to be part of the area's heritage.
A significant portion of South Africans and the majority of the country's poorest people live in rural areas, finance minister Trevor Manuel said.
"Higher prices are a signal to plant," he told National Geographic News. "This is true for poor people in rural areas as it is for large-scale commercial farmers."
Overall food prices have gone up 15.3 percent in South Africa over the past 12 months, with fats and oils increasing by a whopping 52.1 percent and heavily used staple grains by 22.9 percent.
(Related video: "World Food in Crisis.")
Failing to plant crops on fallow land would squander an opportunity to protect the poor from an erosion of incomes because of these higher prices, Manuel said.
And while most urban dwellers do not have the land to plant sufficient food, many have vegetable gardens that could be used to supplement household food provisions, he added.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (6)
at 17:38 on July 10th, 2008
kferaday, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 17:48 on July 10th, 2008
Thanks>
at 20:30 on July 10th, 2008
kferaday, I like this story. It's good stuff. Ya know, this is one of those "No Sh*t Sherlock" solutions, that is so "Plain as the nose on ones face!" Pouring Billions of dollars in food aid is senseless, when dictators take the bulk of it to feed their armies and friends. At least if Aid when to farming and training those to be self sufficient is a step in the right direction. I have yet to see a dictator and his army out there farming, though they are not above stealing their produce.
at 20:48 on July 10th, 2008
Agreed. There's alot of politics and special interests behind the food aid so I imagine that will be a tough ship to turn around.
at 08:37 on July 11th, 2008
kferaday, I like this story. It's good stuff. It's amazing the amount of food you can grow in a small space. For many people, the limiting factor is availability of water. Leaving land fallow is good farming practice as it allows the earth to recover from intensive cultivation. Fallow land is part of the crop rotation in well managed systems.
at 09:00 on July 11th, 2008
Thanks. Drip irrigation goes along way to solving water issues as does GMF potentially.