Tanzania Organic Agriculture Movement (TOAM) has underscored the importance of organic farming to reduce cultivation costs and ensure environmental, social and economic sustainability.
Foods produced through organic agriculture had natural nutrients which were important to people's health compared to genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) and other foods cultivated using artificial fertilizers and pesticides.
This was said on Monday in Dar es Salaam by TOAM's board chairperson Mwatima Juma when briefing reporters on the World Food Day, which was celebrated yesterday worldwide.
In Tanzania the day, whose this year's theme was 'Right to Food', was officially marked in Mwanza.
"Organic farming produces the same yields of corn and soybeans as conventional farming. It uses 30 per cent less energy, less water and no pesticides", said Mwatima.
Organic agriculture also guaranteed income to all people and gave them a right to choose proper food and nutrition patterns and control their destiny, resulting in their beating hunger and malnutrition.
Speaking on the theme, she said over 850 million people around the world, particularly in the least developed countries, suffered from hunger and malnutrition.
She said as far as TOAM was concerned the right to food was the right of every person to have regular access to sufficient, nutritionally-adequate and culturally acceptable food for an active, healthy life.
She said the most adverse effect of GMO foods was that developing countries were dumping their agricultural surpluses in developing countries, hence creating unfair competition. Once sold on the world market at lower prices than the production costs, they depress local prices.
"However," she said, "since food was directly connected to communities and cultures the right to food was also connected to community and rural development."
"There needs to be a space for development that is not created by donating chemical fertilizers, but rather support the generation and improvement of indigenous local knowledge," said Mwatima.
SOURCE: Guardian
2007-10-17
By Felister Peter
