Soil
degradation holds back African farmers, costing them $68 billion annually and
threatening to stall vital food production, Sir Gordon Conway, director of the
group Agriculture for Impact and a professor at Imperial College London, said
in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Thursday.
“The
problem is certainly getting worse,” Sir Gordon Conway said. “Poor farmers don’t have the money, time or
labour to prevent degradation or improve their soils,” Conway said. “If they
don’t have land tenure, there is no incentive to invest in improving their
farms.”
Climate
change, the depletion of mineral nutrients, desertification, improper use
