Oyo State governor, ‘Seyi Makinde, has expressed the readiness of his administration to collaborate with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) to ensure food security in the state.
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Showing posts with label Tropical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tropical. Show all posts
Thursday, August 17, 2023
Food security: Oyo to partner IITA - ITREALMS
NaijaAgroNet: ... Linking agrobiz, sustainable environs, people & technology
Oyo State governor, ‘Seyi Makinde, has expressed the readiness of his administration to collaborate with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) to ensure food security in the state.
Oyo State governor, ‘Seyi Makinde, has expressed the readiness of his administration to collaborate with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) to ensure food security in the state.
Monday, June 4, 2012
With hunger, sustainable development is not feasible - FAO
The Food and Agriculture Organisation
(FAO) of the United Nations has affirmed that sustainable development is unfeasible
if hunger and malnutrition are not eradicated.
José Graziano da Silva, FAO
Director General said there cannot be anything called sustainable development
when nearly one of every seven men, women and children are victims of
undernourishment.
FAO in a press statement made
available to NaijaAgroNet revealed that millions of people are still hungry despite the
significant progress in development and food production as there are no means
to purchase the food needed for a healthy and productive life.
FAO made the pronouncement in
preparation for the Rio+20 summit coming up this month in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, that a sustainable future is being put to a limit as a result of the
challenges of food security.
"At the Rio summit we have
the golden opportunity to explore the convergence between the agendas of food
security and sustainability to ensure that happens," FAO boss said
forecasting the summit as an opportunity to discuss food security issues.
Hunger reduction and sustainable
development, FAO revealed are irrevocably connected, hence a better governance
of the agricultural and food systems are key to achieving both targets.
Further, NaijaAgroNet gathered that three quarters of
the world's poor and hungry live in rural areas and most of them depend on
agriculture and related activities for their livelihoods.
The UN agency also made known that about forty
per cent of the world's degraded lands are in areas with high poverty rates,
making hunger to put in motion a vicious cycle of reduced productivity.
Yinka Awosanya/LS
... Linking agrobiz, people & technology
Saturday, June 2, 2012
AATF enters deal with Japan Tobacco on rice varieties
In order to
develop varieties of rice in sub-Saharan Africa, the African Agricultural
Technology Foundation (AATF) has signed a license agreement with Japan Tobacco
(JT), a leading international tobacco product company.
The license, as
revealed in a press statement made available to NaijaAgroNet, would enable smallholder
farmers in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Uganda to use JT's transformation
technology to develop new rice varieties.
The project
which seeks to address major constraints facing rice production in Sub-Sahara
Africa region is tagged 'Nitrogen Use Efficient, Water Use Efficient and Salt
Tolerant (NEWEST) Rice Project.' Japan Tobacco would also offer free technology
in support of humanitarian aid projects.
Commenting on
the agreement, AATF Executive Director, Dr. Denis Kyetere affirmed that slow
growth in domestic rice production has contributed to the low output achieved
by farmers in the region.
“Several factors
are responsible for the low rice production. However, nitrogen deficiency and
drought have been cited as leading constraints to upland rice production, while
high salinity is increasingly becoming a major problem in many rice growing
areas of Africa,” he noted.
NaijaAgroNet recollects that the Food
and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) once revealed that rice production in the
region has stagnated at about 14.5 million tonnes per year, which is against
the annual consumption of 21 million tonnes, hence the need to boost
production.
The license,
JT’s Chief Strategy Officer, Mr. Masamichi Terabatake said would also enable
the use of JT's plant transformation technology for monocot species, PureIntro;
developing and deploying the nitrogen efficient, water efficient, and salt
tolerant rice products, free of royalties.
PureIntro is an
agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation technology that is recognized
worldwide as de facto standard for monocot transformation, which reduces
development costs and time.
Additionally, PureIntro
has been licensed by JT to more than 50 private and public entities worldwide
for numerous monocots including maize, rice, wheat, barley, sorghum, sugarcane,
switchgrass, miscanthus, forage and turf.
JT’s plant
biotechnology is independently managed from its core businesses including its
tobacco business and food business, thus not applied to its product development
conducted within those businesses.
AATF launched
the NEWEST Rice for Africa Project in 2008 with the objective to transform some
varieties of the New Rice for Africa (NERICA) to improve their productivity in
nitrogen-poor soils.
Experts say, provision
of smallholder rice famers with higher yielding varieties are well adapted to
the upland and lowland rice-growing areas in Africa, which also is another goal
for establishing NEWEST.
Other partners
in this private public partnership include Arcadia Biosciences who are
providing access to traits that confer nitrogen use efficiency, water use
efficiency and salt tolerance. The University of California is donating
required plant transformation technologies. The International Center for
Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the national agricultural research institutes
of Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda will conduct the necessary field
trials to test the performance of the new varieties.
The project is funded by the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Kingdom’s
Department for International Development (DFID), and will initially be
implemented over a 10-year period.
Yinka Awosanya/LS
... Linking agrobiz, people & technology
Thursday, May 31, 2012
FAO develops online portal to unlock food potentials
Thermal zones (baseline period: 1961-1990) |
The United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO) with the partnership of International Institute
for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) recently developed an online data portal
in order to help unlock the planet's potential on food.
The data portal, NaijaAgroNet learnt is named Global
Agro-ecological Zones (GAEZ) Portal and developed in order to assist in
unlocking the planet's potential to feed the rapidly growing population.
The United Nations' agency affirmed
that there is need to increase the global food production to 60 per cent by
2050 as the world population is expected to rise above 9 billion.
FAO revealed to NaijaAgroNet in a press statement that
the portal is a planning tool designed specially to help identify areas of
increased global food production while maintaining natural resource base and
facing the challenge of climate change.
FAO identified water scarcity as
one of the limiting factor for area expansion that intensification of food
production occurs within a changing climate, thereby requiring adaptation and
mitigation.
Director of FAO's Land and Water
Division, Parviz Koohafkan said GAEZ would help identify where there are
‘bridgeable yield gaps' and what causes them, allowing for the formulation of
appropriate investment policies with the provision of appropriate support for
farmers to help boost food production.
FAO recent study revealed that
crop production by small farmers can run as low as 30 to 40 per cent of
potential in some areas in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
The study also made known that
the Sub-Sahara Africa is the region with the highest yielding gap in cereal.
Africa as a whole also recorded about 1.2 tones of cereal per hectare compared
to an average yield of some 3 tons per hectare in the developing world as a
whole.
The online data seeks to enhance planners' and
decision makers' capacity to estimate agricultural production potentials and
variability under different environmental and management scenarios, including
climatic conditions, management regimes, water availability and levels of
inputs.
Yinka Awosanya/LS
... Linking agrobiz, people & technology
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
John Kufuor is special envoy for tropical disease
Mr. John A. Kufuor |
Former Ghananian President, Mr. John A. Kufuor, has been honoured
by the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) as the
organization’s new special envoy, reports MarketWatch.
NaijaAgroNet gathered this was to honour the former president for his
political and humanitarian achievements in Africa and beyond.
Dr. Neeraj Mistry, Managing Director of the Global Network
expressed the organization’s delight to have President Kufuor joining the cause
of the organization.
"His record of progress in human development for the people
of Ghana and globally speaks for itself,” Mistry said.
John Kufuor in his response affirmed that NTDs is a major factor
in improving health systems and reducing poverty in endemic countries.
"I am delighted to apply my experience in improving health,
nutrition, and food security programs in Africa to work with governments around
the world," he said.
Admin/LS
... Linking agrobiz, people & technology
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