Today, the world faces the highest migration flows since World War II. Hunger and poverty, in addition to conflict and instability, are the main drivers of this phenomenon. Most of the world’s 763 million migrants have become internally displaced people within their home countries, relocating while searching for food and peace.
To make matters worse, global hunger is on the rise again. About 815 million people went to bed unfed or half-fed in 2016, compared to 777 million the year before. This trend, if left unchecked, will result in a mass exodus of rural populations to urban areas, potentially triggering an even larger human catastrophe.
Rural-urban migration is intensifying an already acute shortage of agricultural workers, which has emerged as one of the main obstacles to food production in many countries. This, in turn, results in more outmigration from rural areas and the agricultural sector.
Similarly, climate change and food production are also connected; the later suffers from and contributes to the former. And let’s not forget that the agricultural resource base is shrinking, and agricultural productivity is declining.
Against this backdrop, the most pertinent question is, where should we invest to enhance food security and thereby help to slow down migration?
- First and foremost, we need customized knowledge and a knowledgeable farming community to boost knowledge-intensive agriculture.
- Second, data enables knowledge-intensive agriculture. since smallholders often lack access to data, we must invest to build an appropriate, accessible, and affordable provider-user networks.
- Third, investment is also necessary at the mid-end (processing and storage) and front-end (distribution and retail) stages of the food chain to reduce post-harvest loss.
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