- Nigeria’s former Agriculture minister, AFAN president explore paths to Battle-proof starvation
By Dele Ogbodo
The Executive Director, Alliance for Science (AfS), Sheila Ochugboju, has raised the alarm over the increasing food insecurity in several African and Global South countries even as she urged the various Governments, Farmers and Stakeholders in the Agricultural space to deploy innovative and scientific technologies that will transform and accelerate the production of food for the world’s growing populace.
Speaking via a video clip recently, Ochugboju, narrated the nostalgic experience on the pathetic food insecurity conundrum in several African countries compared to the Western world, adding, that it will be pretty difficult to realise the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) where children and adult still go to bed with hungry stomachs.
She explained that the Alliance for Science seeks to promote access to scientific innovation as a means of advancing food security where innovative research and ideas are shared to help bring about a world without hunger and poverty.
In a remark, the CEO of 1 Hectare 1 Family, Onyaole Patience Koku, who was a former Board Member of the Alliance, said the occasion was part of the 2023 programme organized by AfS who are the sponsors and her organization as host to launch the National Farmers Day Campaign.
According to her, the Nigerian farmers deserved to be honoured and commended for providing food for over 200 million mouths. Similar events, she said held in Ghana, Guatemala, Egypt, Bangladesh and Zambia.
The 1 Hectare 1 Family boss underscored that without the farmers we (Nigerians) would not be here and it is therefore compelling that the day (May 28) has to be set aside to honour and acknowledge the Nigerian farmers for the great job they do in keeping the nation going.
The Alliance for Science, according to her is collaborating with the University of Conell, New York and housed by the Boyce Thompson Institute to undertake research around the world to meet the basic needs of humanity.
AfS, she added is a communications outfits that works with farmers all over the world and to communicate technologies and opportunities that are available to farmers in the Global South to access.
She said: “I have had the privilege of serving on the Advisory Board for 4 years now and I can tell you that they have done so much work in Nigeria in collaborating with a lot of organisations.
Koku, acknowledged the presence of the former Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, the delegation of Nigerian farmers led their President, Arc. Kabiru Ibrahim and the Ambassador of Argentina who was represented by one of Advisers.
Also, present at the event were representatives from the Nigeria Seed Council, the Head of agriculture Business in Nigeria Flour Mill, members of the Ukrainian Chambers of Commerce counterpart and staff of Jubaili Nigeria Limited.
In their remarks, Nigeria’s former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh and the President, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Arc. Kabiru Ibrahim also acknowledged the invasion of hunger in Africa and in Nigeria even as they admitted that this has exacerbated poverty, malnutrition and fueled crimes across the country.
Ibrahim, urged Nigerian farmers to adopt Biotechnology and Science Technology and Innovation (STI) as it has been established that subsistence and peasant farming cannot meet the country’s food need as a result of its growing population.
In solving the country’s food insecurity and hunger, Ogbeh added that credit finance windows, agriculture mechanization, irrigation among others must be urgently put in place to salvage the threatening situation.
The duo acknowledged that with Nigeria’s population expected to hit 450 million in 20 years’ time, severe hunger is indeed lurking even as food insecurity continues to worsen.
They averred that lack of food and prevalence of hunger is increasing poverty thereby fueling criminality across the country.
On failure of Nigeria’s agriculture, Ogbeh, admitted that failure of government at different levels has further accentuated the crisis of food and poverty and thereby increasing criminality and discontent in the country.
He added: “We the political class and leaders over the past years have become extremely laid back especially at the post-independence era and military era.
“We are growing rapidly as a country, yet it is increasingly becoming difficult to afford fish, egg, bread and common food staples because of its skyrocketing prices.”
According to him, the various levels of governments are so poor to finance agriculture the way it should be done, explaining that agriculture had become peasant occupation even as he stated that most families cannot cultivate 1 hectare of land in a year, adding that rain-feed agriculture are sometimes destroyed by floods.
The former Minister said: “The demand for food is huge and the production is too low and productivity continues to remain low because our agriculture is rain-fed, with very little irrigation, very little equipment and centres for research not enough as it is the case with developed nations.
The worst part is that Nigerian farmers can’t access credit. There is an agricultural scheme of 9% it cannot round and so how do you farm if cannot find the money, Chief Ogbeh, asked?
He however commended the CEO of 1 Hectare 1 Family, for her innovative collaboration with the Alliance for Science to drive food production in the country.
He said: “This programme of 1 Hectare-Per-Family is fantastic, but even then, to create land to farm to buy the basic implements, supply diesel to your tractors to and engage the local boys to work for you.”
On increasing agriculture productivity, he added: “1 Hectare 1 Family each is fine but as younger people you have to put pressure on the political class because on their own, they will not do anything to make this kind of programme work as these are not the topics that excite politicians.
“On the other hand, if we do not deal with this issue of engagement of young people in agriculture, access to reasonable credit, irrigation, proper seed sources etc it is going to be extremely difficult to cure this problem of hunger.
“Today let us see what we can say to each other to get agriculture back and when this association let us help to pressure federal government, state governments, local governments whoever is there harass, lobby, blackmail and to do whatever we can do to invest in agriculture seriously and make farming profitable otherwise we are in trouble.
While advocating for adoption of biotechnology engineering to drive food production in Africa, Arc. Ibrahim, while expressing excitement over the progress made in Nigeria on BT Cowpea and Teller Maize, two crops produced through biotechnology, said: “We just finished from another event earlier today and it is also similar to what AfS is promoting but this time, it is with the National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA) in collaboration with the Africa Agriculture Technology Foundation (AATF).
Ibrahim, expressed AFAN’s determination to with AfS on its 1 Hectare 1 Family initiative geared towards increase in agriculture production across the value chain using scientific innovations.
He however, acknowledged that subsistent farming is not the solution to end Nigeria’s food insecurity dilemma, explaining that peasant has never moved agriculture production forward.
“We have been told that that farming with crude implement on subsistence level will not work because it cannot put food on the table for Nigerians.”
He said a greater part of the world, including Nigeria are in trouble today because of the disruption in the global food system caused by COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian-Ukraine war.
He admitted: “In Nigeria we have own share of conflicts, we had a devastating flooding last year which caused a lot of poverty for farmers. Today, our food system is seriously challenged more than any other time.
“For us to get out of this mess we must learn to produce what we eat and eat what we produce and we have to produce optimally using the right technological tools which is biotechnology.
“I’m glad that the Alliance for Science is encouraging us to embrace biotechnology to drive agricultural practices and production.”
“With my background and training as an Architect, my training is largely science and engineering based, the nexus between any disease and Genetically Modified Engineering in crop production, has not been scientifically proven. I encourage everyone and our farmers to embrace biotechnology.”
According to him, the use of biotechnology has led to the production of BT Cowpea and Teller Maize, which demonstrate the sign of good things to come from Africa.
He said: “Today we have a gap a shortfall of supply of about 500 metric tons of cowpea because the normal cowpea that we plant we spray chemicals about 9 times and the BT Cowpea we spray only twice.
“In Nigeria, we should embrace biotechnology because of our growing population, the pervasive hunger. If this is done, I can assure you that we would get the African market and Nigeria will be on the path to prosperity in food production.
“I encourage you farmers to use biotechnology as a way of increasing food productivity to take agriculture as a business.
“We must begin to think outside the box with Science, Technology and Innovation, we must create opportunities, we must mechanize so that young graduates can be gainfully employed agriculture value chain and processing of what we produce.”