South Perth, Western Australia
November 3, 2011
The Director of Plant Biosecurity with the Department of Agriculture and Food says interest is growing in the need for the international community to make plant biosecurity a higher priority.
Dr Shashi Sharma warned plant biosecurity needed to improve when he addressed an International Symposium on Grain Information Technology held in Beijing last month.
“World population has now touched seven billion and about one billion people are hungry and undernourished. Hunger is killing more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined,” Dr Sharma said
“Most of the world's undernourished people live in the developing countries that have grossly inadequate capability and capacity to safeguard their food supply chain from biosecurity risks.”
Dr Sharma said the global demand for food would rise significantly in next 40 years with the world population estimated to reach more than nine billion.
“We have to produce an adequate quantity and quality of food for these people, and achieve that in an environment of competing demands for water and arable land,” he said.
“Crop production internationally will need to increase substantially to feed the world’s growing population. Importantly, we must not lose what we already produce.”
Dr Sharma said the key to success was good food supply chain biosecurity to ensure plant diseases and pests did not diminish current food capabilities.
“Our world is seeing unprecedented increases in trade and tourism, and remarkable advances in transport and communications. We must ensure that these advances do not facilitate introduction and spread of pests and diseases that pose threats to food supply chain biosecurity and addressing the problem internationally is a priority,” he said.
Dr Sharma said Western Australia aimed to be the best at plant biosecurity to safeguard the State’s food production and supplies.
“But it is also important for the rest of the world to place more emphasis on good plant biosecurity,” he said.
“We need good plant biosecurity internationally to maximise the benefits of globalisation and food aid programs, and to minimise the risk of exposure of feed and food production, storage and distribution systems to pests and diseases.
“It is crucial that the importance of plant biosecurity in achieving food security is recognised internationally, particularly by the developing countries. It needs also to be recognised by the world’s major funding agencies so that adequate finances are provided to develop and implement biosecurity plans that safeguard the food supply chain.
“Food loss, because of pests and diseases, is not just wasted food. It is also wasted resources to produce the food. So it makes economic good sense to address plant biosecurity as a priority in agriculture.
“Without plant biosecurity, there is no food security for the world.”
Topics
Species
