Developing and agreeing on policies for food security is just the beginning. During this first day of the Committee on World Food Security, numerous members of the plenary addressed the following question: “what is the next step?”
Scientists around the world are developing innovative and modern techniques to improve crop yields, their nutrition content and their resilience to climate extremes. This is fantastic news, but the simple solution may have been right under our noses over the past decades.
Africa is rich in ancient crops, but many are being replaced by modern high yielding varieties. However, these so-called orphan crops are better adapted to extreme soil and climatic influences than the major crops of the world. The African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC), supported by the FAO, emphasizes the opportunities of these ancient crops. That means that more research to increase orphan crop yields is needed, rather than research into the climate adaptation of modern crops.
Read the full post on the CFS website here.
Blogpost by Jesse Opdam #CFS43 Social Reporter – jesse.opdam(at)wur.nl
Photo: Harvest of rye in the Netherlands (taken by author)
This post is part of the live coverage during the 43rd Session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), a project GFAR is running in collaboration with CFS. This post is written by one of our social reporters, and represents the author’s views only.
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