BIOTECHNOLOGY - The Food Solution

Africa Must Embrace Biotechnology

A number of journalists from Anglophone West African countries including Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and The Gambia, have had frank discussions with African scientists on biotechnology and related issues.

This was at a two-day workshop in Accra from June 16-17, at the end of which, they agreed that there is the urgent need for African scientists to employ biotechnology, to help address food security and health matters on the continent.

The journalists were of the view that since scientists and industries in the developed countries are mainly interested in crops cultivated there such as maize, wheat, potatoes and soybeans, African scientists must take up the challenge, and make use of the appropriate tools available through biotechnology to boost agricultural production especially in crops such as cassava, yam and legumes that make up the people's staple diets.

When this happens, the continent's food security status will be enhanced and the money used in importing food items from the developed countries, could be channelled into other sectors of the economy that equally require urgent attention.

But on the other hand, if Africans accept reservations about biotechnology and refuse to use it to their advantage, they will continue to be dependent on developed countries for even their basic food items.

The workshop was organised by the Forum in Agricultural Research for Africa, FARA, with funding from USAID, to expose media persons to the reality of biotechnology in order to properly position them to engage in positive debates on the subject.

It also provided a platform for an interactive exchange on biotechnology between the journalists and scientists.

Issues discussed included what biotechnology is all about, biotechnology in agricultural research and its application in crop and animal production.

Africa Urged to Promote Biotechnology

African countries should form smart partnerships to share knowledge on biotechnology applications in agriculture, health, industry and food technology, an expert said on Tuesday in Zimbabwe. Visiting Biotechnology specialist, Thomas DeGregori of the University of Houston, in the United States, said this soon after meeting Vice President Joyce Mujuru. "Africa needs all the knowledge it can get together on biotechnology," he said. DeGregori said there was growing concern in Zimbabwe and the rest of Africa on the failure to produce adequate food to feed the people.

He said Africa was the only continent in the world that had experienced a decline in food per capita over the past 15 years. "African farmers are taking more nutrients out of the soil than they are putting, making agriculture not sustainable," he said.

Biotechnology was the solution to the challenges that African countries were experiencing and governments should listen to what their scientists were telling them about the science, said DeGregori. African scientists had been promoting biotechnology long before outsiders started talking Genetically Modified Organisms, he said. They had been developing seed varieties that were drought resistant, high yielding and adapted to local conditions.

The Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences, in conjunction with the Research Council of Zimbabwe, invited DeGregori to deliver a public lecture on Applications of Biotechnology to Agricultural Productivity, Health, Industry and Food Technology at the University of Zimbabwe on Wednesday.

Biotechnology Only Solution to Feed the World

Biotechnology holds tremendous promise for the developing world. The use of high-yielding, disease and pest resistant crops will have a direct bearing on improved food security, poverty alleviation and environmental conservation in Africa.

By developing crops that more efficiently absorb nutrients from the soil, biotechnology can help farmers produce more on land already under cultivation, and may reduce the need for costly inputs such as fertilisers and nonrenewable resources such as oil and natural gas.

According to a Mexican scientist Luis Herrera Estrella, the use of tropical biotech crops can be modified to tolerate aluminum and acid soils to significantly increase the productivity of corn, rice and papaya.

Biotech crops that require less tilling may help to decrease soil erosion and development of plants that can grow in tough conditions such as drought, or dry or poor soils may make it easier to farm marginal lands hence helping to keep fragile soils such as wetlands and rain forests out of food production.

In many African countries, subsistence farmers eke out meager livings, and the ability to provide enough food for survival is often less than assured and the vital importance of staple crops such as rice, sweet potatoes and cassava can’t be overstated. Over 650 million of the world’s poorest people live in the rural areas and without sustainable agriculture; they will have neither the resources nor employment they require for a better life.