The world needs to boost cereals output by 1 billion tones-UN

BY AGENCIES

AFRICA will rely on non-transgenic crop breeding to boost food output to feed its rapidly growing population in the coming decades but will also need genetically modified products (GM), the head of a pan-African farm think tank said on Wednesday.

The world needs to boost cereals output by 1 billion tonnes and produce 200 million extra tonnes of livestock products a year by 2050 to feed a population projected to rise to 9 billion from about 7 billion now, the United Nations estimates.

Africa's population is expected to double to about 2 billion people by 2050 and the continent would need to double its food output by that time with some countries having to triple food production, Monty Jones, executive director of Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), told Reuters.

"Our future growth is through conventional breeding approach and through the use of biotechnologies which come up with high yields but are not transgenic," Jones said in an interview on the sidelines of an international food and nutrition forum.

"What we need in Africa is our own, unique "green revolution" calling for interventions in several areas, in crops and livestock. We must learn from mistakes of India," he said.

The so-called green revolution in the 1960s and 1970s in India and other developing countries boosted farm production yields through intensive practices and new seed varieties drawing praise for helping reduce the number of hungry people and criticism for making farmers dependent on GM seeds.

African countries should use the best results of conventional breeding and "modest", or non-transgenic, biotechnologies to boost crop yields and make plants resistant to increasing heat and dryness as climate changes, Jones said.

Nerica (New Rice for Africa) rice, a non-GM cross between a high-yielding Asian variety and a hardy African variety has higher yields, shorter growth cycle and more protein content than its parents.