Gadgetory

in a small rural village in Tanzania Joyce sander spends most of her time tending to her crops for many years her in the seven out of ten farmers in sub-saharan Africa have relied on going and narrow variety crops as a result malnutrition runs rampant across a continent of farmers in 2012 life change for Joyce when she started growing maize seed bred to tolerate drought when drought came most of her crops withered and died but her new maize was more productive than ever that seed made the difference between hunger and prosperity to get agricultural productivity up you want many factors working in your favour you want better seeds you want farmers to adopt the best seeds the farmers have got to be a lot more educated because they could often grow two crops in the season and the way they deal with soil health by rotating the crops to make a big difference they also need a credit system because if they don't have the money to get fertilizer that loan will cut their productivity very substantially and so that farmer education system the Rd to make those better seeds by managing those things well we predict that we'll get African productivity up to 1.5 times where it is today and that will get Africa to the point where even with its population growth somewhat worse whether instead of importing food it will be able to feed itself improvements in critical infrastructure will further Africa's ability to feed itself investments in road improvements will allow food to move to places it needs to go and reduce the need for expensive air transport additional surpluses will be put away and improved storage to better position them for lean years well GMOs are very well accepted in some countries like the United States and not as well accepted in Europe the African countries will have a choice of whether to use those tools the example I gave of a woman using a drought resistant seed that was actually done with conventional breeding and there is quite a bit of improvement still available with conventional breeding but in this time frame the GMO derived seeds will provide far better productivity that drought-tolerant salinity tolerance and if the safety is proven then the African countries will be among the the biggest beneficiary so I think most of Africa will see this as a way to improve their productivity but it's a it's a sovereign decision no no one makes that for them fifteen years from now stories like Joyce's become all the more common as improvements in agriculture drive down poverty and improve life across the continent