Nahimat Adekoga
Agriculture can greatly contribute toward the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that seek to end poverty, hunger, inequality and injustice as well as tackle climate change.
This was the resolution made by Agriculture experts at the just concluded regional workshop organised by the UN food agency, Food and Agriculture Organisation, where they called for more governments’ intervention.
The theme of the workshop is ’’Towards productive, sustainable and inclusive agriculture, forestry and fisheries in support to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”
UN member states last year adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The workshop discussed how the principles for sustainable food and agriculture can promote joint action to improve the contribution of agriculture, forestry and fisheries toward sustainable development, and to identify priorities for FAO’s support at national and regional levels.
FAO’s Senior Programme Officer for Coordination of Sustainable Food and Agriculture, Jean-Marc Faurès, said that agriculture is very importance in poverty reduction and ending hunger.
“Because agriculture is so important to achieve SDGs, countries have to strengthen their engagement in agriculture in their national development strategies,” he said.
The Strategic Programme Leader for Sustainable Agriculture Programme at FAO, Clayton Campanhola, also explained that agriculture production is key since it provides food, decent employment, and income for the rural population.
“Sustainable intensification is something that embeds not only production, but also social and environmental aspects. Crops, livestock, fisheries, aquaculture and forestry, all should be integrated,” he added.
Under the 2014 Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods, African Heads of State and Government committed to end hunger by 2025.
To achieve this, they resolved to accelerate agricultural growth by at least doubling agricultural productivity levels and to halve levels of post-harvest losses by the year 2025.
According to the World Food Programme, some 795 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life.
The vast majority of the world’s hungry people live in developing countries, where 12.9 per cent of the population is undernourished.
According to FAO, Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the highest prevalence of hunger as one person in four was estimated to be undernourished between 2014 and 2016.
