ZAMBIA: World Shocks Call For An Urgent Need To Support Agro Ecology
Mr. Eugene Kabilika, Caritas Zambia Executive Director
By Mwenya Mukuka
As the world commemorates the 2020 World Food Day, Caritas Zambia says the shocks the world is experiencing today highlight the urgent need to support agro-ecology.
Agro-ecology is a people centric system of sustainable agriculture and social justice movement driven by local farmers and other food producers to maintain power over their local food systems, protecting their livelihoods and communities, and defending every right to nutritious and diverse food.
Speaking at the 2nd National Food and Seed Festival in Lusaka, Caritas Zambia Executive Director Mr. Eugene Kabilika said climate change, economic downturn and widespread disease threaten African food systems.
“Climate change, economic downturn and widespread disease threaten African food systems. However, agroecology enables food producers to develop sustainable farms, bustling local markets, and small innovative enterprises that bring security, resilience and prosperity to African livelihoods in the face of global or regional shocks,” Kabilika said.
He added that agro-ecology is the stronger economic and ecological alternative to the failing industrial agriculture system.
“Food sovereignty is the solution to food security. Agro-ecological systems can sustainably feed more Zambians than- industrial agriculture by keeping power over local people’s seeds, markets, diets and profits in the hands of the local community,” he said.
He further said that agro-ecology protects health, safeguards public health by providing nutritious foods to communities and rejecting toxic pesticides and fertilisers that poison farmers, agriculture workers and consumers.
The Caritas Zambia Executive Director furthermore noted that agro-ecology protects bio-diversity on farm eco-systems and localising sustainable food systems while defending Africa and the world from future out breaks and pandemics spurred by human development of forests, industrial animal agriculture and wildlife trafficking.
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