Africa seeks "Green Revolution" to reduce hunger

ABUJA, June 9 (Reuters) African leaders and international donors launched an ambitious attempt today to foster a ''Green Revolution'' in farming, based on increased fertiliser use, to reduce hunger in the poorest continent.

A third of sub-Saharan Africans face recurrent famine and under-nutrition and experts say this is partly due to a worsening problem of soil depletion, which occurs when farmland loses more nutrients than are being replaced.

To address this, African heads of state and ministers, farmers' groups, scientists and foreign donors gathered in the Nigerian capital Abuja with the aim of helping African farmers gain access to fertilisers.

''Without progress in increasing soil fertility, hunger will be a constant companion of Africa and a potential cause for conflict,'' former US President Jimmy Carter told delegates in a video message.

The modernisation of farming techniques and increased fertiliser use spurred Green Revolutions in Asia and Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s that increased crop yields dramatically and eradicated hunger in most regions.

But in Africa, where many farmers cannot afford fertiliser, yields per person have fallen over the last 40 years and experts warn that if soil depletion continues unabated, they will decline by up to 30 per cent over the next 15 years.

Possible measures to avoid this could include creating rural networks of small retailers to reduce the distance that farmers have to walk to purchase fertiliser, and developing new financing schemes to help farmers buy the products.

THREAT TO ENVIRONMENT Policies could also include subsidies to reduce the cost of fertiliser, schemes to develop local manufacturing and better financing for private sector importers and distributors.

Africa has 60 per cent of world reserves of phosphate, a key ingredient for fertilisers, but hardly any local production.

''The potential is there but you can't eat potential. You've got to convert it into grain,'' said Norman Borlaug, an agronomist who won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Green Revolutions in Asia and Latin America.

He challenged heads of state and ministers who are due to adopt resolutions at the end of the four-day summit to change their economic policies to bring about the Green Revolution.

As things stand, Africans pay up to six times the average world price for their fertilisers because of transport costs.

It costs more to truck a bag of fertiliser from an African seaport to a farm 100 km inland than it does to ship that bag from North America to Africa.

Fertiliser use is negligible in Africa and most of it is for cash crops. Subsistence farmers are not replacing the nutrients they harvest along with each successive crop.

What this means is that the land ultimately becomes barren, forcing farmers to clear new lands for cultivation.

Studies show that 70 per cent of deforestation in Africa is done by farmers clearing new fields, while soil depletion also accelerates desertification, which affects half of Africa.

REUTERS SHR BST1949