LAGOS (AFP) — A Nigerian-based regional agricultural research outfit has come up with a new yield-enhancing system of rice production to help the continent battle rising food shortages and prices, an official told AFP.
The new system developed by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and aimed at increasing yields per unit area, is based on the Asian way of paddle-field rice planting. It is to be adapted to conditions in rain-fed wetlands of west Africa.
The system could see rice production rise three-fold with food import bills slashed by more than 75 percent and possibly turn some of the countries into net rice exporters in the long term, according to Oluwaritimi Fashola, an agronomist with IITA.
From experiments conducted over the past five years in Ghana and Nigeria, Fashola said "we were able to increase output by more than three times the food we produce at the moment using our traditional dryland system".
If adopted in a region where rice is a staple for many nations, it could ease the food crisis on the poverty-stricken continent recently hit by unrest over rising food costs and shortages.
"If taken on a wide scale, we will reduce substantially the importation of food, by more than 75 percent because the land is there," Fashola said in an interview.
"It could provide a long term solution to the food crisis in Africa," the institute said in a statement.
IITA said although rice production grew 5.1 percent annually in west Africa over the four years from 2001 through 2005, it failed to keep pace with consumption, which rose 6.5 percent annually over the same period.
Africa imports about 40 percent of its rice, accounting for more than one third of the rice traded globally, according to official export figures.
Under the system dubbed 'Sawah', in reference to Indonesia's wet rice fields, rice-consuming countries could save some two billion dollars in annual import payments.
In a recent report the Africa Rice Centre, known as WARDA, which is based in Cotonou, Benin said Africa, south of the Sahara, has 130 million hectares of land suitable for rice production, but only 3.9 million are cultivated.
Japan last month pledged at a summit with African leaders to step up aid and investment and employ its expertise to help double rice production to ease the burden of soaring food prices in Africa.
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