IITA Chief Solicits Support For African Farmers

The Director-General, International Institute of Tropical
Agriculture (IITA), Dr Nteranya Sanginga, has called for more support for
small-holder farmers to ensure food security in Africa.

This is contained in a statement made available to our
correspondent in Ibadan and signed by Mr Godwin Atser, the Institute’s
Communications Officer.

Sanginga was quoted as making the call in Australia at the
Crawford Fund annual conference.

He said food security in Africa would remain elusive with
isolated successes unless decisive actions were taken to assist small-scale
farmers to grow more arable crops.

Sanginga noted that in spite of the progress made in crop
improvement, low soil fertility and nutrient depletion had continued to present
huge obstacles to securing the needed harvests.

He quoted recent studies by IITA in the Great Lakes region
of Eastern Africa that showed that the soils in that region were now barren
with very little fertility.

He said that the barren soils were caused by years of mining
and insufficient replacement of nutrients by small-holder farmers, mostly
practicing low-input agriculture.

Sanginga suggested the adoption of Integrated Soil Fertility
Management (ISFM) system to reverse the trend.

He said ISFM involved “the application of soil fertility
management practices, and the knowledge to adapt these to local conditions
which optimise fertiliser and organic resource use efficiency and crop
productivity”.

He noted that ISFM was also the topic of an ongoing
international conference in Nairobi, Kenya, being attended by the Institute’s
natural resource management specialists.

Sanginga said ISFM presented a means to overcome the dilemma
of low productivity.

He said it offered farmers better returns on investment in
fertiliser through its combination with indigenous agro-minerals and available
organic resources.

Sanginga said disseminating the knowledge of ISFM and
developing incentives for its adoption was a challenge for national planners
and rural development specialists.

He said that if done efficiently it would result in more
productive and sustainable agriculture, improved household and regional food
security, and increased incomes among small-scale farmers.