WORLD : Africa Warned of Destruction

The head of the U.N. food agency warned Africa today that it is on the path to total destruction of its natural resources.

Edouard Saouma, director general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, told an agency conference on Africa that the continent faces “an extremely serious threat of accelerated, continent-wide environmental decline with the inevitable outcome in the long term of total depletion.”

In an opening speech to delegates from 51 states, he said there is a widening gap between agricultural production, which grew at 2% over the last decade, and population, which grew at 3%.

At the three-day conference the FAO will outline a series of remedial steps for which it has budgeted $527 million in 1990-91. Land reclamation, soil conservation and increasing food production by training farmers in more efficient methods will be the focus of the FAO plan.