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Food Security, Indigenous Knowledge and Sustainable Agriculture. Part I
Food Security, Indigenous Knowledge and Sustainable Agriculture. Part I
Wednesday, 13 July 2016: 09:00-10:30
Location: Prominentenzimmer (Main Building)
RC40 Sociology of Agriculture and Food (host committee) Language: English
Food security refers to the stage when all people at all times have access to sufficient safe nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life. But in the efforts for meeting the food requirements of a burgeoning population, the available natural resources are being overexploited, which threatens the sustainability of agriculture and consequently endangers our food security.
In 1947 Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, said everything else can wait but not agriculture. The world has already entered into an era of scarcity. Water, food, energy and environment have got interwoven in a spiral of decline and degradation. The consequences of food crises and environmental degradation go beyond simple economics.
The main components of sustainable food security are: availability of food in the market, which depends upon internal production; access to food, which depends on the purchasing power; and absorption of food by the body, which relies on clean drinking water, sanitation and primary health care, etc. Agriculture remains the largest employment sector in most developing countries. But in many developing countries, agricultural problems are becoming a threat to growing population. The number of people affected by hunger and malnutrition is very large.
The session invites papers from different countries to promote comparative understanding of rural poverty and agricultural production, focusing on problems in agricultural development and environmental degradation, and the evaluation of different programs run by government and NGOs for agricultural development and better production.
Session Organizer: