High costs of inputs and falling commodity prices are among the factors which contribute to food insecurity in Africa, an international grain summit said here Wednesday.

Participants who are attending a two-day Regional Food Grain Trade Summit in Nairobi said lack of focus on coordinated investment in regional grains distribution channels between surplus and deficit areas is constraining market development.

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Secretary General Erastus Mwencha urged African countries to embrace regional approach to food security in forecasting, planning and overall management of food deficits and emergency situations.

"We need to open up our borders to freer movement of agricultural produce so that maize, wheat, rice, sorghum and other cereals move unimpeded across the region from surplus to deficit areas driven primarily by market forces through the regional framework that has already been agreed upon," Mwencha told over 1, 000 grain growers from Europe, United States and Africa.

The COMESA chief said the overall reduction in cereal harvest for the sub-region in 2004 is expected to result in an increase net course grain import requirement of about 2 million tones for the 2004/05 marketing year.

Kenya's Agriculture Minister Kipruto Kirwa called on African countries to adopt appropriate strategies by stimulating exports for other commodities in order to exploit regional potential for cereals.

"If one compares regional maize consumption, which is estimated at 15 million metric tons every year with maize production, which is estimated at 21 million metric tones, the surplus of six million metric tons. We should ask why food security needs drive the trade policy and not the increase of commercial trade driving policy," the minister asked.

He said seasonal export/import restrictions, tedious and costly licensing requirements and non-tariffs charges have exacerbated food insecurity in the region.

The two-day meeting brought together all private and public sector players to chart out the road map to an effective and efficient regionally focused strategy for grain trade market development for COMESA.

The Summit comes a time when the food security situation in the COMESA region during the agriculture seasons 2004/05 is precarious as a number of countries in the region face food shortages due to among factors, adverse weather conditions.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 23 countries still face food shortages in the sub-Saharan Africa and nine of these countries are from the COMESA region.

Source: Xinhua