IT’S HERE AND TAKING SHAPE


This is the Bt factory that is being constructed at ICIPE with assistance from
the Chinese government. ICIPE is calling on the Kenyan government
and private sector to help in sustaining the facility.

Declining funding for research worries experts
By Naftali Mungai

THE Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Annual General Meeting kicks off in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, against the backdrop of mounting concern over the food security situation, poverty and passionate debate on the future of Africa’s agriculture.
The AGM also comes at a difficult time for the CGIAR, now undergoing a major re-engineering process that might see some centers either merge or fold up altogether as donor funding declines.
And, according to the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) Director, Dr Romano Kiome, there is growing global concern among researchers over a worrying decline in funding for public sector driven agricultural research.
“From 1995 until the last two months or so, global funding for agricultural research has been on the decline. This has largely occurred as a result of a feeling by the Overseas Development Agencies (ODAs) that agricultural research has not contributed much to development,” he says in an exclusive interview with Biosafety News.
However, he says this decline is now being stemmed with the realisation that a very big proportion of the global population is dependent on agriculture for its livelihood, especially in Africa. “There is now a growing realisation of the importance of public sector led agricultural research in terms of equity and food security. This realisation is coming to bear and there has been some significant increase in the funding. An example of this is America which has doubled its contribution to agricultural research,” says Dr. Kiome

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Which way for Africa’s farming?
By Susan Mabonga

African countries must transform their farming systems from subsistence type of farming to a more large scale commercial farming to reverse the trend of perennial food insecurity. According to Dr. Edward Clay, the director of the Institute of International Agriculture at Michigan State University in the US, it is only through such transformation that African farmers would optimize the benefits that advanced agricultural research and technological innovations offer.
Dr. Clay, however, acknowledges the important role played by low-resource agriculture and small-scale farmers in Africa in keeping the population going. “My honest opinion is that this is not the future,” he says, adding that the way to go is towards more large scale, commercial type of farming as opposed to small holder subsistence type of farming now prevalent in Africa.
He, however, said before African farming systems follow the transformation of other regions of the world like North America, Europe and Asia, the small-scale farmer has to be enabled to perform better. “ We can’t have growth in agriculture and movement towards a more commercial market-oriented agriculture without upgrading the skills of the smallholder farmer,” says Dr.Clay.
In an exclusive interview with Biosafety News at his MSU office in Michigan, Dr.Clay was optimistic that the current sub-division of farms in Africa would end and a period of land reconsolidation would ensue, ushering in the era of large scale commercial farming.
Dr.Clay cites the example of the US and North America where, just over one per cent of the population is directly involved in agriculture and yet feeds the whole population. In many of the intermediate-level countries, he says, the ratio ranges from five to 20 per cent. In some parts of Africa, like South Africa and Egypt, the percentage is still minimal.

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