SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) -- An estimated billion people in the world go hungry every day, and now a group of local professors has a plan to end global hunger and poverty through agricultural development.
The best steps to end hunger involve working closely with local farmers, according to a group of professors at the University of California at Berkeley.
Tens of millions in the developing world, specifically Africa and parts of Southeast Asia and Latin America, are now living on the edge of starvation.
“Increasing food security is a worldwide problem,” said Andy Gutierrez, a Berkeley professor of ecosystems sciences, who explained this is a much different situation than the poor who go hungry right here in our own country.
“Real hunger is not going to bed with not as much food as you wanted,” Gutierrez explained. “It’s going to bed without hardly any food, if any at all.”
He says the solution lies in good science and sustainable agriculture – working one-on-one with farmers to contend with their challenges.
Participatory plant breeding has been successful in East Africa and Honduras, according to Professor of Natural Resources Louis Fortman.
“In the case of Honduras, they’ve bred maize and bean varieties, corn and bean varieties, which are adapted to the high altitude conditions where they live. And in Kenya, they’ve bred bean varieties that are resistant to a terrible, terrible disease called Root Rot.”
The goal is to develop appropriate seeds that can attain the best yields in diverse environments and then getting those seeds to the farmers.
(gma)
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KCBS' Margie Shafer reports
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