Smallest Farmers Key To Feeding World’s Poorest

Smallest Farmers Key To Feeding World’s Poorest

Postby Michael » Fri Feb 12, 2010 3:33 am

Writing in the journal Science, researchers note that helping developing countries’ small farmers find ways to make better use of marginal land and cope with overfarmed fields is key to feeings the world’s poorest people. Cynthia Graber reports.

How can we feed the world? It’s a key question for the 21st century, one that vexes scientists, policy makers and, of course, farmers. In a paper in the February 12th issue of the journal Science, researchers warn that unless the focus is on helping small farmers in developing countries, the efforts to feed all the world’s people will most likely fail.These small-scale farmers may raise just a few crops and graze a handful of animals. They’ve been mostly ignored by agricultural assistance agencies—but according to the researchers, these farmers feed most of the world’s poorest billion people. They face challenges from an increasing population; land that’s overfarmed and worn out; and climate change, bringing with it worsening drought or increased rainfall.The authors say farmers must learn to use marginal lands that could be prime location for crops such as millet, sorghum and cowpea. Also needed is more investment in livestock research, such as breeding for hardier animals. And wealthier nations that have a significant financial agricultural investment in the developing world should match that with a scientific one. Because helping these small-scale sustainable farmers is the way to feed the world’s poorest people.

—Cynthia Graber

60-Second Science is a daily Podcast. Subscribe to this Podcast:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=189330872

 

Peace and Light, michael
Posted by Michael on January 9th, 2012

Leave a Reply

  • Blogging with Integrity

    BlogWithIntegrity.com

  • Subscribe to our Monthly Newsletter

    To subscribe to our dandy newsletter simply add your email below. A confirmation email will be sent to you!


  • a note about linking and participating

    namaste. Sbafarmscollective.org, a brand new look for the site for a 30 year old collective on the Gulf Coast of Texas. We were completely destroyed by hurricane ike and as part of our rebuilding efforts we have launched our site and it contains a forum section. We would greatly appreciate your consideration for cross posting or participation in the forum section. We have a great deal of common in what we seek to accomplish and would like to contribute in your regional sections of connections and reciprocal linking and posting. Thank you for your time and consideration michael founder sba farms collective.

  • Additional Information

    FAIR USE NOTICE
    This site contains copyrighted material.
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License.
    .
    If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

    For more information on sbafarmscollective.org Fair Use Policy.
    see the Privacy Policy page listed in the OUR PAGES Links below

    © 2000 - 2012 SBA Farms, all rights reserved. Website revisions by SBA FARMS COLLECTIVE

  • Green and Secure site


    Protected by WP-Secure Plugin
    SiteSecurityMonitor.com
    Visit Hyperlocavore - A free yard sharing community

  • Posts from the past

  • Visitors to our site