Reaction to food and Agric Group recommendation

The Food and agric group of the voice over 2015 chose the recommendation of :

Eat less meat and make the world a better place

In response to this recommendation, Alex Lukanga from Uganda argued that he did not understand how eating less meat will improve food and agriculture in the developing countries.

"The biggest challenge facing my country Uganda right now is hunger due to poor subsistance farming levels because of poverty.Not all rural farmers have acess to good farming methods, fertilisers and irrigation therefore their yields are poor and this causes hunger to many poor people in my country.Eating less meat in the Netherlands will not help improve food availability unless if the Netherlands donates some of its cattle to Uganda for use as draught power since this is another challenge facing the poor farmers"

I then explained to him that there was persuasive scientific evidence that points out that by eating less meat, it reduces the carbon we send into the atmosphere and ultimately reduces the impacts of climate change like droughts that cause poor food harvests in Uganda

Still he argued that , "Agriculture in my view is not about rain fed water only.In Uganda we have many lakes and dams with water.Therefore it will have much short term impact if the people can be assisted with water management and irrigation know-how from the Netherlands who are a leader in water management in the world"

Another interviewee, Weluzani Mashavira who is an agriculture student at Wageningen University in the Netherlands agreed with the recommendation.He argued that eating less meat is one of the ways that can in the medium to long term help reduce the impacts of climate change.He says drought due to changing global warming induced climate has led to vitually no harvest in countries like Zimbabwe where smallholder farmers virtually rely on rainfed agriculture

"However, for the strategy to work, it must be done by all leading industrialised nations like the EU , USA and China.But to dismiss this recommendation at first hand will be to ignore the hard reality that a journey of 100 miles start with one step.The Netherlands can lead and show the world that this is a serious alternative.Otherwise if the negative impacts of global warming are reduced and we have normal seasons and rainfall, I believe that the people can at least manage to harvest food enough for consumption at household level.Most aid intiatives like the ones suggested by Alex have been tried for a long time and has not worked"

The above 2 views summarise the major comments of different people interviewed. Most felt that we have to first recognise that in most developing countries, people are dying of hunger already and what are needed from a development assistance point of view is practical help like seed, machiney, fertiliser and technology transfer.Once the vicious cycle of starvation is broken down, then people can talk of long term strategies of eating less meat in the Netherlands