Rome, Italy
December 10, 2007
Organic agriculture can
contribute to fighting hunger, but chemical fertilizers are
needed to feed the world
FAO has no reason to believe
that organic agriculture can substitute for conventional farming
systems in ensuring the world’s food security, Dr. Jacques
Diouf, FAO Director-General, said here today.
Dr. Diouf was commenting on recent press and media reports
suggesting that FAO endorses organic agriculture (OA) as the
solution to world hunger.
“We should use organic agriculture and promote it,” Dr. Diouf
said. “It produces wholesome, nutritious food and represents a
growing source of income for developed and developing countries.
But you cannot feed six billion people today and nine billion in
2050 without judicious use of chemical fertilizers.”
Organic farming generally bars the use of any chemical inputs.
Nearly 31 million hectares, or roughly two percent of the
world’s farmland, was farmed organically in 2005, generating
sales of some US$ 24 billion in the EU, US, Canada and Asia in
2006.
In May of this year, FAO hosted an international conference on
organic agriculture. One of the papers presented for discussion
– not an FAO document - argued that organic agriculture could
produce enough food for the current world population.
Insufficient potential
However, according to FAO, data and models regarding the
productivity of organic as opposed to conventional farming show
that the potential of organic agriculture is far from large
enough to feed the world.
Organically-grown products generally attract higher prices than
conventionally grown ones and therefore represent a good source
of income for farmers. However, they must meet certain farming
and quality standards and require capacity-building, large
investments and efficient organization along the production and
marketing chains, which puts them beyond the reach of most
resource-poor farmers of developing countries.
Judicious use
Judicious use of chemical inputs, especially fertilizers, could
help significantly boost food production in Sub-Saharan Africa,
where farmers use less than one tenth of the fertilizer applied
by their Asian counterparts, Dr. Diouf said. Much of African
soil suffers from constraints such as acidity and lowered
fertility and is greatly in need of soil amendments and
nutrients.
In its annual World Development Report, the World Bank noted
this year, that “low fertilizer use is one of the major
constraints on increasing agricultural productivity in
Sub-Sahara Africa”.
Malawi, for years a recipient of food aid, has recently boosted
its maize production after adopting a policy of providing
small-scale farmers with seeds and fertilizers.
“However, chemical inputs must be used with care,” Dr. Diouf
said. “You have to choose the right inputs, right amounts, and
apply them in the right way and at the right time."
Higher productivity with lower inputs can be obtained from such
systems as Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Conservation
Agriculture (CA), Dr. Diouf noted. IPM can reduce pesticide use
by 50% in the case of cotton and vegetable production and up to
100 percent with rice. CA and no-tillage agriculture reduces
labour requirements by doing away with ploughing and can use 30
percent less fertilizer and 20 percent less pesticides.
The key elements in feeding the world now and in the future will
be increased public and private investments, the right policies
and technologies, knowledge and capacity building, grounded in
sound ecosystem management. “There is no one solution to the
problem of feeding the world’s hungry and poor,” Dr. Diouf
concluded.
World leaders, international figures and distinguished
researchers and academics will examine how to ensure the world's
future food supply next year when FAO is due to host a
High-Level Meeting on “Feeding the World in 2050”. |
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