The North Africa region stretches from Morocco to Egypt and includes the Maghreb countries (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia), Libya and Egypt. It extends eastwards to West Asia which includes Turkey, Pakistan and other countries and share several weather, soil and agricultural features in common. Thus, the percentage of arable land is low (around 13%), while steppes and deserts are quite extensive.The main crops in the North Africa region are cereals (wheat, barley and some maize generally under irrigation), grain legumes (lentils, chickpeas and broad beans), forage species (alfalfa, berseem—Trifolium alexandrinum—mainly in Egypt), irrigated crops such as vegetables (tomato, green peas, artichoke, etc.), citrus,sugar-beet, olive tree, almond and date palm. Sunflower and groundnut are also cultivated, while cotton is the main non-food crop species.
Despite some good harvests during years with adequate rainfall, the region is a net importer of food, especially cereals. In the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region, with a population growth rate of 3% and per capita food production at 1.1%, the shortfall in cereal production has been projected to be more than 50 million tons by 2005 (Weigand and Baum, 1997). This situation may worsen due to an aridification trend under global climatic change.
However, self-reliance for food would be enhanced through a combination of new technology, better farm practices, more favourable government policies and a more rational land-use pattern. While acknowledging that major increases in food production would come from the high rainfall lowlands (over 350 mm of rain annually), highlands and drier areas should not be neglected.
In sub-Saharan Africa, afflicted by hunger, periodically or endemically, food availability, access and absorption are the key issues relating to the food deficit existing in this region. Increasing the availability of food demands improvements in agricultural productivity such as those achieved during the ‘green revolution’ of the 1960s in Asia. Regarding access to food, this can be restricted by economic or environmental criteria; food is available, but people cannot purchase it, or it is unequally distributed within families. The major problem here is poverty and more so the ‘feminisation of poverty’. Finally, even with high and sustainable agricultural productivity and equitable access to food, people may still go hungry if the food is not safe to consume or if its nutritional quality is low. This is the issue of food absorption (M.S. Swaminathan, personal communication, 2002).
Some argue that the problem is not one of quantity of food but of its unequal distribution. However, even if we resolve the issue of distribution in the short run, the future growth in food demand will require increase in productivity from a decreasing stock of arable land. The challenge, therefore, is not only to feed more people (population growth is still rather high throughout Africa), but to do so with less available land, fewer non-renewable resources and less water.
Such facts, combined with the commitment to fighting poverty, indicate that the main thrust of national (and international) policies aimed at solving issues of rural poverty and food insecurity must include significant increases in local food production. Because the rural poor represent a significant percentage of the total population in Africa, an innovation that increases productivity will have a major impact on food security efforts and a nation's poverty.
Any strategy designed to eliminate food deficit and poor nutrition, and also to accelerate the evolution from household production to more commercial farming entrepreneurs, should comprise two interdependent approaches: developing commercial opportunities for the less vulnerable farmers by developing or enhancing markets for agricultural and horticultural products with high added value; and increasing food security by reducing the reliance on monocultures through encouraging diversified crop–livestock–forestry systems, which may be more environmentally resilient, nutritionally superior and commercially attractive (Ortiz, 2002b).
For the African countries, it may be more appropriate to specifically target biotechnology innovations that will increase productivity in marginal areas, where an increase in food production is needed and crop yields are significantly low. Raising productivity requires action in several areas: adoption of technologies that combat low productivity levels, decrease in post-harvest losses, control of pre-harvest pests and increase in yields on soils.
Some argue that the poor farmers and consumers stand to benefit very little from biotechnology. Indeed, this is part of the criticism directed at biotechnology, in particular, genetically modified (GM) crops. It is true that many modern biotechnological applications are geared towards market-based economies or used for commodities in highly productive environments. It is also true that in the current environment of declining public investments in agricultural research, one may wonder whether there is a positive impact of biotechnology on the livelihood of the rural poor. The following examples or case studies show that modern biotechnologies can benefit small holders and consumers in a positive way: increase in farm output; higher nutritional value of specific crops and livestock; provision of employment opportunities and higher incomes to small farmers and landless rural labourers; improvement of the rural environment through the decreasing use of chemicals; and lower food prices in urban and rural areas.
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