Out of the three basic needs of man – food, shelter and clothing – nature designed it so that animals must feed to obtain nutrients to generate energy that sustains life. A closer look at mammals, the group that man belongs in the animal kingdom, at birth, it takes a newly born goat, a few minutes once it gains stability, to involuntarily seek for breast and start suckling for strength and greater stability. That demonstrates the incredible and amazing power of nature on the life of all living creatures. This sampled observation supports the great importance of food in the lives of every living organism. Food, particularly, plays a very vital role in the life of man (including for the maintenance of health and the growth process); and equally to avoid hunger, it is significant for sustainability in man’s energy generation, utilisation and dissipation. Food security, therefore, cannot be overemphasised because, without food the body system lacks the fuel for energy generation; which invariably means that man lacks the ability to do work (man will lack energy).
Food security in all intents and purposes, demands that agriculture is one economic sector the federal government of Nigeria must not toy with in the food business. Food production value chain is an important aspect of daily economic and commercial activities in the society. The strategic importance of food to life’s sustainability, with its origin rooted in agricultural activities, calls for a well defined, critical focus on agribusiness. This is for the sole purpose of developing an advanced food value chain within the agricultural produce landscape. It is heartwarming, however, that the current administration has smartly placed a high premium on agriculture as an important project, by declaring a state of emergency on the agricultural sector (for the purposes of food security and sustainability in Nigeria’s economy). It shows that priority has been attached to long term food production plans, and all aspects of the agricultural value chain that support food availability and sustainability in the economy. It also tells much about the strategies that are being thought through and programmed to apply to actualize the targeted goal in the nation’s food industry.
Local food processing and manufacturing, from all the harvested agricultural produce within the economy, is very important; not just to chase away hunger but also to add value and growth to the entire economic advancement and financial prosperity of the country. The initiative demands that the government should up the scale by encouraging the private sector and investors to key in seriously along the food value chain within the economy (by making food production attractively private sector-driven). Creation of an enabling environment is simply where the government needs to focus on, and attract investors into the agribusiness sub-sector, most especially in the aspect of controlling the post harvest wastes of perishable cash crops through efficient utilisation of preservation and storage facilities. This calls to mind the services of the government agency, the Directorate of Foods, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI), that enhances efficient haulage and distribution of harvested agricultural produce (cash crops) by provision of access roads to farmlands located at various hinterlands in all the states in the country.
Small holder farmers, who go through the rigours of applying traditional farming techniques with farming tools that are not compliant to modern mechanised farming methods, experience very painful and great losses due to post harvest waste challenges (food loss across the food supply chain from harvesting of mostly perishable crops like fruits and vegetables until its consumption). They regularly encounter such challenges after each farming season. This singular, endemic problem keeps them impoverished, from not making visible progress financially, nor prospering in their chosen vocation and career. Such challenges need to be reduced through the establishment of an adequate number of local food processing plants along the value chain that preserve and store such agricultural raw materials all through the year for food sufficiency and availability (food security) within the economy.
Another threatening and very disturbing challenge these farmers currently face in Nigeria is insecurity, which is very worrisome indeed. In most parts of the country, farmers no longer freely go to their farmlands due to fear of all kinds of heinous crimes, including mass killings, kidnapping, raping of female farmers and various kinds of harassment they encounter from assailants. These have been experienced regularly lately; in virtually all the geopolitical zones of the country. This insecurity issue has impacted very negatively, and has particularly affected the volume of all agricultural outputs from the farmlands (just name it; grains, tubers, legumes, fruits and vegetables) within the economy. This issue requires the very urgent attention of the government (federal and states, alike), and ought to be sufficiently addressed and squarely countered by security agents nationwide, if this economy must survive because agriculture is key to economic growth and development.
If you go to food markets in Nigeria today, apart from the ongoing depreciation of the naira exchange rate (and its attendant hyperinflation on products and services); the commodity market is facing a bigger challenge and prices of foodstuffs are getting out of reach, with the astronautical high costs of food items like pepper, onions, egusi, ogbono, oranges, mango, groundnuts, maize/pap for nursing babies, garri, beans and rice (for instance). The common man in the streets in Nigeria today can no longer afford it any more, with his meagre disposable income. Government, therefore, needs to come to the aid of these suffering Nigerians (as a matter of urgency).
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