Although the Federal Government has assured that the fear over imminent food crisis in 2013 is unfounded, many Nigerians, especially concerned stakeholders, are not persuaded that the means and ways being devised by government at all levels can possibly address the challenge, report Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf and Bukola Afolabi
IT the best of times, feeding has always been a problem in Nigeria. The truth is that we Nigerians have suffered a lot of privations more than we are willing to admit to ourselves. But with the recent ravaging floods and the porous security situation in the country which is getting worst by the day, the future is bleak as well as scary.”
The foregoing anecdote by Mr. Timothy Adewale, a produce merchant from Ondo, speaks volume of what Nigerians should expect next year in anticipation of food shortage.
Flood casualties
The ravaging flood took a lot of casualties from small-holding farmers to big businesses across the country.
As a result of the disaster, most of the farmers fear that they would be able to contribute just little to the food basket of the country, a situation that could lead to food supply crisis.
Malam Aminu Bako, from Kano, is one of those hard hit by the effect of the flood.
“I was harvesting on the average over 200 bags of wheat and corn in previous years, but this year I was only able to take five bags after harvesting period,” he lamented.
Bako added that many of his colleagues could not harvest a third of their usual annual output this year, saying “they have lost all their farm produce to the disaster. Most of the affected farmers in this village have started sending their children to cities like Kano, Abuja, Lagos, Port-Harcourt and Kaduna to search for odd jobs so that they can sustain their families till next year.”
Like Bako, Malam Ali Suleiman, a large scale cotton farmer in Katsina, is still leaking his wounds.
He said, “We have started feeling the consequences of the disaster in this village because some people have started begging for food, while others have begun to send their children to cities in search for odd jobs.”
In Kebbi State, farmers are still counting their losses few months after flood washed away their farmlands. At the peak of this year’s rainy season in August the state witnessed its own share of flood. Many farmlands and residential houses were destroyed in parts of the state.
“We thank Allah for everything. The major crop we plant here is onion, but because it is a dry season product we plant grains to augment it. This year, apart from the problem of flood, we had acute shortage of fertiliser, which also adversely affects our output.”
Echoing similar sentiment, Mr. Ade Adefeko, Head Corporate & Government Relations of Olam Nigeria Limited, while weighing the economic cost of the flood on agribusiness, he said, “I can readily say the crop loss was within the margin of about 150, 000 to 20, 000 tonnes with an economic value of over N2.4 billion approximate. Nothing can be done for this season. For next season, the government should provide irrigation for upland planting or bunds for the fields.”
Adefeko who confided in The Nation that his company also suffered from the flood hinted that over 10, 000 hectares of its rice farmland in Nasarawa was partly affected.
Probed further, he could not clearly estimate losses, saying, “The Olam has not quantified its losses yet.”
Austerity takes toll
It is a public knowledge that food items most especially tomatoes has become a scarce commodity now while the few that are available are sold at exorbitant price by traders.
Investigation revealed that the scarcity of most staple foods is already taking its toll on the economy.
Two small seeds of tomato now sell for N100 as against four or five large seeds which were sold for N50 before the scarcity. Items like yam, cucumber, beans and other perishable food stuffs are also scarce in the market as a result of the violence and terrorist attacks in the northern part of the country, a region that is responsible largely for the food items consumed by the southerners.
According to Abiola Oni, food stuff merchant, this time around farmers are supposed to be working in their farms now but they cannot because flood has taking over there farm and some run away because of the insecurity in the region.
“Before now everybody produce there foods from there region like those in the south west, they have time when there yam comes out also in the Eastern part of the country but now, everybody are eating Abuja yam. They all depend on the foods that come out from the northern part of the country now,” Oni said.
Probable cause of food scarcity
Many people are of the opinion that laziness on the part of southwest people is responsible for the current food crisis being experienced by the region.
“I think the problem has to do with laziness from us Southwest people. In Yoruba land, we have better and fertile lands than what they have in the north,” said Segun Adeyemi, a graduate of Agricultural Engineering who resides in Lagos.
He continued, “In those days, in the west, we had Cocoa, Igemo rice, yam. There were many people in the village who were doing farming but now, everybody wants a white collar job. They have all left the village and are now living in Lagos, Ibadan, I mean cities. Everybody wants to come to the city to work. Some even prefer to be bus conductors than staying in the village to farm. In those days, we never depended on yam or tomatoes from the north but now there is problem. We no longer have all those things in the west. We eat what comes from the north. Assuming that the south west people are doing farming on a larger scale, we wouldn’t be feeling the impact of food items not coming from the north as a result of Boko Haram violence in the area. Sad to say, whatever affects the north in terms of food items now affects the south too,” he said.
He added, “It was the money from farming that was used to build Cocoa House in Ibadan. That was the period farming was flourishing in the west. Look at ofada rice which is being planted in the west. Assuming that we have been able to increase the production of the rice, we would not be relying on imported rice. Now with what is going on, you can imagine what would happen, God forbid, if there is war between the south and the west, we southerners will be at the mercy of northern people. They can stop bringing food to the south which will adversely affect us.”
“Government also is not helping matters. They only distribute few fertilizers to few farmers. Roads to some of these rural areas are also in bad condition thereby preventing movement of goods. What about mechanized farming? It is no longer practiced. If governments in the west fail to improve the sector, we might soon experience the worst food crisis in the west in the near future. Unfortunately, people are now paying through their nose to eat which should not be the case whereas the money is hard to come by.”
Toyin Ogundele, a grocery seller, also lamented rise in the cost of produce.
“I am afraid for this country because now that food has increase at this time, basket of tomatoes that we buy N4,000 naira is now N7, 000 and I know it will still increase.”
Recent investigation also revealed that the violence has also affected the cattle trade as traders are finding it difficult to transport their animals to the South. In fact the crisis in the North has forced some of the crop farmers and pastoralists to abandon their lands and relocate to the neighboring countries of Niger, Chad and Cameroun.
A few months back the National Emergency Management Agency said about 65 per cent of northern farmers had migrated to the South because of the insecurity they faced. The agency warned that the country faced a famine by the end of this year because most of the small-scale farmers and big-time farmers in the North were threatened by terrorist attacks.
Government optimism
But the government holds a different view. If anything, the Federal Government has assured Nigerians not to panic over the speculations that there may be food crisis or famine following the massive destruction done to farm produce by floods across the country because it has already put in place a Flood Recovery Food Production plan to support farmers in the flood affected areas.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Akinwumi Adeshina made this disclosure during the National Agricultural show held in Nasarawa State last month.
He said “Let me assure Nigerians we shall not have a food crisis or famine. We will recover from the flood. We have already secured 100 metric tons of seeds of extra-early maturing maize, which matures in 60 days, to plant on 5,500 hectares of farm lands in affected areas. This will allow affected farmers to have a harvest and feed themselves quickly before the next planting season. This will produce 11,000 tons of maize and will be complemented with an additional 500,000 tons to be produced under irrigation in the dry season.”
Dr Adeshina said “what does this add up to in terms of food production for our country? When we started, we informed the country that we would add 20 million metric tons of food to our domestic food supply by 2015. Today, from our efforts this year alone, from maize, rice, cassava and sorghum we are adding a total of 8.1 million metric tons of food. That is 41% of the total target that we set for 2015.”
He observed that as part of the flood recovery food production initiative, the Ministry of Agriculture will distribute 1,000 pumps to farmers to use for flood recession food production in the dry season. “The Agricultural Transformation Agenda in Nigeria is well on course. We have been able to attract $ 7.8 billion of private sector investment commitments into the agriculture sector in the past one year. The World Bank is providing $500 million. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have selected Nigeria as a priority country for its investment in agriculture. The International Fund for Agriculture Development has put up $80 million. The USAID has committed $60 million. And the DFID, Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation have committed technical support facilities,” he said.
John Isemede, Director General, National Association of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, (NACCIMA) is also on the same page with government.
The threat of famine, he says can be conquered if the right steps are taken. “I travel round the country and I have found out that cultivation is not the problem. The problem is not with the farmers, this you would notice if you also travel round the country. Processing, storage and marketing are the problems. When you consider these one after the other, then you would understand what I am talking about. Starting with processing, the majority of what is produced in the country is lost.”
He however noted that lack of some basic infrastructure have affected some of the moves being made. “Electricity is not there. Even In the past when we had the railway system, we use to transport cows, livestock and many other things were transported from the North to the South and even people. Things however has changed, not even cows this time, that we have refrigerated containers that is the issue of processing.”
The flooding, he stressed may be a blessing in disguise. “I am saying that because I know what the minister of agriculture is all about. He is a very experience and very matured somebody, and so also of recent the federal governments have come up with a good support for the state that is affected by this flooding.”
In search of elusive silos
It is also instructive to note that the flood and the poor harvest this year have raised questions over the state of storage silos spread across the country.
It will be recalled that the late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua administration committed a whopping sum of N50 billion in the 2009 budget projections of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources for the construction of grain storage silos across the country.
By 2010, reports said an additional N96 billion had been released, making a total of N146 billion. At that time it was projected that ongoing silos projects and the construction of new ones in order to bolster food security was meant to raise the national strategic storage capacity to 1 million tonnes.
The original intention was to have the grain storage silos located in different grains producing states, among them Ekiti, Kebbi, Zamfara, Borno, Imo, FCT and Bayelsa States. They were supposed to have 100,000 metric tonnes capacity. Other silos with the storage capacity of 25,000 metric tonnes were to be constructed in Yobe, Bauchi, Osun, Nasarawa, Taraba, Ogun, Anambra, Kogi, Sokoto, Akwa Ibom, Adamawa, Kano and Katsina States. The silos were meant to store rice, beans, maize, soya beans, millet, wheat, and other food items.
But the project may have been mired in corruption. For instance, a case involving a silos meant to be built in Akwa Ibom had to be taken to an Abuja High Court over an allegation that the cost of its construction had been inflated by over N500 million.
Also, in 2010, there were allegations against the Ministry of Agriculture that the sum of N96 billion had been removed from Ecological Funds to fund the silos project, but the grain silos have not been constructed.
In Bauchi State, there are four grain silos. There is one in Boto, one in Bauchi, one in Azare. A N1.5 billion silos was recently built by the Federal Government at Wailo village in Ganjuwa Local Government Area.
In Kaduna State, silos built since 2009 have been lying empty. Three years after its commissioning, the one in Angwan Maigizo, Jama’a Local Government Area, Birnin Gwari in Birnin Gwari LGA and that in Saminaka in Lere LGA have been abandoned.
Further checks revealed that the silos in Makurdi, Benue State, store grains fall below its capacity. The silos in Lafia, Nasarawa State are still under construction. In Ekiti State, the one constructed along the Federal Polytechnic Road, Ado Ekiti has been lying there empty, as no activities are taking place at its site.
As at press time, the Special Adviser to the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Kayode Oyeleye could not be reached as his phone was switched off.
In the view of industry analysts, some of the measures being put in place are cosmetic and can hardly solve the problems given the enormity of the situation.
What they canvass is however a holistic approach which the issues affecting the agric sector, stressing that this will help in no small measure to boost the nation’s food basket.
Pray, is someone listening?
