Exclusive: Nigeria, 36 other countries need external food assistance

Some 37 countries globally including Nigeria are in need of external food assistance, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisaton (FAO), reports NaijaAgroNet.

Other countries comprised of Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Haiti, Iraq, and Kenya.


Equally affected based on FAO outline include Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Niger, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Uganda, Yemen and Zimbabwe.


Also, FAO raised its forecast for global cereal production in 2016 to 2,539 million tonnes, up 17.3 million tonnes from its previous May projection and up 0.6 percent from last year's harvest. 

Aggregate cereal production in Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LIFDCs) is also forecast to increase to 420 million tonnes in 2016, led by a recovery in rice and wheat production in India after last year reduction due to El Niño-related drought.  That would be a 2.5 percent increase from last year's "sharply reduced" level.


NaijaAgroNet, in spite of the improved world production prospects in 2016, output would still fall slightly short of the projected demand in 2016/17, meaning global stocks would need to be drawn down from their near-record level.


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ICT helps to monitor crop growth – FAO

The Director General José Graziano da Silva has said at a meeting of agriculture ministers of the G20 in China that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) helps in monitor of crop growth, reports NaijaAgroNet.

He also said that this would promoting sustainable agriculture requires a renewed focus on innovation and investment in research, technology and capacity development,

"ICT helps in the monitoring of crop growth, utilization of new techniques, field management and harvests,” the FAO Director-General said, stressing that it has also become an essential tool for improving people’s livelihoods and welfare while advancing social justice and ensure equal access to opportunities, particularly in rural areas.

Telecommunication tools, he told NaijaAgroNet, have the potential to provide Internet access for millions of people and connect farmers with digital agriculture. This includes the use of mobile phones to report animal disease outbreaks, which is one area FAO has been supporting in recent years.
Among the innovative ways FAO is using ICT, Graziano da Silva highlighted a new partnership with Google, whose satellite data and processing power will usher in an unprecedented level of environmental literacy, especially on forestry and fisheries, he said.

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