Word: droughts
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Imagine a future of relentless storms and floods; islands and heavily inhabited coastal regions inundated by rising sea levels; fertile soils rendered barren by drought and the desert's advance; mass migrations of environmental refugees; and armed conflicts over water and other precious natural resources...
...National Agricultural Research Organization of Uganda has developed corn varieties that are more resistant to disease and thrive in soil that is poor in nitrogen. Agronomists in Kenya are developing a sweet potato that wards off viruses. Also in the works are drought-tolerant, disease-defeating and vitamin-fortified forms of such crops as sorghum and cassava--hardly staples in the West, but essentials elsewhere in the world. The key, explains economist Jeffrey Sachs, head of Columbia University's Earth Institute, is not to dictate food policy from the West but to help the developing world build its own biotech...
...answer is to get smart about how we use water. Agriculture accounts for about two-thirds of the fresh water consumed. A report prepared for the summit thus endorses the "more crop per drop" approach, which calls for more efficient irrigation techniques, planting of drought- and salt-tolerant crop varieties that require less water and better monitoring of growing conditions, such as soil humidity levels. Improving water-delivery systems would also help, reducing the amount that is lost en route to the people...
...genetically modified crops, whereas yields of sorghum and millet in sub-Saharan Africa have not increased since the 1960s. Green groups hoping to earn the trust of the developing world should lobby hard for the resources of Big Agriculture to be plowed into discovering crop varieties that can handle drought and thrive on small-scale farms...
...economic uncertainty has exacerbated the effects of a searing drought in southern Africa. Without food aid, 6 million Zimbabweans will risk starvation in the coming months, according to the U.N. World Food Program. The hardest hit are poor black Zimbabweans, the very people Mugabe professes to be helping. The opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (M.D.C.) and U.N. insiders accuse Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front (Z.A.N.U.-P.F.) of using food as a political weapon--giving it to card-carrying Z.A.N.U.-P.F. supporters and denying it to M.D.C. members. "If you cannot prove you are a member...