Premium
The Year of the Rat ends—time to fight hunger!
Author(s) -
Meerburg Bastiaan G,
Singleton Grant R,
Leirs Herwig
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
pest management science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.296
H-Index - 125
eISSN - 1526-4998
pISSN - 1526-498X
DOI - 10.1002/ps.1718
Subject(s) - livelihood , agriculture , natural resource economics , food prices , food shortage , food security , agricultural productivity , population , food insecurity , population growth , business , economic shortage , economics , development economics , agricultural economics , biology , ecology , environmental health , government (linguistics) , linguistics , philosophy , medicine
This paper investigates the importance of ecologically based rodent management in the light of the current food crisis, and the potential effects of this approach on the position of the undernourished. Hunger and food prices are on the rise owing to shortages that can be traced to reasons such as climatic extremes, use of crops for biofuels, reduced growth in yields which lag behind population growth, reduced world stocks and lack of sufficient investment in maintaining the irrigation infrastructure. For the undernourished this is problematic as they are most vulnerable to the rise in food prices. Very often, agricultural experts focus on an increase in agricultural production to reduce food prices. It is postulated in this article that almost 280 million undernourished could additionally benefit if more attention were paid to reducing pre‐ and post‐harvest losses by rodents. Moreover, rodent‐borne diseases would decrease, diseases that can be catastrophic to the livelihoods of the poorest of the poor. Copyright © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry