“Our food security would be assured through a combination of food production and energy crops. Once we have food security, we can then deal with the issues of poverty once and for all,” he told delegates attending a meeting on renewable energy for agriculture in SADC, yesterday.
The three-day meeting, which was held in Gaborone is a follow-up to the SADC Extra-Ordinary Summit on Agriculture and Food Security held in Tanzania earlier this year, in response to the food shortages that hit the region in recent years.
The meeting of senior officers from the Ministries of Agriculture and Energy from SADC seeks to promote the use of renewable energy in the agricultural sector.
Dr Ramsamy said bio-fuel has the capacity to create massive rural employment and boost a diversified agro-based industry.
He said that temperatures in Africa allows for faster biomass production and that perennial crops have the potential to transform solar energy into biomass, the renewable organic matter produced by plants all year round.
“Hence there is little doubt that the bio-fuel revolution will particularly benefit developing countries, which can produce bio-fuel for own consumption as well as for export. Bio-fuel will soon become the most important agricultural commodity on earth,” he said.
South Africa has taken the lead in SADC and has put in place a series of incentives including an initiative by its oil company SASOL to put up a 50,000 tons ethanol plant and an 80,000 tons diesel plant.
The Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security adopted by the Extra-Ordinary Summit commits member states to increase their budgetary allocations for agriculture to at least 10 percent of their total national budgets.
