A world food issues presentation showcased some of Iowa State’s top undergraduate and graduate researchers Monday night.

Prior to the lecture by Monty Jones, a former World Food Prize Laureate, there was a student poster competition about the issue of food security.

Elizabeth Sukup, senior in public service and administration in agriculture, traveled to Uganda on an undergraduate research grant, which gave her the ability to research on the school and residential research gardens in Uganda.

Sukup said 80 percent of the people living in the area that she went to lived on about $1 a day.

Students living in this area do not usually attend secondary school and depend almost exclusively on subsistence agriculture.

“The idea behind a school garden then is to teach them at school, they get a practical education,” Sukup said. “They actually go out to the garden and learn about the techniques.”

She also said an NGO, or nongovernmental organization, she was working with was trying to introduce various higher protein seeds into the area by providing them to the school and residential gardens.

She won second place in the undergraduate portion of the poster contest.

This sort of agricultural progress is what Jones focused as the topic of his lecture. He was awarded the World Food Prize in 1994 after he developed a new variety of rice that was bred specifically for harsh African climates.

Jones said the growing population of Africa is putting pressure on its already frail economy.

“It’s a country that’s growing at a very fast rate,” Jones said. “At 3 percent, we have one of the highest population growth and increasing population means increasing demand for food.”

He said the global agricultural performance expanded by an average of 2 percent a year, and with a population growing at about 1.6 percent a year, the global community was meeting its agricultural demand.

However, according to the statistics displayed on his PowerPoint presentation, the African agricultural performance is either declining or has remained stagnant.

He said in recent years there has been promising evidence that the period of economic stagnation is over, but because there have been poor yields in staple crops and a heavy dependence on rain-fed agriculture, the growth hasn’t been consistent.

“If it doesn’t rain for a protracted period, you run into problems – like drought, for example,” Jones said.

Africa is also plagued with poor infrastructure, policy discrimination and diminished investments in the region, Jones said.

“Four out of 10 Africans survive on less than one U.S. dollar a day,” Jones said. “One in three persons is undernourished, and one third of children under five are stunted due to inadequate feeding and poor health.”

However, there has been genetic improvements in certain crops that have proven to be successful in certain areas.

The combination of an African and Asian seed has yielded a strain known as New Rice for Africa, which has increased yields from between 25 to 50 percent.

There has also been an increase in foreign investment in the region and Jones said with the right kinds of investments, this foreign aid could be invaluable if the farmers and private sectors can work together.