Farming know how could save starving masses

As this will be the first Conservation Comment for 2012, I thought it appropriate to quickly revisit 2011 from a Tramping Club point of view, as last year we lost two of the most enthusiastic environmental stewards the club has had for many years with the passing of Tom Luff and later Harold Stimpson.

The role these two members played in encouraging and leading the club in environmental issues locally and in the region was something we could all aspire to.

Something I have long been pondering is if we can feed, say, two billion people today who basically live a western lifestyle as we know it, how do the other five billion get housed, fed and clothed? If we look, for example, at Africa, more than 30 million people are going hungry from the west, to the horn and south owing to droughts and associated problems.

The term "drought" is used in different places identifying a problem that has wide-ranging consequences.

The African continent is susceptible to droughts partly because of geography, but often due to poor agricultural practices, lack of rain and an ever-increasing population.

As the drought starts to take hold, poverty comes to the fore as most Africans live in rural areas, many are subsistence farmers who rely heavily on the seasonal rains for food production.

Add to that the world's highest rates of HIV/Aids in Southern Africa, which is also a major factor in the food shortage.

So where does agriculture fit in? With current information available in New Zealand on irrigation, pasture production, grazing techniques and animal health management, we as a country could supply the technology to ease the problems of that continent.

World economists have said that to modernise agriculture could be the best way forward to ensure farmers get to use a more effective and efficient method of food production. It seems they have the same problem we have with water storage: they need to capture water wherever it falls for future use.

I remember groups like VSA gathering together suitably qualified people and sending them to countries like Africa in an effort to teach and train local farmers in the modern techniques of agriculture.

Now I know this may seem simplistic, and I know the internal problems in Africa are huge - from government to tribal issues, to constant harassment from armed groups to family conflicts that make pastoral farming difficult - but to continue to send money could, I suspect, go on forever while not sorting the food issues for the starving masses.

What seems to be needed is funding from the World Bank - something that stopped around the late 80s for countries like those in Africa - a commonsense, well-structured organisation to operate and control the technology transfer to teach Africa's pastoral farmers modern techniques of food production.

Agriculture can play a major role in assisting countries like Africa feed themselves with modern technology, and their willingness to learn. We can never feed the world, but we can do our bit to ease the pain and suffering of the millions of hungry people.

Brian Doughty is Provincial President of Federated Farmers Wanganui and a long-time member of the Wanganui Tramping Club