Farmers urged to join the 'greener' revolution

AllAfrica.com, via FAO: Some 100 delegates from 36 countries meeting at FAO today called on farmers to join the ongoing "Greener" revolution represented by a form of farming known as Conservation Agriculture. This farming system, CA for short, aims to help feed the world more sustainably by building up soil ecosystems and reducing unnecessary soil disturbance wherever possible.

According to one study, some 20 percent of the earth's cropland is now being eroded or otherwise degraded - a potential catastrophe given the need to double world food production by 2050 to feed a population of more than nine billion. Rebuilding good soil structure and encouraging biological processes in soil increases its capacity to produce crops, the delegates declared in a Framework for Action adopted at the end of a three-day technical meeting on Investing in Sustainable Crop Intensification and Improving Soil Health.

They urged "a rapid shift, whenever and wherever conditions permit it, to management systems based on minimal soil disturbance, increased soil cover, and appropriate crop rotation". The Framework for Action also called on donors and policy-makers to promote such systems into their programmes for agricultural development and to mitigate the current food crisis….

FAO logo found on Flickr, on Jaume d'Urgell's stream, under Creative Commons 2.0 license