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Tag: wastage

  • Establish ministry of food processing to curb wastage, Don tells FG

    Establish ministry of food processing to curb wastage, Don tells FG

    A professor of Nutritional Biochemistry and Phytomedicine at Covenant University’s Department of Biochemistry in Ota, Prof. Israel Afolabi, has urged the federal government to establish a food processing ministry. 

    He also said that the ministry should prioritize the utilization of local research findings by Nigerian industries.

    During the 31st inaugural lecture at the institution in Ota, Afolabi emphasized that national development hinges on integrating industries involved in producing and marketing products. 

    He suggested that such integration could foster marketing competition, potentially lowering prices of goods and services for the benefit of citizens.

    He also noted that a deliberate use of the dietary approach could help control crime at the national and global levels.

    Afolabi believes that the level of crime will be reduced if the community is given adequate diet and nutrients, especially at the childhood level.

    “The current insecurity crisis experienced in our nation may be primarily attributed to poor access to good nutrition. It may also be linked to the poor leadership experienced in Africa countries as humans would inherently and unknowingly react back to their community according to what was seeded into them”, he said.

    Read Also: Food insecurity: Fed Govt to curb fruits, vegetable wastage

    He further said that food and nutrients are programme software that drive the behaviour of humans in response to her community.

    Afolabi said that providing tax incentives for these industries would also create market competition that may force the price of services down for the benefit of the citizens.

    He also urged the federal government to further invest and reinvest in technological revolution to drive national development.

    Afolabi added that technological drive was imperative for national development, adding that such a drive would engage the minds of several youths to reduce crime.

    According to him, proper education which inculcates critical thinking dynamics of youths and explores their knowledge gaps for practicable global competition is needed.

    The don emphasized that universities and research institutes should be empowered through adequate funding to generate products and services for global competition.

    Earlier, in his welcome address, Prof. Abiodun Adebayo, the Vice-Chancellor of the institution, said that the 31st inaugural lecture was critical and timely to addressing fundamental human existence.

    Adebayo said that the entire nation was grappling with acute hunger and nutritional deficiency, due to the incessant destruction of food production and distribution chains rising from armed banditry and numerous attacks on farmers, among others.

    He said: “It is time for the federal government to look inward and see how food could be made available to everyone, because a hungry man is an angry man,”.

    The vice-chancellor assured that the institution would continue to strive hard to ensure that it promoted research that would advance food security in the country.

    Adebayo appealed to the federal government to continue to diversify the economy from oil to Agriculture in order to secure food security and tame the price of goods and services.

  • Group cautions against food wastage

    Ahead of the World Food Day, a group, Foodclique Support Initiative, has canvassed against open wastage of foods across at parties.

    Its Media Director, Adeola Adetola, said it saddens the heart to see some Nigerians wasting food when millions of people have nothing to eat.

    He said the commitment of FoodClique Support Initiative to ending hunger will be reinforced by support for families and populace battling with one form of hunger or the other.

    Also, the founder of FoodClique Support Initiative, Bolajoko Fadipe, said they would be providing 4,000 meals to people that are socially disadvantaged in Lagos Mainland Local Government Area.

    He urged the government and corporate organisations to help in reducing hunger through deliberate policies and corporate social responsibilities that trickle down to the lower pyramid of social class.

  • Horrors of food wastage

    Horrors of food wastage

    Food and fruit wastage not only hurts growers and the economy, it especially harms children’s health, reports AMOS ABAH from Makurdi

    Ene Ayuba was worried she would lose her five-year-old son Kato to illness. His frequent bouts with diarrhoea in one week made him weak and frail. His jaw and eye sockets were the only prominent features on his face; he was a far cry from his usual animated and lively self. Ene sensed her son was at the brink of death after he failed to respond to the medications procured from a patent medicine seller in their neighbourhood.

    “After buying drugs from the chemist shop to stop the diarrhoea, his condition got worse. My son was unable to sit or stand which made me distressed,” said the 26-year-old petty trader.

    According to her, she heeded advice from a friend and rushed her son to Benue State University Teaching Hospital (BSUTH) where he was admitted for treatment. At the hospital, she was subjected to a 30-minute procedural questioning by the doctor concerning Kato’s diet. However, the doctor’s inquisition hit a brick wall when Ene lied about Kato’s nutritional history. On closer examination, Kato was placed on drugs and food supplements to boost his immune system but his condition still worsened.

    “Initially I lied to the doctor about what I was feeding Kato with to save myself from being a charity case until I had no choice but to speak the truth to save my son,” she confessed to the reporter.

    Ene had tinkered with Kato’s nutritional profile before he had diarrhoea attacks. Kato’s diet two months earlier usually contained a daily staple called garri, granules produced from cassava considered the most affordable meal in Nigeria.

    Blaming the economic downturn in the country as the reason for the change in her son’s diet, which has led to a decline in the nutrients needed for his all-round growth and development, she bemoaned the fact that her son has been susceptible to bouts of infection as a result of his tinkered diet.

    Thankfully, Kato started responding to treatment at the paediatrics centre of BSUTH) after his meals were changed to a cereal based combination of soy and maize flour.

    Dr. Rose Abah, a consultant pediatrician and lecturer at BSUTH, Makurdi, asserts that a greater percentage of people suffering from severe under-nutrition cases in the state usually fall within the low-income and impoverished economic divide.

    “Most of the cases of severe under-nutrition I have dealt with at the paediatric unit concerns persons with low earnings. This puts many under-two children at risk of their immune system being compromised, making them preys to infections,” she posited.

    Research findings carried out by O. Akinyemi and A.G Ibraheem in 2009 at Queens College, Lagos which was published in the Pakistan Journal of Science in 2009, reveals that the nutritional status of students within the ages of 10-19 years is at a low, as their diet lacks the appropriate energy and nutrients intake. The study further shows that in Nigeria, most secondary school students are under-fed or starved due to the socio-economic conditions of their parents or guardians. This development, affects their concentration and academic achievements in school.

    Nigeria’s growing agricultural business was dealt a serious blow in 2015 when the European Union (EU) put a ban on beans imports due to an increased amount of pesticides. The EU also extended the ban for three years for failure by the Nigeria government to set up systems in place that would prevent such problems from reoccurring.

    With the abundance of fruits in the state, Benue still ranks lowest amongst the producers of fruit juices in the country. The processing plants managed by government has been neglected and abandoned, leaving rural farmers to their own devices.

    A stroll through an orange orchard in Mbawuar, a farming community in Benue State, reveals why the timeworn epithet, the food basket of the nation was conferred on the state. However, nestled among patchworks of fallow farmlands and swaths of land being prepared for the planting season, the 20 acre orange orchard which is home to different varieties of oranges, mirrors the plight of food security in the state. In a chat, Mr John Biem, manager of the orchard, shares his travails with the reporter.

    He said, “Although I make profits during the harvest period, I usually encounter severe losses as my oranges get spoilt in the event of waiting for buyers to purchase them. We don’t have an accessible market where big-time buyers can buy from us directly; we depend on the middlemen to reach us before we can make reasonable sales since they have a ready market. Orange wastage can be reduced if we can get access to fruit juice companies that would buy from us (orange farmers) directly,” Biem submitted.

    Records obtained from the Centre for Food Technology and Research (CEFTER), a World Bank funded research centre in Makurdi, the Benue State capital, pegged the post-harvest losses of fruits at 51 percent for 2016 in Benue State. In a country where majority of under-five children are stunted, the statistics validates a grim reality of how fruit wastes affect the growth of children.

    In a global effort to scale down food losses and reduce farm and retail waste, the United Nations projects a sustainable goal geared towards ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns that would halve per capita global food waste at retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains including post-harvest losses by 2030.

    Will this be able to restore Nigeria’s nascent growth struggling to emerge from the throes of poverty and conflict? A nutritionist and lecturer at the University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Mr Benbella Iorliam replies in the affirmative.

    “Government will have to play a major role by increasing its efforts in improving agricultural support to rural farmers by providing soft-loans to help them obtain processing equipment to process their farm produce. This action will enable small cottage industries thrive. Most rural farmers can preserve their fruits as dried concentrates at the level of processing, but at the level of consumption, without electricity they (fruits juice) cannot be preserved for a longer period when processed.

    “Without good roads there would be no access to a market where this processed products will be sold. When these infrastructural challenges are fixed, then food loss can be reduced at production level and goal 12 of the SDGs can be realized bit by bit,” he concluded.

    Speaking to Mr Hafiz Oladimeji; the General Supervisor of the Nigerian Fruit Agro Processing Limited, a fruits juice factory based in Gboko, Benue State. He decried the lack of interest by investors to support small cottage industries to curb food waste.

    “Operations in the plant have been on hold due to operational costs making the management to consider the production of table water in order to keep afloat,” he said.

    “Farmers usually bring oranges to sell to us but since we’ve not started concentrate and juice production, we are forced to turn down their offer which they sell at giveaway prices.  Our juice production capacity is about 1 metric tonne of concentrate juice per day which with investors support we will produce a shared prosperity for the farmers and the investors,” he said with conviction.

    Okey Ezekiel, the project manager at the centre for food technology and research (CEFTER) hedged his bet on appropriate application of technology to cushion the implications of eating poisonous food products which could arise from excess amounts of preservatives.

    “The transfer of technology from the various research institutes and universities should be effected into the market to ensure our foods are safe and processed meeting international accepted standards,” he said.

    The United Nations estimates that 20 million people are being underfed or starved including 1.4 million children on the brink of imminent death. According to a recent report, it is hoped that the Sustainable Development Goals 2 and 12 would seek to improve nutrition, end food waste and promote sustainable agriculture that ensure healthy living for all.

    • Abah is a contributor to our Campus Life
  • Curbing fish wastage through smoking technology

    Curbing fish wastage through smoking technology

     Fish is a staple food vital for good health. But the challenge for fish farmers is storage after harvest to enable them sell. Following this, there is a campaign to introduce smoked fish technology to prevent spoilage and help farmers earn more income. DANIEL ESSIET reports.

    F Phil Onuoha has his way, all his fishes will be smoked. This followed dwindling sales, he suffered selling fish fresh.

    A hardworking and dedicated fish farmer, Onuoha prefers selling his fish fresh from the pond.

    The challenge however is that fresh fish can’t hold long periods of time.  Though consumers prefer fresh fish, his challenges are transportation and storage facilities to keep it in a condition that can still be sold after moving them from the ponds.

    For him and other farmers, transportation of live fish to the markets requires investment in trucks with fish holding cages.

    While long distance transport of fresh fish further requires ice or trucks with cooling devices, the road from his farm  to  the  market  is  bad during certain seasons.

    In Ikorodu, a Lagos suburb, where his farms are located, transporting fresh or live fish to rural markets was not feasible .

    Besides, being expensive, it takes him time to move fish to central  Lagos   where consumers are willing and able to pay higher prices.

    Not able to do direct marketing, he has to contend with  market  women  who come  to buy  on  the farm.

    Onuoha  said  the  women  would  always  want  him  to sell at a price that is not profitable and  to  serve  as major  link  to  the  market.

    While lowering the price will enable him  to  sell  more, he  said it  makes no  sense economically to do so.

    As a result, sale at most  times  is  often   poor  after harvest. Besides, he explained that  the    fish industry is prone to seasonal fluctuations in demand.

    In most cases, fluctuations in  demand  is taken care  of by  processing.

    According  to him, selling fish is a high-risk business, as they go bad very quickly, so they have to do whatever they  can to reduce the risk.

    The option  for him is  smoking. After harvest, he  smokes the fish within the farm. This helps  him  to  control  supply to the market, stabilise prices and reduce  waste.

    So far, he is making gains. His customers are aware he sells smoked fish. Also, consumers’ preferences for taste and price are taken care of.

    Although modern preservation technologies would simplify their processes and would enable them to sell fresh fish, them can’t  afford to buy  cold  storage  equipment which cost run into millions of naira.

    For such, smoking  fish  may  be  the way  to go.

    He said  small-scale fish traders  invest significant time and effort to preserve their stocks using traditional methods before they sell it.

    To  experts,  kilns  used for  traditional smoking involves burning wood which leads to a variety of problems.

    Aside producing  more greenhouse gas pollution , it  releases contaminants known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are hazardous to the human respiratory system.

    Farmers, also  suffer  from intense heat  that  affect their  health.

    The campaign now is to get more farmers introduced to smoking kiln technology that improve processing by reducing the smoke level to internationally acceptable standards.

    One of the organisations promoting  this is  the West Africa Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAPP).

    WAAPP  has resolved  not    to  strengthen  fisheries  but  to  support   technology transfer  through  universities  and research  institutes.

    WAAPP-Nigeria National Project Coordinator, Prof. Damian  Chikwendu  said the  priority focus of the project  in Nigeria include aquaculture, poultry, cassava, maize, and rice among others.

    He said WAAPP-Nigeria is   committed to doing anything possible to promote aquaculture.

    In this regard, he  said  the National Institute for Freshwater Fisheries Research (NIFFR), New Bussa, Niger State is emerging into a National Center of Specialisation in Aquaculture. The objective, according to him,  is to develop and release top notch technologies in aquaculture for adoption in Nigeria and Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) countries to increase productivity.

    Chikwendusaid  the  programme is also supporting the smoked fish  project at  the  institute.

    Another institution also involved in this campaign is University of Ibadan,(UI).

    In its  Department of Aquaculture and Fisheries Management are specialists in aquaculture development .

    The  department  conducts  market research and provide  fish farmers  with business management support. It also  provides  technical assistance to visiting farmers.

    Speaking while receiving World Bank WAAPP  team at the university, its Head of Department, Aquaculture and Fisheries Management, Prof Bamidele Omitoyin  said the school is  training  students  on smoked fish technology.

    In addition, he  said  farmers  are  trained  to process fish free from benzo-a pyrene considered hazardous to health.  The facilities in the department, he maintained,  has  the capacity to smoke one tonne per batch within 24hours, adding that UI has all it takes to deliver services in areas of aquaculture.

    The university fish farm, for instance, he noted is well positioned to deliver dividends in aquaculture research while essential infrastructure are also on ground to support research and production activities in the animal sciences.

    At  the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research (NIMOR) ,Lagos, the  World Bank WAAPP Task Team Leader ,DrAbdoulayeTouré  said  access to smoked  technology is making real change possible for  fish farmers .

    With the support of  WAAPP, he  said  NIMOR  has  trained entrepreneurs on modern fish smoking technology and introduced an industrial fish smoking kiln fabricated by the institute.

    He  said the improved fish smoking project aimed to catalyse the development of sustainable value chain fish smoking improving energy efficiency and supply.

    He  reiterated  that  WAAPP   is implementing a regional fisheries strategy aimed at improving the sustainable regional supply of fish and fishery products. The programme has five different result areas, the fifth one being food security, which primarily focuses on the implementation of activities, geared at reducing post-harvest fish losses that occur in small-scale fisheries.

    In line with   this,  NIOMR  Executive Director, DrGbolahamAkande has urged cat fish farmers to embrace canning as a means of preserving their products.

    He said cat fish farmers were recording losses due to poor  preservation and lack of value chain, adding  that canning would boost the income of the fish farmers.

    “Canning the catfish will create value and increase the income of farmers. Instead of selling fishes unprocessed and at ridiculous prices, farmers  should either smoke or can them to enhance their profit,” he said.

    According to Akande, canned catfish   would compete favourably with the imported  canned products  such as Geisha and Sardine and  also has the potential to become an export product for  the country.

    Its  Head of Extension and Media Relations, Dr. Mabel Yarhere, said that the Catfish Canning Innovation Platform (CCIP) project was sponsored by the Forum for African Agricultural Research with $100,000 (N19.7 million)

    She said the fund was to support research, processing, market survey, mobilisation of farmers and launching   various stage  of the project within nine months.

    According to her, farmers in the Southwest zone have been mobilised and empowered to embrace the project.

    “We have assisted the farmers with fingerlings and feeds to boost catfish production as a step towards the success of the CCIP,” she said, adding that the platform was connecting co-operative societies to  commercial banks, which would give them loans to drive their active participation in the projects.

    Remarking that the CCIP project was a platform set on a stable ground and would create an open market for existing farmers and aspiring ones, she expressed delight that some of the farmers were already setting up canneries through sponsorship by state governments.

    She assured of the safety of consuming canned catfish as it has no health implications.

    “We have followed the international best practices as specified by FAO from primary production to finished products. We have worked with various local and international regulatory agencies to ensure quality,” she said.

    To  support the  Federal Government’s  move to increase fish  production, the   National Association of Fish Farmers in Kebbi State said  it will partner with the state SURE-P on the establishment of fingerlings production centre and packaging of fish after harvest.

    Its Chairman, Alhaji Hussaini Raha, said the association would also partner with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and National Institute for Freshwater Fisheries Research, New Bussa, on the management of fish farms.

    Raha said an update of the membership records revealed 12,050 members located in Argungu, BirninKebbi, Bunza, Bagudo, Shanga, Yauri and Ngaski local government areas, producing tilapia and catfish.

    According to him, the association has also registered 9,000 artisans and 300 cooperative societies.

    He said that the association would strive to meet international standard in the production of smoked and fresh fish.

     

  • £15m Royal South York wastage

    A dilapidated mansion in South York is now the last symbol of Prince Andrew’s failed marriage to Sarah Ferguson and has been left to decay seven years after the prince sold it for £15million.  To make matters worse the grand country house gifted by the Queen to her second son as a wedding gift is now under the Heathrow flight path where planes pass over it every few minutes.

    The 12-bedroom Sunninghill Park in Berkshire, which is only around 30 years old, is a shadow of its former splendour and now has broken windows and boarded-up entrances.

    Dubbed SouthYork because it resembles Southfork, the ranch-house in TV’s Dallas, the Duke of York sold it to Kazakh businessman, Timur Kulibayev in 2007. He paid more than £3million above the £12million asking price but since then it has become close to derelict and could be demolished after the local council gave permission nine months ago. The Duchess of York lived on there with daughters Beatrice and Eugenie following the divorce in 1996, but moved out in 2006 and joined Andrew at his home, Royal Lodge, in Windsor Great Park.

    It was sold a year later but has become an expensive ruin and worse it is now being bombarded by noisy Jumbo jets coming in to land at Heathrow.  The new flight-path is part of a trial started by the National Air Traffic Services in August which lasted five months. The experiment is also to be repeated this year. Neighbours told how the latest blight on the once grand mansion saw planes cruising over every two minutes, as low as 5,000 feet, with noise levels of 78 decibels being recorded.

    ‘It’s terrible – huge jumbo jets fly right over our rooftops and it’s so, so noisy,’ said one neighbour, who declined to be named.

    • Culled from MailOnline

  • A diary of wastage

    He was the very symbol of wastage: frail limbs, premature grey hair and a sagging gait. I had put him down as another specimen from our museum of atrocity. He seemed to have understood. As he took his leave, the wasted young man asked me the million dollar question: “Why do we waste ourselves so much?” he cried.

    The metaphor itself, I’m told, originated during our darkest national moment: the civil war. But its sad antecedents, I’m sure, must be located in the bitter and self-destructive post-independence politics of our founding fathers. Like a malignant cancer, it has overtaken every facet of our national life. Wastage has become the dominant metaphor, the all-embracing formula for the tragedy of our collective existence.

    Wole Soyinka, ever the troubled prophet, first drew our attention to the creeping cancer in the mid-seventies. In a newspaper piece titled “Varieties of Wastage,” Soyinka assailed the invasion of our national life by the culture of wastage. We waste our best and brightest; our best and brightest politicians; our best and brightest soldiers; our best and brightest intellectuals; our best and brightest bankers; our best and brightest journalists etc. the road, taking its orders from the system, completes the carnage for us.

    One year this week, a novel and spectacular variety of wastage made its debut on the national scene. Dele Giwa, brilliant editor and one of the stars of Nigerian journalism, was bombed out of existence in his study. This writer is often amazed these days when people talk glibly about the Nigerian bomb without first conceding that the real “McKoy” made its sly and devastating entry several months ahead of the idle speculations. It is pertinent to add here that nobody can fool history and that if care is not taken, that horrifying spectacle of a gifted and virile young man with shattered limbs may itself become an alternative metaphor for our national condition.

    As the first anniversary of Giwa’s murder approached, I’ve been thrown into deep mourning and depression. Some days earlier, a good friend, Deji Adegorioye, who had gone to buy some drugs for his indisposed son had his life snuffed out by a bus belonging to the Celestial Church. Some weeks before this, another friend, Tunde Okeleye, a customs official, was battered to death by a danfo bus whose driver had perfected the murderous strategy of overtaking in the night with lights switched off. Death had barely closed in on him before some brave new Nigerians saw it fit to remove his money, his shoes, his wristwatch and the drinks he bought for his kids.

    As if all this was not enough burden on the soul, news came of the death by road accident of Professor Iluyomade, Oxford-trained law teacher and attorney-general of Ondo State. Something always conspires to deny us of even our brief sources of joy, I thought in deep gloom. I remembered how the Dele Giwa murder had put a damper on the Wole Soyinka Nobel celebration. And now the cultured and lively people of Ondo town will have to share the joy of their illustrious son winning the national merit award with the grief of burying another illustrious son.

    These cruel tricks of fortune! Three weeks earlier, I was thinking of sending a telegram of congratulations to Chinua Achebe on his return to high form when I learnt of the death of Dambudzo Marechera, the gifted Zimbabwean writer. I had reckoned that Achebe who had survived a thousand literary cudgels after his immensely frank but immensely impolitic put-down of Obafemi Awolowo surely deserved some congratulations. But the death of Marechera, the supreme artist of hunger whose life must serve as a classic example of the dissolution of the flesh by spirit (whisky and co), halted me in my track.

    These deaths make my mind to focus on the damage the notorious Ife-Ibadan road might have done to the intellectual development of this country. One now remembers the Bamiduros, the Kola Adenijis, the Taiye Adebanjos, brilliant men who have gone through all the rituals of education only to have their lives tragically terminated on The Road. I remember now a tall, dashing young man who would have graduated with our class of ’75 at Ife. Onome Ibru would have been an invaluable asset not only to the formidable Ibru empire but to the entire country. His life was cruelly abridged on this monster of a road.

    Now consider this. If one were to resurrect all the people we have put through the ceaseless mill of our unedifying history, all the brilliant men and women that our monstrous system has hurried over to the great beyond! What an endless procession of shame and misery would it have been! What a staggering burden of collective guilt for the living!

    Let us end this sad piece with a disturbing but profoundly soothing anecdote. In the gloom and misery that enveloped the nation in the wake of Giwa’s murder. I had the honour of briefly participating in one of the planning sessions for his burial. In the atmosphere of consuming sadness, I had asked a journalist friend whether things would ever be the same again in the country. The man looked at me and said philosophically: “In forty years time, Dele Giwa will be remembered as a fearless journalist of the eighties.”

    Then he told me a story about his father. The old man, sensing that he had only a few more months to spare, decided to take his son down the memory lane on a tour of familiar spots on Lagos Island. As they crossed from one alley to another, the old man’s face would light with memory as they came upon some familiar land mark. “That is the house of so and so,” he would begin, “he was a socialite who died mysteriously in 1937.” At another spot the old man would look up and remark: “This is the house of J.K. he died in his prime in 1956.” And so on…

    His message was clear. Life will go on. Life must go on. The only honour we, the dazed survivors ,can do to the wasted is to resolve to change a system that is responsible for such colossal waste.

     

    •Culled from Newswatch, October, 1987.