The Hindu Business Line : FAO chief becomes Honorary Fellow of Icrisat

THE Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Dr Jacques Diouf, was on Wednesday conferred the Honorary Fellow of the International Crops Research Institute for Semi Arid Tropics (Icrisat) here.

Presenting the Fellowship, the Icrisat Chief, Mr William Dar, said Dr Diouf was the first FAO Head to visit the institute. The FAO supports Icrisat with grants to the tune of $0.9 million in 32 projects on a collaborative mode.

The FAO supported gene bank at Icrisat, is one of the biggest collection of germplasm in the public sector. So far, 672,000 accessions of germplasm have been given free to scientists in 143 countries for research purpose. It has a total collection of 110,000 accessions, Mr Dar said.

In his acceptance speech, Dr Diouf said the Millennium Development Goal of reducing hunger by half by 2015 can be met through concerted action, investments and fulfilment of commitments by both the developed and developing nations.

The greatest battle is elimination of hunger of rural poor, who constitute three-fourth of the 1.1 billion, who earn less than one dollar per day. A two-pronged approach involving the support of infrastructure development in rural areas and increasing farm productivity to raising employment was necessary, he added.

He said the FAO wants to increase support to Agriculture Extension and Research activities, without which the `Green Revolution' would not have been possible. Greater effort would also be to improve the efficiency of women farmers.

Dr Diouf said investments in agriculture should go hand-in-hand with agriculture research.