Sustainable farming must for food security

The 7th session of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ministerial Conference on Food Security and Agricultural Development and the inaugural General Assembly of the Islamic Organisation for Food Security (IOFS) to be held in Astana will throw spotlight on food security. Starting Tuesday, the conference will delve into the current state of agriculture and food security in the member states. The IOFS will coordinate efforts of member states in the agricultural sector, develop strategies, give technical assistance, and take pragmatic steps to beat hunger and malnutrition.
The Astana gathering will focus on the difficulties and challenges facing agricultural development and food security in OIC member states amid the declining ratio of agriculture in their GDP at 10.3% in 2013 compared with 16.3% in 1990.
The food security’s current and future challenges have sparked a global concern. Ministers from the Group-of-Seven nations, which met in Niigata prefecture, northern Japan, to discuss the food security, agreed on Sunday to promote agricultural innovation and investment as farmers face the twin challenges of an aging
workforce and extreme weather at a time when global food demand is increasing.
They reaffirmed that motivated, skilled and enterprising farmers are essential for the growth of the agricultural sector. “We will help farmers enhance their capability and skills by facilitating access to information and communication technologies, precision farming and agricultural innovations,” they said. In Niigata prefecture, Japan’s Agriculture Minister Hiroshi Moriyama came out with an innovative idea that the retiring growers could be replaced with Japanese-developed autonomous tractors and backpack-mounted robots, as the average age of Japanese farmers reaches 67.
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton painted an optimistic scenario when she said, “Agricultural productivity around the world has been greatly enhanced by agricultural research and development, which has helped to improve the livelihoods of millions of the world’s poorest people.”
But she acknowledged the gap across Sub-Saharan Africa. “We could close this gap by giving farmers access to inputs like high-yielding and adapted crop varieties, fertilizers, animal health products and services like financial services and technical advice.”
Yet, challenges persist. The El Nino weather phenomenon, one of the worst in 50 years, has caused intense drought in southern Africa that will have a “devastating” impact on the region’s food security, the UN food agency warned on Friday. Across large parts of Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, and Madagascar, the rainfall season has so far been the driest in the last 35 years, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a report.
In India, about 330 million people are suffering from drought that caused severe water shortages and desperately poor farmers suffer crop losses. The
government had released funds to affected regions.
Undoubtedly, agriculture will play a crucial role in addressing the planet’s future needs. Gearing towards this, the UN set out 17 Sustainable Development Goals to tackle contemporary global challenges by 2030. It wasn’t a surprise that nine of them are directly or indirectly connected with agriculture.
Hope for this Earth lies in sustainable farming. The farmers have to be trained in farming methods that increase yield without damaging the environment. Technology has to be brought to the aid of farmers so that they can stop their reliance on agriculture inputs that are not only expensive, but ecologically hostile too.
The General Assembly of the IOFS has to put emphasis on these aspects and address the challenge of food security with concrete strategies and plans.