By PAULINE MUTHIGANI
Posted Saturday, March 31 2012 at 13:47
Millions of East Africans face starvation. Food security is rapidly deteriorating yet necessary interventions are not being made The poor performance of the long rains is likely to result in extensive crop losses. Low household food stocks will result in significant food deficits, particularly for the very poor households throughout the year.
In the past few years, most pastoral areas received less than half their normal rainfall, with rains being poorly distributed. Hence, the recharging of water sources and regrowth of new pasture has been very poor. Cereal prices have rocketed from about 25 to 90 per cent above the previous year’s average.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that there are more than one billion people worldwide suffering from hunger; an estimated 830 million live in developing countries, the most affected by climate change.
Hence food security has become one of the main issues on the national and global agenda.
FAO defines food security as a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
Food insecurity has been brought about by the impact of climate change, sharp rises in food prices and energy policies. Shortages are also being caused by global population growth and rising consumer demand in developing countries, together with the loss of farm land to residential and industrial development.
Information Technology
Information and communication technologies can be used locally and globally to address this problem. To solve food security issues, e-agriculture should be a priority.
Mobile phones in developing countries have become a major means of disseminating information.
E-agriculture services can offer farming advice as well as weather forecasts and market prices through the short messaging service (SMS) directly to farmers in their local languages. Farmers can go online to learn about new techniques, as well as to trade and find new partnerships.
In India, e-Choupal offers services that help farmers achieve better yields and secure better prices. TradeNet, in Accra, Ghana, has created a platform where farmers and traders across the world can share market information via mobile networks and the Internet. Similar platforms are being developed in Kenya.
Rural radio connects people in remote areas and helps them improve their farming methods and productivity. Radio is a key medium as it is relatively inexpensive and has wide coverage in the developing world.
In rural areas, information can also be made available to farmers through community telecentres, or digital villages which provide rural populations with access to the Internet, telephone and fax services.
Monitoring
A systematic monitoring of world food supplies is a necessary step to address food security. This includes mapping agricultural production and food shortages and establishing comprehensive databases. Monitoring can be greatly facilitated by ICT, through remote sensing of agricultural and water resources, use of computers and software to collect, analyse and share information that is relevant to food security. Geographic information systems also provide powerful tools for analysing statistics.
Science has proved that monitoring environmental and soil conditions can make farming more profitable and sustainable, such as through better water management and pest and disease control.
ICT tools employed for this purpose include stand-alone sensors to measure air temperature, atmospheric pressure and humidity. One example is a project named Common Sensenet (Community-Oriented Management and Monitoring Of Natural Resources via a Sensor Network), which is used for agricultural water management in semi-arid rural areas of Karnataka, southern India. This project consists of a wireless network of ground-sensors that periodically record the state of the soil and the air temperature.
Satellites are to be used in a project by the African Soil Information Service. It will combine remote satellite imagery and soil science to produce the first detailed, digital soil map of sub-Saharan Africa.
The food supply chain
Better communication between the producers, traders and consumers means that less food will be wasted and supplies will be more reliable. One way to do this is through radio-frequency identification tags to track inventories, from the field to the shop. RFID systems can also help ensure that perishable products are kept in optimal conditions, and they can provide details of each product’s origins that can be used in preventing the spread of foodborne illnesses.
It should be recognised, however, that these are examples of what can be done, and scalability remains an issue.
The author is a telecom and technology analyst.
Pauline@nordic.co.ke