Luanda – The director-general of the Agrarian Development Institute (IDA), Felismino da Costa, on Friday in Luanda defended the promotion and adoption of sustainable, resilient, competitive and inclusive food systems, as well as the participation of different players.
Speaking at the round-table on “Research and Development, opportunities and challenges for the Farming Sector in Angola”, the manager highlighted the enormous challenges facing Angola in the area of farming research, investigation and development.
He went on to stress that in all economies the local and sustainable food production gets an impacting input from family farming.
“Unlike the commercial agriculture, local and sustainable production of food involves the majority of producers and it makes a great contribution to the nutrition of the people”, he said.
The IDA manager also explained that in face of the strategies and activities involved in family agriculture worldwide, it is illusionary to want simple models and highly dependent on modern techniques to be dopted uniformly and efficiently in all regions, especially in those places subject to restrictions on access to foodstuffs.
“The climate crisis and its effects on agriculture, together with population growth, which is very high in developing countries, emphasise the need for a resilient agriculture and one that can continue to produce sufficient foodstuffs, both in quantity and quality”, Felismino da Costa explained.
He reminded that Angola currenly has 8,500 field schools, with more than 1.1 million families.
“The truth is that we have about 3.1 million families in the rural area for us to support (...)”, he disclosed, adding that the number of field schoos has been growing, so with that the number of families participating in the process of accessing know-how has also increased.
The Agrarian Development Institute (IDA) functions under the umbrella of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests.
HM/ASS/jmc
