The War Against Food Insecurity – Independent Newspaper Nigeria

 Months after the Federal Govern­ment declared a state of emergen­cy on the nation’s meals in­safety standing, there are not any empirical evidences to point out that the costs of sundry meals objects are stabilized or coming down anytime quickly. Fairly, meals inflation price is now about 40%, and as each the United Nations Kids’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Meals and Agricul­ture Group (FAO) rightly predicted, some 25 million residents are cur­rently dealing with meals insecuri­ty problem within the nation.

The elements listed as re­sponsible for the worsening scenario embody a combined bag of financial, climatic and infrastructural deficits. On the one hand, there’s the persisting difficulty of the hydra-headed insecurity affecting Borno, Adama­wa and Yobe (BAY) states, which has stored a number of farmers away from their farmlands.

These states are mentioned to have between 1.8 million to 2 million food-inse­remedy kids whereas about 700,000 of them are on the brink of dying! Many con­cerned farmers in different states, resembling Benue, Zam­fara and Plateau, are nonetheless battling with absolutely armed herdsmen within the recurring disaster over possession of farmlands.

Then again are the freaky local weather change that causes excessive warmth, resulting in drought in some components of the northern states and the flushing floods which have laid to waste fertile farmlands throughout many states within the nation.

Options would come from sustainable sound financial insurance policies, especial­ly those who make agricul­tural practices enticing to the youthful technology of Nigerians. Step one, nevertheless, is the pressing have to curb the menace of inse­curity throughout the nation with a purpose to permit hundreds of thousands of displaced farmers to return to their farmlands.

Additionally essential are pol­icies that present some inputs resembling reasonably priced high-yielding hybrid seed­lings which can be early matur­ing and disease-resistant. Aside from the availability of low-cost, but efficient organ­ic fertilizer, younger gradu­ates in associated fields resembling meals know-how and agricultural engineering needs to be employed as farm extension employees. As fa­cilitators, they are going to educate the farmers a lot about trendy agricultural prac­tices. These may embody biotechnology, tissue cul­ture and genetically modi­fied meals practices to spice up manufacturing.

They need to additionally help to coordinate the farmers’ actions by forming farm­ers’ associations much like what performed out throughout the then President Goodluck Jonathan-led administra­tion, when the Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akin­wunmi Adesina, introduced up an identical coverage. It was by means of such organisa­tions that that they had entry to low-cost fertilizer, to interrupt the spine of the fraudu­lent fertilizer retailers.

Given the present situa­tion of excessive meals inflation, the federal government ought to sub­sidize agriculture as Malay­sia did for the rice farmers. What can also be wanted and ur­gently too is the supply of secure infrastructural improvement of excellent entry roads and secure electrical energy provide.

The assure of secure electrical energy provide would help in meals storage, pres­ervation and processing practices to be consistent with worldwide customary practices. That’s one other space the place the important position of the farm extension work­ers will make the specified optimistic influence.

Good entry roads would mitigate the scourge of pre­ventable meals wastage that has risen from 25% to 40% over the previous twenty years. That’s particularly so on the farmlands, the place a number of crops and uncooked farm professional­duce are left to rot.

With all these in place, the farmlands can be­gin to draw buyers not solely from inside the coun­strive however exterior our shores. They might step by step develop to financial hubs, such that a number of the regionally professional­duced meals objects change into exportable to reinforce our international alternate.

This may develop our Small and Medium Scale Enterprises, enhance our Gross Home Product and enhance meals safety, which can pull hundreds of thousands of Nigerians out of the pit of indigence.