[00:00.100]From VOA Learning English,
[00:02.280]this is the Agriculture Report.
[00:06.210]Cassava is an important crop in some countries.
[00:11.260]More than 160 million people across Africa
[00:16.180]depend on the plant for food or to earn money.
[00:21.050]The continent produces 60 percent of the world's cassava crop.
[00:27.070]The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
[00:31.920]reported last May that cassava production
[00:35.690]has increased by 60 percent worldwide since 2000.
[00:42.270]Agricultural experts had been expecting it
[00:45.970]to grow even more during the next ten years
[00:50.250]as policy makers begin to understand the crop better,
[00:56.020]but those expectations have been crashed.
[00:59.730]The amount of cassava being grown in east and central Africa
[01:05.270]is falling because of diseases that reduce production.
[01:10.570]Two such diseases of the cassava brown streak virus
[01:16.320]and cassava mosaic virus,
[01:19.750]they are wrecking Africa's agricultural lands.
[01:24.710]The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization says,
[01:29.460]brown streak disease does more damage
[01:33.110]since it affects the root of the crop.
[01:36.440]Luca Alinovi is the acting director of the FAO
[01:42.310]in eastern and central Africa.
[01:45.820]He says the agency has taken steps to improve the situation,
[01:51.560]but it is not getting better.
[01:55.260]"Doing right or wrong on cassava has a huge impact
[01:58.820]on the food security of the people in this region,
[02:00.520]has such a relevance in our daily lives
[02:04.040]that we tend to forget it
[02:05.740]because it appeared in a kind of technical discussion.
[02:09.400]And I want to bring to your attention that,
[02:11.700]although it is a technical issue
[02:13.710]it requires knowledge and requires research."
[02:16.570]Dominique Davoux heads the European Union Rural Development
[02:22.940]and Agricultural program in Kenya.
[02:26.340]He says the cassava diseases have changed over the years,
[02:31.410]he says there is need to invest in research to fight the diseases.
[02:37.520]"We supported the cassava initially,
[02:39.730]there has been [a] stop in the support,
[02:42.530]the research slugged [lagged] behind,
[02:44.790]and the disease reinvented itself [and] propagated again.
[02:48.940]We have to re-address the issue."
[02:50.840]The FAO says at least $100 million is needed.
[02:56.670]Some of the money would go to support clean farm production,
[03:01.230]collect information and study the diseases.
[03:06.090]The rest will go to market and micro-finance development
[03:10.450]across the cassava production chain.
[03:14.400]Experts say failure to do so means the cassava disease
[03:19.940]will likely invade Nigeria,
[03:22.390]the biggest producer of cassava in Africa.
[03:26.860]And that's the Agriculture Report from VOA Learning English.