part of celebrations
for World Food Day, I spoke at
the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the UN (FAO)
about how we can reduce food
waste and loss in developing
countries. Last year at the Rio
Summit, the UN Secretary General
announced the Zero Hunger
Challenge. One of the five targets
is zero food loss; the other is
more sustainable production
systems. Agricultural biodiversity
offers a way to achieve progress
towards both goals
simultaneously.
Damage inflicted by crop pests
and diseases is a major
contributor to food loss. Almost
one-fifth of all food grown is lost
in this way which means not only
mean less food and lower farm
incomes —lost food also
represents lost labour, energy
and water.
These losses are particularly
devastating to the 1 billion
people in rural areas of
developing countries who rely on
low-input agriculture to meet
their household needs of food
and income.
Research by Bioversity
International over the last 15
years has shown how science
can help farmers already
growing diverse plant varieties
to use agricultural biodiversity in
a more targeted way to reduce
pest and disease loss. Let’s look
at a couple of examples.
Beans - Uganda and Ecuador
Common bean is one of the most
important plant-based protein
sources for the people of East
Africa and Latin America. In East
and Central Africa, common bean
serves as an important food and
cash crop, and plays an
important nutritional role
providing around 23% of protein
in diets - in Ecuador the figure is
about the same.
In Uganda, bean yields have
consistently remained at 20%
lower than the potential yield, in
particular because of loss from
pests and diseases. Losses due to
pests such as bean fly and
diseases such as Angular Leaf
Spot (ALS) and Anthracnose can
be as high as 25% in some areas
of Uganda, but we have seen
that when farmers’ groups there
grow three or more bean
varieties in their fields they
experience significantly less
damage to their crop than
households with few varieties,
particularly in years when there
is high disease incidence.
In Ecuador, the picture is
somewhat different. Pest and
disease damage to common
bean grown by smallholder
farmers is low — less than 3% in
2012. Farmers use little or no
pesticides but instead plant
traditional common bean
varieties in mixtures — almost
90% of beans sown in Ecuador
are traditional varieties. Working
with farmer groups in trials
where the bean mixtures were
enhanced by adding more
varieties to the mixture than
normally used resulted in yields
that doubled, and in some cases
tripled — exceeding yields from
both normal mixtures and
commercial varieties sown that
year. In addition, the enhanced
bean mixtures also withstood
low rainfall. As a result, the
number of farmers wanting to
try enhanced bean mixtures
tripled after the first year.
Barley in Morocco
Powder mildew is a disease
affecting barley losses worldwide
which can reach up to 30% in
North Africa, although average
losses are about 10%. When
researchers working with
smallholder farmers on using
traditional barley varieties found
some traditional varieties to have
more or equal resistance than
the recommended modern or
improved ones, the farmers
commented: “finally the
extension services are thinking
about using and improving our
own local varieties in their
experiments”.
So what do these examples tell
us?
Agricultural biodiversity can be a
powerful and sustainable tool for
reducing the incidences of pests
and diseases in developing
countries. Using agricultural
biodiversity also increases the
adaptive capacity of crops to
resist new pests and diseases
that might enter farming systems
in the future. Yet not enough
research is being dedicated to
learning how to use these
techniques and how to integrate
them into farming systems.
Research and development
agendas also need to give more
importance to conserving the on-
farm crop genetic diversity that
we need to help combat pests
and diseases to ensure this
natural resource is not lost.
Agricultural biodiversity is not
the only solution but we have
identified where diversity can be
part of the solution to reduce
food loss in a sustainable way if
we are to meet the Zero Hunger
challenges - something to reflect
on as we mark World Food Day
2013.
M. Ann Tutwil
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