The three basic necessities of life are food, clothing and Shelter. Of these necessities, food is the most critical as it supports life, being as it were, the fuel of life. The almighty God at creation gave man plant (herbs) (Gen; l;29, Ezekiel 47:12) as a source of Food and medicine; for these plants have healing properties being rich in vitamins and minerals.
Governments and institutions the world over, recognises the place of food in human undertakings, hence enormous amount or energy, time and money are being devoted daily to fight the scourge of hunger and its debilitating consequences.
One of the specialised agencies of the United Nations, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (F.A.O.), was established for this singular purpose. Locally, several institutional arrangements are daily put in place to address this same phenomenon. For instance in the 1980s, we had the “Green Revolution” programme of Alhaji Shehu Shagari, the then President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; this was followed by the “Operation Feed the Nation” (O.F.N.) of General Olusegun Obasanjo, the Military Head of State. There was also the Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (D.F.R.R.I), a pet project of General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, the then Head of State. There are also the state ministries of Agriculture, the “Fadarna” Programme and the Agricultural Development
Programmes (A.D.P.) in the various states, all of which are to ensure that food is made available and affordable, so as to avert food crisis.
In spite of the various efforts above, it is no longer news today, that food crisis is staring the whole of humanity in the face. What is rather news, is the fact that this food crisis could have been avoided with adequate planning and timely deployment of resources; after all, the said food crisis, is not a consequence of natural calamity like drought, excessive rainfall or other adverse climatic conditions, but a function of the neglect, failure and the refusal of man to harness God’s freely given resources for the overall benefits of humanity.
Which are these resources you might ask? Water, Air, arable land, perfect weather and above all, abundant and qualitative crop of human resources (Labour). We have in Africa, enormous amount of productive capacity, but it is idle for the most parts. These human resources, apart from being directly involved in agricultural (manual) production, is also to coordinate other natural and human resources earlier mentioned. But quite unfortunately, we have neglected agriculture in favour of “White and Blue collar jobs” as well as Oil and Gas.
Going by the natural topography/climate of Israel in today’s Middle — East, it should have been an agriculturally backward nation, as such, a hungry nation because it is a desert. But no, this nation (Israel) has turned their challenges into opportunities and thus refused to make themselves an object of self pity, but decided to embark on agrarian revolution, thereby making food available all the year round. In fact, there is no difference between the dry season and rainy season in Israel since irrigation is a way of life there. This is why they are called the “Giants of the Desert”.
We too as a nation can replicate the Israeli experiment. It is a possibility. Lest we forget, Malaysia came here (Nigeria) to shop for oil palm and rubber seeds/seedlings, but today, they are the world largest exporters of palm oil and rubber — based products, thus earning huge foreign exchange therefrom.
It is never too late to start, let us cultivate the political and personal will to channel our energies and resources in this direction. Perhaps, one such way is to reduce rural — urban migration through the provision of the basic amenities in the rural areas, to make life meaningful for the rural populace thereby motivating them to produce. It is in this context, one sees great wisdom in President Umaru Musa Yar’dua’s 7 —point Agenda which iner alia, is the unbundling of the infrastructural and the power sectors. Lest we forget, if and when some Infrastructure as road is taken care of, the problem associated with produce evacuation from the hinter land to the market or to processing sites, would be a thing of the past, and farmers would be encouraged to produce more food; because of a situation where their produce get spoilt before getting to the market due to bad roads is counter - productive and debilitating.
Another bane of agricultural production in sub-Saharan Africa, of which Nigeria is a typical example, is the problem of storage, since most of the agricultural produce are highly perishable, coupled with the absence of processing firms in the rural areas to convert these produce to semi –finished and finished products. It is therefore hoped that with the power sector reform, as part of the cardinal programme in the 7— point agenda, this problem (Storage) would be frontally addressed.
It is pertinent to observe here that in America, Israel, Thailand etc. where agriculture is a major industry, not everybody is a farmer. In Nigeria too, we do not all need to be farmers to turn things around. All the farmers need is an enabling environment and it is never too late to begin again; but we must first get our priorities right. Let us be reminded too that the oil and gas resources which we are abundantly blessed with as a nation, are exhaustive resources, with limited life span, and as such, cannot be there for ever; some day, they would be used up. This is why we have to as a people, put on our thinking caps, discover what went wrong, where and when, so that we can re-chart our destiny all over again. Agriculture is one area of such diversification.
Politics today, has become an all — comer affair, to the detriment of other sectors of the economy, agriculture inclusive. A friend once told me that the shortest course to wealth is politics, for the pay-offs are enormous. This is a wrong notion, for everybody cannot be a politician, if anything at all, the gains are short-term. The physiocratic school of (economic) thought of the 18th century, opined that the greatest wealth of a nation is from land while other sectors are essentially peripheral and parasitic on the soil resources. This notion holds true, even today the 21st century. We can still go back to the drawing board and reclaim our lost glory; the era of the celebrated “Groundnut Pyramid” in the Northern Nigeria, Cocoa in the West; Rubber and Timber in the Midwest and palm oil in the East, are still very fresh in our memory. Today, more than ever before, we can still make agriculture to command the pride of place as major foreign exchange earner of old, as we have it in Thailand and Malaysia. Agriculture could still be the source of food, employment of our young school leavers, source of raw materials for (Infant) domestic industries etc.
There is no doubt that the current food crisis poses enormous challenge, in fact, an embarrassing one.
THE WAY FORWARD
The fight against hunger/food crisis is a collective one that requires a concerted efforts of the government, corporate bodies and individuals since food is a major tonic for creative and productive endeavours.
a. It is also humbly suggested that the government should assist in the supply of agricultural
inputs in the form of seeds, seedlings, fertilisers pesticides etc. at highly subsidised rates.
b. Provision of soft loans to farmers, devoid of the usual bureaucratic bottlenecks in such
procurement.
c. Community leaders, the government at different levels, as well as other stake holders should make farming land available to interested farmers on a large scale basis.
d. Nigeria is today ripe for agricultural mechanisation, so it would be appreciated if the three levels of government would make agric machinery such as tractors, planters, ridgers, combined harvesters etc. available to farmers for rental purposes at very low rates.
e. Establishment of cottage industries in the rural areas for the processing of agricultural produce side-by-side with the deployment of extension workers to educate the rural farmers on modern
farming techniques.
f. Rehabilitation of existing roads, as well as the construction of rural earth roads to ease produce/products evacuation.
It is hoped that when all or some of the above recipe are faithfully implemented, the so - called food crisis would have been substantially mitigated.
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