June Science Café to discuss food production

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Next month’s Kokopo Science Café topic is one that’s close to the heart, or more precisely the stomach of everyone on earth – food.
Head of the University’s Agriculture Department, Peter Navus, will present on the topic Can we feed the world?
He promised that the presentation will be an interesting one as the question of whether or not the world’s famers can grow enough food to feed an ever increasing population is challenging when different factors are taken into consideration.
He said with food being one of three basic needs of human beings, PNG UNRE has a huge role to play in producing quality food.
He said many factors such as land, population, information, technology, climate change and others; contribute to food production challenges.
He said he would use science to explain the impact of land and food production.
“Given that land resources management has a production and a conservation component, an obvious task is to ensure that the rate of production increases in a sustainable way. Perhaps a less obvious, but equally important, aspect of land resources management is the ability of land users and other decision-makers to take informed decisions regarding the land resources. As long as rural populations remain significant and vulnerable, there is little opportunity to enhance social capital (education, institutional and social networks) which would lead to enhanced decision making,” said Mr Navus.
He said in the worldwide context, food production is influenced by powerful economists of the world.
He said they are the ones that run the operation directly or indirectly for small countries and because of that they determine the future of the food production.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that from 2014 to 2016, about 795 million people of the 7.3 billion people in the world, or one in nine, were suffering from chronic undernourishment.
Almost all the hungry people, 780 million, live in developing countries. This represents 12.9 percent, or one in eight, of the population of developing countries.
Come to Monsieur Henry Café in Kokopo on Monday June 4 to be part of this informative presentation and discussion. The session starts promptly at 7:00pm. Entry is free and everyone is welcome.


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