Geneva, 1 July 2009 - The African farming sector has been neglected for years, contributing to a much-publicized 2008 food crisis that now persists out of the headlines, agricultural experts said Tuesday at a meeting on "Food security in Africa: lessons from the recent global crisis." They stressed that future, more severe crises very likely will occur unless extensive, long-term efforts are made to prevent them.
"We cannot let history repeat itself. We cannot once again allow Africa´s farmers to be abandoned," said the gathering´s keynote speaker, Akinwumi Adesina, Vice President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. "I have never seen farmers so abandoned. They have had no help with seeds, no fertilizers, no financing, no price stability, and they have to pray for rain. They do not have the supports you see in Asia, in Europe, in the United States. They are locked in a poverty trap."
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