FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf on hunger strike (Photo Courtesy FAO/Giulio Napolitano)

INVESTMENT in agriculture is a panacea to ending the global food crisis and the UN World summit on Food security taking place in Rome, Italy must be seen against this background.

While commercial farmers are the major contributors to food security worldwide, it is now not in contention that small-scale farmers, the peasants, and women in particular contribute on a larger scale to the food baskets of their respective countries.

That is why agricultural policies must be deliberately skewed towards promoting the efforts of these small-scale farmers who are at most vulnerable to any shocks, be it geographic or price-related.

Zambia has long recognised the contributions of small-scale farmers, especially the women and has come up with policies that favour this group of people.

In a country where 80 per cent of peasant farmers are women, it made a lot of sense for the Government to formulate policies that would assist them in efforts to grow more food.

The Land Act of 1996 and the National Gender Policy adopted in 2000 guarantee women an opportunity to own land with 99 years security of tenure.

The Land Act and the Gender Policy must be seen against a backdrop where women in Zambia were not allowed to own land nor given access to credit, notwithstanding the fact that they were the ones toiling on the land.

Adoption of these two policies is laudable and that is why First Lady Thandiwe Banda, at a meeting of first ladies ahead of the UN summit, expressed happiness with the measures the Government has taken of ensuring that women have access to land.

Women are now given preference when land is being allocated as 30 per cent of this is set aside for them while the remainder must be competed for by both men and women.

Beside the above policies, the farmer input support programme is another policy aimed at assisting vulnerable but viable farmers attain food security.

As the country hurtles towards 2015 when the millennium development goals (MDGs) must be reviewed, there is no doubt that reducing hunger and poverty by 50 per cent, one of the goals would have been achieved.

In fact, according to the MDG progress report for Zambia, this is one goal that is likely to be met as there is a supportive environment, such as the policies that Government has come up with.