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“Move to sustainable agriculture”: FAO to cereal-based farming systems
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Monday, 22 December, 2014, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Rome
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fiogf49gjkf0d Cereal-based farming systems must join the transition to sustainable agriculture if they are to meet the unprecedented demand for maize, rice and wheat. That was one of the key messages to emerge from a recent meeting held by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which was attended by leading crop production specialists.
FAO estimated that over the next 35 years, farmers would need to increase the annual production of maize, rice and wheat to three billion tonnes, which is half-a-billion tonnes more than 2013’s record combined harvest.
They would need to do that with less water, fossil fuel and agro-chemicals on farmland that has been widely degraded by decades of intensive crop production, and in the face of drought, new pest and disease threats and extreme weather events provoked by climate change.
At the meeting, experts said that that challenge could only be met with eco-friendly agriculture that achieves higher productivity while conserving natural resources, adapting to climate change and delivering economic benefits to the 500 million small-scale family farms across the world.
The meeting focussed on maize, rice and wheat because those three crops are fundamental to world food security, providing 50 per cent of humanity’s dietary energy supply.
Cereals are also increasingly vulnerable. Since 1980, climate trends have reduced the annual global maize harvest by an estimated 23 million tonnes, and the wheat harvest by 33 million tonnes.
Green Revolution cereal yield increases, once averaging a spectacular three per cent a year, have fallen to around one per cent since 2000.
In Asia, the degradation of soils and the build-up of toxins in intensive paddy systems have raised concerns that the slowdown in yield growth reflects a deteriorating crop-growing environment.
The FAO meeting agreed that agriculture can no longer rely on input-intensive agriculture to increase crop production.
Improved varieties of maize, rice and wheat must go hand-in-hand with what FAO calls save and grow farming systems that keep soil healthy, integrate crop, tree and animal production, use water far more efficiently, and protect crops with integrated pest management.
Examples of ecosystem-based farming
Papers presented at the meeting provided an inventory of proven ecosystem-based farming technologies and practices. These revealed the following facts:
?In Vietnam, more than a million small-scale farmers have adopted the system of rice intensification, which produces high yields using less fertiliser, water and seed than conventional irrigated rice;
?In China, planting genetically-diverse rice varieties in the same field has cut fungal disease incidence so significantly, compared to mono-cropped rice, that many farmers were able to stop spraying fungicide;
?In southern India, site-specific nutrient management, which matches nitrogen inputs to plants’ real needs, has reduced fertiliser applications and costs, while increasing wheat yields by 40 per cent;
?The elimination of soil tillage on wheat land in central Morocco cut the water run-off volume by 30 per cent and sediment loss by 70 per cent, leading to increased water holding capacity that boosts crop productivity in drier seasons;
?In Zimbabwe, conservation agriculture has helped smallholder farmers produce up to eight times more maize per hectare than the national average, and
?Farmers in Zambia grow an acacia tree, Faidherbia albida, near maize fields and use its nitrogen-rich leaves as natural fertiliser and a protective mulch during the rainy season, resulting in a threefold increase in yields
The challenge facing policymakers is to accelerate the adoption of save and grow farming systems.
One clear need flagged by the meeting was greater support to smallholder farmers in adapting ecosystem-based farming practices to local conditions, which would require the revision of national policies and considerable upgrade of extension services and approaches that reduce the transaction costs of knowledge sharing, such as farmers' field schools.
The FAO forum was attended by 50 crop production specialists from FAO, AfricaRice, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dray Areas (ICARDA), the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and agricultural development institutions in Asia and Latin America.
Their findings would be presented in a policymakers’ guide, titled ‘Save and Grow: Maize, Rice and Wheat’, which would be published in 2015.
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