THE celebration of the World Food Day on October 16, this year, has again brought to mind the reality of food insecurity in the country and the urgent need for Nigeria to accelerate food production.Already, the global climate change which has brought in its wake inclement climatic conditions, such as floods, has reduced agricultural productivity in Thailand, Russia, India, Vietnam and many other food producing countries on which Nigeria rely upon for the importation of rice and wheat, among other foodstuff. The countries are responding to their dwindling agricultural productivity by cutting their exports of food commodities in order to meet local food demand. This implies that Nigeria is at great risk of experiencing food shortages.The Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, recently confirmed to the House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture that food shortage could hit Nigeria, if the exporting countries continued with the policy of reducing exports to address local challenges. He provided some shocking revelations on food insecurity in the country saying that the country in the past 25 years had lost about N1.6 trillion per year to developed economies due to importation of agricultural products from them.Indeed, Nigeria's food import bill is exceptionally high and it is also alarming that in spite of the much acclaimed improved food production in the country, its food importation is still growing at an unsustainable rate of 11 percent per annum, while the top four imports consume over N1 trillion in foreign exchange every year. The situation calls for urgent solution to avert imminent food shortages in the country. Such importation has gulped the country's hard earned foreign exchange and also created jobs for millions of unemployed in those countries where the food items were produced at the expense of Nigeria. These revelations coming from Adesina must be seen as the stark reality of the food situation in the country. Proactive measures must be put in place to stop this impending embarrassment. It is noteworthy that the diversity of the country's agro-ecological production systems has made it possible for the country to produce an array of staple crops, among which are cereals (sorghum, maize, millet rice and wheat), tubers (yam, cassava), legumes (groundnut, beans), and vegetables in all the ecological production systems. These commodities are important for food security as they constitute the bulk of every household food intake and incomes of farmers. Unfortunately too, past attempts by the government to develop agriculture in the country have not changed the food security situation substantially. Therefore, any new initiative taken now must take cognisance of why all the past attempts to develop the sector and increase food production have failed. This time around too, a holistic approach must be adopted to increase food production in the country. In particular, the new initiatives must address the need to make the rural areas more habitable for new young farmers and thus check rural-urban drift which impacts negatively on the country's ability to feed herself. In addition, the various agricultural research institutes across the country must wake up and be alive to their duties. The government too must equip and fund them adequately to enable them play their roles in increasing agricultural yield in the country. Also, every University of Agriculture in the country must walk its talk by producing food for its immediate environment, the nation and also for export.Meanwhile, while the peasant farmers are aging in the villages, there is a dwindling interest in agriculture by the youths across the country. Replacing these aging farmers requires rekindling the interest of the youths in agriculture. In doing this, the government would need to improve the infrastructural conditions of the rural areas to make them conducive for youths who are willing to go into agriculture. Urgent steps must be taken to address the post-harvest wastages and losses by introducing improved storage and processing of agricultural products. Records indicate that the country loses more than 20 percent of its post-harvest proceeds because of lack of adequate processing and storage facilities. Towards this end, all the strategic storage silos of the government must be put into use to store excess production during harvest, while those still under construction must be completed and put into use. State governments must also have their own strategic grains storage silos to supplement Federal Government's efforts to ensure food security in the country.There must also be improved farmer and investor support for the production, storage and marketing of agricultural produce. In addition, the results of research in the Universities and Institutes of Agriculture must be made available to farmers to accelerate food production. Mechanised farming should be the goal as peasant farming cannot provide food in the quantum needed for the growing population of the country. In view of the water shortages for many months in most parts of the country, rain-fed agriculture has proved inefficient. So, the various Fadama Schemes must be strengthened to enable them provide water and land for all-year farming to be practised and all-year food production can be assured. Uncontrolled importation of rice and other food items that can be produced locally has discouraged local production of such food items. Over the years, successive governments have declared bans on importation of rice, sugar, wheat and other commodities; only for it to be reversed again. Last week, the Federal Government once again promised to end the importation of rice into Nigeria. Nigerians are by now familiar with such declarations. Only a firm and unequivocal stance on importation of food will demonstrate sincerity on the part of the government to address the issue of food insecurity. Anything short of this will merely continue the uncertainties in Nigeria's commodities market.Funding is also critical to increasing agricultural production in the country as no meaningful agriculture can be done with commercial loans from banks in the country. Therefore, the government would need to creatively introduce a scheme that would enable genuine farmers to have access to the necessary credits at reasonable rates to buy inputs and other vital machinery for their farms, while small-scale farmers should be supported with micro-credit schemes at subsidised cost. Above all, these solutions must be sustained over a long period so that the country could be on the road to self- sufficiency in food production.
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