New Telegraph

Farmers proffer way to sustainable food solution

Addressing the peculiarities of Nigeria and Africa at large is necessary in order to proffer a sustainable and veritable food system solution beyond mere dialogue, the Association of Nigeria Farmers (AFAN) has emphasised. The association said the challenges of COVID-19, insecurity, inadequate adoption of technology, very low fertiliser penetration, unavailability of ready to use locally manufactured inputs as well as veritable seeds and credit were some of the reasons constituting threat factors to production, processing and marketing in agric sector. National President of AFAN, Kabir Ibrahim, explained in a press release made available to New Telegraph that a close look at what obtains elsewhere within Africa would reveal a few innovations that can be modeled to reinvigorate Nigeria’s food system.

The AFAN national president noted that a system of crop intensification, agro-ecology as well as good agricultural practice sprouting from zero tillage methodologies and sustainable livestock production technologies in dairy and meat processing when properly embraced in the country by Federal Government and agric stakeholders will enhance Nigeria’s agriculture sustainably. Ibrahim said: “In South Africa, Southern Africa, parts of East Africa and North Africa as well as within West Africa a lot of innovations in crop production, animal Husbandary, commodity exchanges etc have been deployed to bolster food systems.

“Nigeria’s population and its dependent Neighbors such as Niger Republic and several others make it vulnerable to food shortages manifesting in unexplainable inflation. “Production can be optimised by the adoption of technology but the purchasing power of the typical Ni-gerian must be shored up to provide the requisite agribusiness to make the agriculture space sustainable.” According to him, AfCFTA is a good vehicle to create a thriving agribusiness environment for Nigeria and Africa as a whole if vigorously pursued.

However, the farmers association’s helmsman stated that sustainable credit with adequate moratorium and readily accessible to the smallholder farmers would help bolster their capacity to sustainably and competitively engage in the food system. Ibrahim suggested that a compendium of reliable planning farmer-data, soil information, crop and soil specific fertilizers and veritable seeds were absolutely necessary for a sustainable food system, which must meet four cardinal pillars viz; production, processing, distribution and consumption.

“From the foregoing it is quite evident that this administration has deployed the majority of the outlined solutions but Nigeria is still far from food security, if truth be told, therefore another approach to the quest for food sufficiency is necessary,” the agronomist stated.

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