Latest Montpellier Panel report gets a mention in a Thomson Reuters article about soil and food security in Mali.
Mali’s remarkable fertility (population will triple to reach 45 million by 2050) is said to be a great threat to the country’s food security and sovereignty. Three out of four Malians live on a farm and the remaining live in mushrooming Bamako and other cities. The climate is unpredictable and tough, bringing droughts, flash floods, not enough or too much rain, and often at the wrong time. Farming families complain of not having enough good land to cultivate. Yet the large stretches of Savannah along the road from Bamako to Segou hint at the room for expansion.
Echoing the Montpellier Panel conclusions in their “No ordinary matter” report, sustainable soil management is urgently needed because land degradation is a huge burden, particularly in developing countries. Nearly 3.3 percent of agricultural GDP in sub-Saharan Africa is lost annually because of soil and nutrient losses, estimated at over 30 kg/ha/year.
