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We don’t have to encroach on our forest land for food

Saturday December 05 2015
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Dr Hezron Mogaka. PHOTO | COURTESY

How can the continent achieve food security without encroaching on forest lands?

Despite Africa’s ecological system being fragile, our soils are still fairly good. We still have a lot of water ... So the best thing we can do is to increase crop yield without expanding into forest areas. The first thing is to invest in crop intensification — use the same area but intensify your activities, use water resources in a more efficient way and use improved varieties. The solution is not necessarily to control population growth; population can be an important resource.

There are opposing narratives of Africa Rising, where people see opportunity on the continent, and another of declining food productivity. With the threat of climate change what are the continent’s future prospects?

The paradox is that deforestation could be fuelling economic growth; levels of eutrophication could be increasing in the water bodies as a consequence of increased economic activity. So a point of equilibrium must be found to satisfy both economic and environmental considerations.

What one has to bear in mind though is that economic growth driven by mining and exploitation of other environmental resources is not sustainable. That is why we are saying that with the coming of climate change, the population is going to become more vulnerable because the first thing that climate change affects is the ecosystem.

Given that our populations depend so heavily on agriculture, their livelihoods are going to be compromised... We need to balance the act by looking after the environmental resources that are fuelling this economic growth.

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What about the optimism you and other scholars are now advocating?

We are here as solution seekers. The mistake we often make in Africa is to lament so much about our existing situation that we lose sight of the solutions.

Our agricultural situation is either declining in productivity or it has stagnated; still, we should not spend so much time discussing the decline or stagnation but think in terms of how to increase agricultural productivity.

How do we turn around declining productivity in agriculture?

The answer is in agricultural intensification, developing our markets, and value addition. The last thing is to use existing resources more efficiently and then deploy the science and technology, which already exists. If you put all those factors together, you are likely to increase your agricultural productivity on a sustainable basis.

Why should we put faith in climate-smart agriculture and how can we make it work?

Climate-smart agriculture is one approach to enhancing food productivity, increasing resilience as well as reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. The technologies and approaches are already there. What may vary from country to country is the capacity — in terms of financial and economic resources and availability of human resources and technical knowhow.

You may need policies to support the implementation of the technologies that are there. But what we need most is to demonstrate that these technologies can enhance food security and empower communities economically.

It has been argued that there is a disconnect between the generators of knowledge and the institutions that are supposed to adopt and put it into policy and practice. How can this gap be bridged?

For a very long time, we have had the researchers operating in their own sphere and the policy- making organs in another. Since the knowledge and technology generators don’t talk with the planning and policy organs, we may not be addressing the correct priorities.

That is changing over time and at meetings these days, you find more cross-cutting representation; if this can be cascaded down to the lower levels, you will have better communication. We also need to work out the mechanisms that enhance the adoption of technologies.

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