Famine is not only about scarcity but also about concerns of distribution.
If governments fail to tighten policies, regulations and strategically mobilise and allocate sources and funds for the purpose of :
Rehabilitating agricultural land.
Being resourceful, by collaborating with municipalities, garbage services, restaurant and supermarkets to retrieve expired, wasted and pruned organic material to create organic fertiliser.
Organically maintaining and preserving the soil, plants, fruit and vegetables.
Not allowing genetically modified seeds and food sources like Bokomo (popular Pro Neutro cereal) and Namibmills (Topscore brand) and GMO animal feed, to enter the country for human and animal consumption.
Looking for sustainable growing practices derived from ancient cultivation practices.
Collaborating and investing in overseas and homegrown agricultural innovations.
Continuously updating and preserving seedbanks.
It will make its people more susceptible to starvation, malnutrition while making people also vulnerable to fungi, bacterial, blood and cell diseases like hepatitis B and C, cancer, diabetes and mental health issues.
It is a fact that GMO’s and pesticides not only negatively affect and compromise our immune system but also directly impacts our gut health, directly affecting our brain health. We stand to not only impact the current population but mothers and their unborn children too. The damaging implications extend also to animals, insects and plants life that feed and pollinate off of GMO plants. This ultimately creates disequilibrium in the ecosystem, intensifying the debilitating long term vicious cycle of disease globally.
Learning from our Ancestors
Ancient farming practices include practices from the Aboriginal people, Aztecs, and Egyptians to name a few. Mesopotamia, one of many arid countries, was prone to flash floods resulting in its ideation of it's and many other ancient civilizations sophisticated irrigation systems. If adapted to the present architecture, this could be utilised in Africa and around the world, considering it common practice to open flood gates across of dams, wasting valuable water supplies that could, in turn, be used for consumption, that so many desperately don't have daily access to.
As important, the ancients looked to natural pesticides to facilitate the crops in these dry areas, with the use of toxic pesticides it brings a whole new host of infections, as toxins seep into valuable underground water supplies, rivers, lakes, streams and oceans that are direct drinking reserves for people. So it key to not overlook Gondwanaland’s long passed agricultural practices, as they remain relevant today, even if somewhat lost to recent colonialism. This then should amplify to society the greater need to preserve indigenous fruits and vegetables adapted to the climate and land.
It should be further probed given the current situation, that innovations are being made to adapt plants to arid areas in China. China’s invention of taking a “plant paste substance and mixing it with sand to retain water, nutrients and air”, to grow plants that thrive in the desert is one not to be taken lightly, as unique a find, it too has its monopolistic traits.
While growing in a desert area may not be sustainable long term, considering it may still undoubtedly take twice as much water to feed the plants as appose planting in less desert-like areas, it still provides possibilities that these innovations can be applied in Africa and elsewhere if utilised across dry yet fertile areas, given the current status of climate change.
In the efforts of preservation, countries should continue its efforts of housing it’s own seed banks as contingencies, especially in the face of calamities, not only due to the offset by COVID but also prevailing climate change and toxic pollution that causes new diseases to arise, that could in-effect prolong the closure of borders and possibly wipeout, plants, animal and insect species further affecting food and seed supply, unfavourably tipping the scale of supply shortages dramatically and inducing global famine.
What will we do moving forward? here's to hopefully collaborating as a global community and developing and executing strategies for long-range planning.