The Montpellier Panel has suggested a new standard for African agriculture in which the techniques of sustainable innovations are used by smallholder farmers to address the continent’s food and nutrition crisis.

This is contained in a statement by Mr Mike Shanahan, the Press Officer of the group, made available to newsmen in Abuja on Wednesday.

The Tide source reports that the Montpellier Panel is a group of experts from the fields of agriculture, sustainable development, trade, policy and global development chaired by Prof. Gordon Conway.

Since March 2010, the Panel has worked together to make recommendations to enable better European government support of national and regional agricultural development and food security priorities in sub-Saharan Africa.

The, group, in its report, said that term “Sustainable Intensification” has come to take on a highly charged and politicised meaning, becoming synonymous with big, industrial agriculture.

It added that as the world strived to sustainably feed a population expected to reach nine billion by 2050, the risk was that it could lose sight of the term’s scientific value and its potential relevance to all types of agricultural systems.

It quoted a member of the group, Dr Camilla Toulmin, as saying that that the world needed to boost the harvest of food and fibre from any given area.

“But rather than doing this in conventional unsustainable ways, which mean more pollution, less biodiversity and more climate change, we can choose to intensify farming in a sustainable way with fewer adverse impacts.

“This means scientists and local farmers working together, building on tradition and applying solutions at a local scale.

“Many of these solutions involve better use of soils, water and ecological systems, as well as diverse crop mixes.

“They also need secure land rights, and support from policymakers and the development community to help them to spread.”

The report examined the process and elements of intensification and considered how to ensure sustenability.

It cited some examples of sustainable intensification as microdosing of fertilisers in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso and using the cap of a soda bottle to measure precise amounts of nutrients for each seed hole.

Other examples are the planting of leguminous tree which sheds its leaves in the wet season and provides a natural nutrient source to crops planted underneath for sunlight to pass through.

It also cited the conservation farming in Zambia and the New Rice for Africa (NERICA), a cross-fertilisation between Asian and African rice species.