June Science Café to discuss food production
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.
“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.
