The Federal Government, in a bid to push back hunger, declared a state of emergency on food security. The focus of the declaration is on revamping the nation’s agricultural sector by, among other things, deploying some savings from the scrapped fuel subsidy regime into a number of interventions such as concessionary capital/funding to the sector especially towards fertiliser, processing, mechanisation, seeds, chemicals, equipment, feed and labour. While operators and stakeholders in the agric sector admit that the move speaks to the fact that government is attuned to the unmitigated hunger and starvation ravaging the land, they, however, put forward some suggestions to ensure the intervention doesn’t go the way of others before it. DANIEL ESSIET reports
If robust and timely policy intervention is the only thing required to turn around the fortunes of Nigeria’s struggling agricultural sector, then, the country looks good to draw strength from the Federal Government’s recent declaration of a state of emergency on food security to push back the unmitigated hunger and starvation currently hitting hard on majority of Nigerians.
The Centre for Human Rights and Accountability Network (CHRAN) personified this thinking when it described the declaration as “a timely intervention, “noting that it came at a time the devastating effects of flooding and rising cost of farm inputs, for instance, were taking a huge toll on farmers and hurting food production, resulting in pervasive hunger.
However, the all-out war against hunger, as encapsulated in the July 13, 2023 declaration, though timely, must, in the opinion of operators and other critical stakeholders in the beleaguered agriculture sector, be matched with clear implementation plan if it must not go the way of other strategic interventions before it.
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Apparently worried by Nigeria’s soaring food inflation manifesting in skyrocketing prices of food items and the attendant hunger ravaging Nigerians, and determined to halt the scourge, the President Bola Tinubu-led administration declared a state of emergency on food security.
Accordingly, the government said some savings from the scrapping of fuel subsidies will be redirected to revamping the agricultural sector.
Also, all matters pertaining to food and water availability and affordability, as essential livelihood items, will henceforth, be within the purview of the National Security Council.
Other intervention strategies under the administration’s food emergency plan that resonated with operators and stakeholders in the agriculture sector include the release of fertilisers and grains to farmers and households to mitigate the effects of the subsidy removal; urgent synergy between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Water Resources to ensure adequate irrigation of farmlands and to guarantee that food is produced all year round.
Others are the creation of a National Commodity Board that will review and continuously assess food prices as well as maintain a strategic food reserve that will be used as a price stabilisation mechanism for critical grains and other food items.
The Special Adviser to the President on Special Duties, Communication and Strategy, Dele Alake (now a ministerial nominee), who made the announcement, also said the administration will engage the security architecture to protect the farms and the farmers so that farmers can return to the farmlands without fear of attacks.
Also, are plans to ensure all-year-round farming just as the administration seeks to emplace special purpose vehicles like commodity boards to liberalise the food production value chain.
There is also a plan to activate land banks across the country (some 500, 000 hectares of already mapped land are said to be waiting for deployment), as well as the introduction of government-managed ranching to terminate the age-long and problematic nomadic animal husbandry.
The emergency declaration on food security was indeed, timely. For one, it came at a time statistics on Nigeria’s food inflation and hunger have become uninspiring and indeed, a national embarrassment.
For instance, food inflation hit 24.82 per cent in May this year, up from 24.61 per cent in April, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). And the soaring rate of food inflation is evidenced in the rising prices of food items such as rice, beans, bread, yam, vegetables, fruits, and eggs, among others.
Food inflation rose to 24.61 per cent in April 2023, from 9.78 per cent in May 2015. According to Trading Economics, the cost of food in Nigeria increased 25.25 per cent year-on-year till June this year, led by prices for oil and fat, bread and cereals, fish, potatoes, yam and other tubers, fruits, meat, vegetable, milk, cheese, and eggs.
This, in turn, has been a major driver of food inflation. In the North, FEWS NET reported that attacks on farmlands have led to devastating crop losses, while the non-clement climate compounded the food crisis problem in most of the states.
Even before FEWS NET’s warning, the President of the Federation of Agricultural Commodities of Nigeria (FACAN), Dr Victor Iyama had alerted on the alarming insecurity situation in the farms, with agricultural production coming to a halt in a few of the northern states.
In those affected northern states, crops were not harvested, agricultural infrastructure was destroyed, agricultural inputs were not being distributed, livestock was stolen or killed, and the impact of the Boko Haram insurgency had a psychological effect on farmers.
Following this, Dr Iyama highlighted the urgent need to provide farmers with the necessary resources to restart their production and to rehabilitate infrastructure to prevent food crisis.
Cadre Harmonisé, a Government-led and UN-supported food and nutrition analysis carried out twice a year, warned that nearly 25 million Nigerians were at risk of facing hunger between June and August 2023 if urgent action is not taken. It attributed this to continued conflict, climate change, inflation and rising food prices.
Operators, experts react, point the way forward
It was against this backdrop that the President’s declaration of a state of emergence on food security resonated with operators and experts in the agriculture sector. While noting that the plan was a welcome development, many of them, who spoke with The Nation, however, stated that government must match words with action, if the plan must work.
For instance, the President, the Agricultural Society of Nigeria (ASN), Prof. Jude Mbanasor said President Tinubu’s declaration of a state of emergency on food security was an indication of better days ahead for the agriculture sector.
According to him, the policy initiative was urgently needed to address Nigeria’s food crisis.
While acknowledging that significant changes are afoot in the sector following the declaration Prof. Mbanasor said the government’s plan to immediately release fertiliser and grains to farmers and households, for instance, was in the right direction.
He, however, insisted that for the interventionist policy to be hugely successful, the Federal Government needs to involve its members and other stakeholders nationwide for its effective implementation.
According to him, sustainability could only be realistic through the input of agricultural scientists.
Similarly, the President of the Cocoa Farmers’ Association of Nigeria (CFAN), Comrade Adeola Adegoke described the food security plan as “the lifelines that can help farmers recover from the tremors that have made disruptions across the sector.”
His words: “Food sufficiency has always been the major goal of any serious government of any nation and Nigeria’s position shouldn’t be different. For any country to survive, food security is the key and the major determinant of any strong economy (import and export). So, this must be a welcome development from President Tinubu, pursuing his food security plans through the Security Council purview, especially agriculture and water resources.”
Comrade Adegoke, however, warned that this (food security plan) must not be mere words, but matched with actions to create food sufficiency in due time. He, therefore, urged the government to seriously scrutinise and rethink current policies and programmes to better benefit farmers, increase food security, and build resilience in the face of climate change.
According to him, the sector has been vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, with production largely characterised by subsistence farming practices resulting in low crop yields, high dependency on rainfall, limited water access, significant post-harvest losses and poor management practices.
Adegoke, who has been urging the government to step up efforts to achieve food security at the national and household levels, as well as enhance food availability and accessibility, expressed concern that Nigeria was faced with one of the highest population growth rates in the world.
He said despite Nigeria’s high population growth rate, especially the growth of urban areas, agriculture productivity rates are not keeping up with population increase. He, nonetheless, expressed hope in the administration’s food security plan.
The Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Development) of the Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta, Prof. Kola Adebayo, said a lot has to be done to enable Nigeria to become a food-secure country in the future, one of which is building the capacity and resilience of farmers.
Prof. Adebayo, however, pointed out that the food security plan does not specify any time frame.
He also wants the government to prioritise improving storage and transportation facilities to allow timely food delivery to all regions of the country.
Furthermore, Prof. Adebayo said he wants a clear role for universities of agriculture and research institutes as they are necessary to address systemic issues contributing to food insecurity.
His words: “The other thing that needed to be brought into the plan is the role of existing agricultural establishments such as the universities of agriculture, research institutes, State Agricultural Development Programmes (ADPs) and special projects.”
“Where are they (universities of agriculture and research institutes) coming in? What is expected of them? Would there be special provisions to enable them to contribute to the food security programme?,” Adebayo asked, pointing out that for him, research and knowledge sharing, and technical assistance are critical if the government wants to solve collective challenges faced by farmers across the country.
The Chief Executive of Agricultural and Rural Management Training Institute (ARMTI), Dr Olufemi Oladunni, also admitted that no priority is more pressing than addressing food insecurity to safeguard the calorie and nutrition needs of Nigerians. He added that the intervention had become compelling to enable households to cope with high food prices and shortages.
According to Oladunni, record inflation has made basic foods unaffordable for many. He said: “The issue of the state of emergency in food Security is long overdue. Once you notice that the availability, affordability and accessibility of basic food is getting beyond the reach of poor man, then there’s a crisis and it must be quickly addressed.
“This government has started very well, but the issue is being compounded by present food inflation and the high cost of energy.
So, in the interim, releasing food from strategic food reserve is germane for the poorest of the poor and to reduce food prices.”
For the National President, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Kabiru Ibrahim, the icing on the cake of the government’s policy intervention in the agriculture sector was perhaps, the creation of a
National Commodity Board will review and continuously assess food prices as well as maintain a strategic food reserve that will be used as a price stabilization mechanism for critical grains and other food items.
Ibrahim said stated that the National Commodity Board will help farmers from being cheated by middlemen. “It is absolutely necessary for a formal commodity exchange board to be used as a vehicle for the sales and marketing of the produce of our smallholder farmers who are often cheated by middlemen and unscrupulous traders,” he said.
Through this board, the government will moderate spikes and dips in food prices. The government also went a notch higher by listing a number of stakeholders on board to support the president’s intervention effort.
They include National Commodity Exchange (NCX), Seed Companies, National Seed Council and Research Institutes, NIRSAL Microfinance Bank, food processing/agriculture processing associations, the private sector and Prime Anchors.
Others are smallholder farmers, crop associations and fertiliser producers, blenders and suppliers associations to mention a few.
“The policy that will aid the establishment of agricultural commodity market must be quickly put in place. This will guarantee standard, quality and price stability for consumers and all actors in the agricultural value chain,” Oladunni maintained.
Comrade Adegoke could not agree less. He said: “Mr President has never hidden his views on the need to bring back the Boards to support his food sufficiency strategies. It must be known that the present total deregulation of the cocoa sector after the dissolution of the commodity board in 1986 set the industry backwards without any appreciable progress in quality, production, productivity, and the fair market mechanism to support the farmers.
“The smallholder cocoa farmers have continued to bear the full cost of cocoa production without any appreciable support from the government at all levels unlike what was obtainable during the cocoa board era in 1986 and being done in Ghana and Ivory Coast that still retained their boards and presently with a production capacity of one million metric tons (MT) and two million MT respectively, while Nigeria is currently hovering around 300,000 -350,000 MT.”
Adegoke, however, said CFAN will not support the purchasing power to be given to the marketing boards due to the bad experience suffered by the Nigerian farmers when they were cheated by the then boards through price manipulation.
Agriculture experts and other industry stakeholders have also advocated the need for a review of the national agricultural Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) architecture if the country is to achieve sustainable food supply.
They also harped on the need to address the absence of a national farmers’ database to allow the authorities closely monitor agricultural production areas, amounts, distribution, imports, inventories and prices to assess supply and demand on a rolling basis and implement policies necessary to stabilise food supply.
According to them, the sector was not making progress as a result of poor data collection. For instance, the Deputy Managing Director of Project Incubation, West Africa, OCP Africa, Mr Caleb Usoh, said enhanced coordination at the state level is key if the government wants to accomplish food security from a strategic perspective.
He called for a thorough overhaul of the agricultural sector. While describing the plan as ‘quite commendable,’ he advised the government to work with the states on the food security plan to rethink and transform the production systems to produce better outcomes, foster innovation and enable sustainable growth.
His words: “The plan is quite laudable with the President declaring a state of emergency in the sector. The plan conveys ideas. However, I have had issues with policy implementation in Nigeria over the years. We have very laudable ideas, we know the what, but the problem is how to do it.
“The basic thing that we need in agriculture today is an enduring structure that will help the government translate brilliant initiatives to actualisation I tell you quickly that one of those best ways to get this going is to translate agricultural initiatives through states. The states should be the arrowheads of the implementation of any agricultural initiative.”