文档介绍：Agriculture Department
Food and anization
of the United Nations
Global farming systems
At puter in FAO headquarters in Rome,
John Dixon has a different view of world
agriculture. "Take eastern Africa," he says,
loading a new map from a database being
developed on the FAO . In addition to
familiar national boundaries, the page displays
what amounts to new agricultural atlas. "That's
the 'maize-mixed' system," says Dixon,
indicating a long, purple contour that stretches
from Ethiopia, through Kenya, Tanzania,
Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, almost to
the tip of South Africa. "It used to be the food
basket of the subregion, and now it's in crisis -
declining soil fertility, inadequate seed and
fertilizer supply due to cutbacks in government
spending."
With a mouse click, the page loads key data on
Africa's "cereal-root crop mixed" farming system,
represented by a dark orange belt running across
the north of the continent, from the Atlantic half a century has shown, convincingly, that
coast through Ghana, Nigeria and Chad into without that information, agricultural
southern Sudan. It also appears on sizeable areas development programmes can go badly awry. It
of Angola and Mozambique. "Here the main goes beyond the modity, or
source of vulnerability is drought," Dixon disciplinary, approach that focused on ways of
comments. "Bu