Scientific innovations in crop cultivation techniques can help poor farmers cope with soaring food prices, say experts from the India-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). William D. Dar, Director General of ICRISAT, in a press release enumerated the innovations that have been found in lowering food prices. These include:

• Use of improved crop varieties and hybrids that are more fertilizer efficient, and resistant to abiotic stresses;
• Tree-crop integration, since trees can collect additional nutrients from the soil. In addition to preventing soil erosion, trees can also provide higher-value products;
• Gravity-fed drip irrigation, wherein water is introduced to plants drop-by-drop through a plastic tube, providing just the amount the plant needs for optimal growth;
• Integrated pest management;
• And cultivating sweet sorghum as a biofuel crop and as a source of animal feedstock.

Other ways include planting-basin cultivation, fertilizer microdosing and improved seed systems. Dr. Dar warned that “unless agriculture is reinvigorated and lifted to a new level of proficiency and efficiency, the world will face more hunger, more poverty, more despair, and more anger”.

Read the press release at http://www.icrisat.org/Media/2008/media7.htm