By Emeka Okoroanyanwu, Bimbo Oyesola and Steve Agbota
The world today celebrates World Food Day. This is a day set aside by the United Nations to create awareness in the global fight against hunger. This day, people around the world would again come together to declare their commitment to eradicate hunger. The theme for this year’s celebration is ‘Climate is changing, Food and Agriculture must too.’
And with over 805 million people still battling hunger in the world, this year’s World Food Day celebration should be a solemn event because the war against the menace is yet to be won.
World Food Day has become a tradition and an annual event. In Nigeria. For instance, the day is just another day as farmers indulge in their daily routine of going to the farms, to either plant, harvest or engage in storage of farm produce.
Ironically, some of the farmers do not even know that there is a day set aside to recognise their effort to ensure food security in a country with a remarkably high number of mouths to feed.
Despite the vast lands available in the country and millions of farmers producing different crops across the country, Nigeria still ranked below on affordability, availability and quality of food on the Global Food Security Index, where it stands at 80th position out of 105 countries in the world.
On this year’s theme, Food Agricultural Organisation (FAO) said one of the biggest issues relating to climate change is food security. The world’s poorest – many of who are farmers, fishers and pastoralists – are being hit hard by higher temperatures and an increasing frequency in weather-related disasters.
In order to achieve zero hunger around the world, FAO has called on countries to address food and agriculture in their climate action plans and invest more in rural development.
Regretably, Nigeria is still a net food importer, spending about $22 billion annually importing food items such as rice, wheat, fish, etc. The country has a rice deficit of about four million tonnes and wheat deficit of 4.6 million tonnes.
Minister of State for Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, recently noted that the $22 billion annual food import bill had led to the astronomical rise in the cost of rice and other commodities. He cautioned that if Nigerians fail to produce some of the items being imported by December this year, the prices of such items could skyrocket.
Agriculture, once the backbone of the Nigerian economy in the pre-crude oil era, continues to be a key contributor to the economy, contributing 22 per cent of GDP in 2014/2015. Farming provides a livelihood for 60 per cent of the population.
The typical profile in Nigeria is a subsistence farmer working a small plot of land and selling the surplus to traders. An estimated 80 per cent of farmers live on less than a dollar a day and farm a plot smaller than one hectare, according to research carried out by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
One major problem of food security in Nigeria is water. Rainfall still remains the main source of water to farmers in the country, as irrigation systems are uncommon, and manual labour is sometimes the only option for ploughing, with less than 30,000 tractors available in the whole country as at today, where it should at least have a million to service numerous farmers across the country.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, confirmed this figure while inaugurating committees for the implementation of the MoU between the federal government, participating state governments and the China-Africa Machinery Corporation (CAMACO) on agricultural mechanisation system recently.
The minister lamented the shortage of tractors in Nigeria when compared to farmers’ population and size of farm operations. He expressed concern about the hardship Nigerians are currently going through, but expressed the hope that all-year-round agriculture through irrigation and increased mechanisation should put Nigeria’s agricultural output on the path of self-sufficiency.
The previous government under former President Goodluck Jonathan launched the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA), with the goal of adding 20 million tonnes of food to the domestic supply by 2015 and creating 3.5 million new jobs in the process through early interventions, including programmes to boost farmers’ access to extension services, and helping to boost yields by improving inputs such as liberalising markets for seeds and fertilizers.
The ATA policy, which was supervised by former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, yielded results as availability of food increased to such an extent that the country had met one aspect of the UN Millennium Development Goals three years in advance of the 2015 deadline.
Under the present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) unveiled a new policy and strategy document for revamping the agriculture sector. The Agriculture Promotion Policy (2016-2020), also tagged, ‘The Green Alternative,’ is designed to address Nigeria’s food security challenges and position the country as a net food exporter.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Ogbeh, at the launch said that the APP builds on the achievements of the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA), launched in 2012. “The vision of the administration of President Buhari is to build an agribusiness economy that is capable of delivering sustained prosperity for farmers and meeting the domestic food demand of the country. A key objective of the new policy is also to generate non-oil export revenue from food exports.
“We believe in building on a previous foundation and avoiding policy somersault. We are not throwing old policies overboard but expanding, deepening and adjusting policies where necessary,” Ogbeh said.
Even with government’s efforts to attain food security, there are still some challenges facing agriculture in the country, which include, funding, modern equipments, land and the issues of Boko-Haram insurgents chasing farmers away from their farms in the North Eastern part of the country and incessant attacks of herdsmen destroying farms and properties worth millions of naira and killing farmers all over the country.
All these challenges pose great threat to food security in the country. Many farmers are said to have abandoned their farms and refused to go back because of threats of Boko Haram and herdsmen.
Speaking with Sunday Sun, an agribusiness strategist and enterprise development expert, Mr. Sotonye Anga said Nigeria requires N18.360 trillion to feed her over 170 million population in one year in order to salvage the country from hunger.
He said government has to create special policies that would make it mandatory for anybody that wants to go into farming to have access to credit and land. He noted that there was need to create the right incentives, right environment, and the right balance that would encourage people to take risk and go to produce food so that people would have enough to eat and to export.
Meanwhile, as Nigeria joins the rest of the world to celebrate the World Food Day, the United Nations has warned that Climate Change may be a threat to the Federal Government’s diversifying effort into agriculture.
According to the United Nations Environment Ecosystem Based Adaptation for Food Security Assembly (EBAFOSA), Climate Change is likely to drive majority of the population into destitution as assets are lost and resources diverted to deal with emergencies, instead of being used for physical, social and economic infrastructure development.
National President of EBAFOSA in Nigeria, Mr. James Oyesola at a briefing on this year’s World Food Day yesterday said the frequency and intensity of extreme events, heat waves, droughts and floods are likely to increase, leading to reduced yield levels and disruptions in food production and distribution channels.
He noted that the theme for this year’s World Food Day, is very unique and timely taking into cognisance that one of the biggest issues related to climate change is food security vis a vis Agriculture.
“Temperature rise and changes in timing magnitude, and distribution of precipitation are likely to increase moisture and heat stress on crops and livestock which will make agricultural practices unpredictable,” he said.
Oyesola said agriculture among human enterprises is the most vulnerable to Climate Change, more so being dominated by small scale farmers who rely on rain-feed agriculture due to widespread of poverty and low levels of technical development.
He explained that there are considerable evidences that Climate Change is already affecting people in Nigeria and its environment, thereby creating strong negative impact, as some areas are becoming too hot for certain crops or animals, while it rains little or too much in some areas to allow farming, including breakout of climate sensitive diseases.
“All these are serious indications which may serve as disincentives for farmers who could produce more food, potentially contributing to even lower food production and threat to food security in which there will be reduction and loss of income (poverty), loss of crops and livestocks, high prices of food and other commodities which may lead to civil strife. There may be intensification of migration out of agriculture, increased morbidity and mortality of human and livestock, loss of biodiversity, decline in the rate of economic growth (also increase of import) and loss of traditional export markets,” he warned.
The UNEP-EBAFOSA President, however, said the way out is to develop ecologically sustainable and resilient food production by increasing the proportion of agriculture that uses sustainable, organic methods of farming.
He said: “For us to be in tandem with this year’s world food day theme, our Intended Nationally Determined Contributions and Sustainable Development Goals, major investments are needed to ensure that vulnerable farmers in Nigeria have the tools to build their resilience, adapt and contribute to food security. There should also be new public investment in agriculture with emphases on agro-ecological approaches (EbA). It is also important to foster people – centered resilience in order to help vulnerable small scale farmers achieve food security. Finally, vulnerable farmers who are particularly women and small scale farmers should be treated as key partners in the struggle against climate change.”
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