Drive for food security has been canvassed severally in the past by concerned stakeholders in the industry. Recall that the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) announced few years back that “36 countries across the globe are in crisis stemming from food insecurity.” The FAO noted in its World Development Report 2008- Agriculture and Development that: “36 countries are in crisis as a result of higher food prices and will require external assistance.” It also observed that in many of these countries, food insecurity has been worsened by conflict, floods, or extreme weather.
Floods or extreme weather that is climatic change is the issue. We witnessed it on our shores not too long ago. Huge losses, we can recall, were recorded.
Agriculture is an important factor in Nigeria. It is no news that before oil, this sector was the pillar of the nation’s economy. Today, whether we admit it or not, it is the backbone of the rural economy, generating more than a third of gross domestic product (GDP), with the crop sector (especially cassava, yam, sorghum, maize and millet) contributing the largest share of the agricultural GDP, followed by livestock, fisheries and forestry sub-sectors. Agriculture also provides over 70 percent of rural employment. And the nation’s agriculture is largely peasant-dominated – the rural employment in reference here.
The Federal Government realizes the need to diversify its economy outside oil and reduce poverty in a larger scale, and has identified agriculture as a major priority. During Jonathan administration, the transformation agenda was on course. Progress was made with various commodities transformation plans – cassava, rice, sorghum, palm oil, cocoa, etc. In 2013, according to Financial Derivatives Company Limited, Nigeria ranked 13th in agricultural dependent economies.
Tomilayo Adekanye, a professor and chairperson, Centre for Gender, Governance and Development, an NGO with headquarters in Ibadan, and former head of Agricultural Economics, University of Ibadan, said Food Security “can appropriately be conceptualized as a balance, or even the equilibrium, between supply and demand.” This, she said, “can be for the individual, family or household, a country such as Nigeria, a region such as Sub-Saharan Africa or even the continent of Africa.”
For the former university don, this conceptual presentation fits into the definitional framework of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in which food security is referred to as a situation where “all people have access to safe and nutritious food at all times such that they can maintain healthy and active lives.” She explained that “an individual, household, country or region is food secure if its food supply balances, is equivalent to, or is in equilibrium with, the demand for it.” But she held that food security equilibrium “is a dynamic and not a static one.”
She also threw light on traditional agriculture (that is largely smallholder farmers-centred) which, according to her, could also be conceptualized as equilibrium, but of a different kind. “Unlike food security, the equilibrium of traditional agriculture is not a dynamic but a static one, which has remained relatively stable for a fairly long time,” she said.
She talked of Green Revolution, of “miracle” seeds (coupled with greater use of fertilizer and irrigation) which have generated several-fold increases in output in different parts of the world and of how development literature has now gone beyond the green revolution towards nutrient recycling within traditional agriculture itself to generate increases in productivity with minimum use of purchased inputs, obtained from outside the agricultural sector; of how this is particularly applicable to Sub-Saharan Africa, which, unlike other developing areas, has been unable to develop its own “miracle” crop varieties.
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Good suggestions, but climatic change menace still remain an albatross. With an unchecked menace of climatic change, our agriculture, largely smallholder farming, which provides over 70 per cent of rural employment, may become extinct in no time.
As part of efforts to improve yam production and enhance the income of farmers in Nigeria, Taye Babaleye, former public affairs manager for International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) said the institute embarked on series of enlightenment programmes to create awareness on improved technologies of yam production, that it focused its attention on yam farmers around the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), a major yam producing area, to launch the technologies on white and water yam propagation, production and storage for better quality food and good market values.
The technologies, he said, cover dissemination of new yam varieties with high and stable yields of good quality tubers; promotion of rapid propagation techniques and strategies for integrated soil and pest management suited to intensify cultivation; and diversification of food products from yams. Again, the question arises- will these technologies have any positive impact with an unchecked ravaging global warming?
That climate change will increase hunger and malnutrition cannot be contested. According to Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), “Climate change will worsen the living conditions of farmers, fishers and forest-dependent people who are already vulnerable and food insecure. Hunger and malnutrition will increase. Rural communities dependent on agriculture in a fragile environment will face an immediate risk of increased crop failure and loss of livestock. Mostly at risk are people living along coasts, in floodplains, mountains, dry lands (Nigerians do), and the arctic. In general, poor people will be at risk of food insecurity due to loss of assets and lack of adequate insurance coverage.”
The FAO added: “Climate change will particularly affect vulnerable people and food systems. More frequent and intense extreme weather will have immediate adverse impacts on food production, food distribution infrastructure, on livelihood assets and opportunities in both rural and urban areas. Changes in mean temperatures and rainfall, increasing weather variability and rising sea levels will affect the suitability of land for different types of crops and pasture, the health and productivity of forests, the incidence of pests and diseases, biodiversity and ecosystems. Loss of arable land is likely due to increased aridity, groundwater depletion and the rise in sea level.”
These are all happening here. Agriculture contributes to climate change. Definitely, it does. Greenhouse gas emissions from the food and agriculture sector contribute over 30 percent of the current annual total emissions (deforestation 17.4 percent, agriculture 13.5 percent). About 13 million hectares of forests are annually being lost due to deforestation, according to FAO. Reducing forest degradation and deforestation helps to protect water and soil resources as well as biodiversity, and it contributes to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change will also affect the health of forests through an increase of forest fires and pests and diseases.
Without economic or other incentives and political will, it will be difficult to stop deforestation and forest degradation. Ours is essentially lack of political will. This has been our problem over the years. Governance in Nigeria is self-centred. You do not need to psychoanalyze our state resource managers to know this. It is a trait that a toddler can easily discern.
“Climate change is having an impact on oceans, seas, lakes and rivers and on the animals and plants that are found in them. Climate change will affect about 200 million people and their families worldwide who live by fishing and aquaculture. Some fish resources will become less abundant while important species may move to other areas where they are less available to the fishers. This will make it harder for many fishing communities to continue to make a living from fish or to provide fish for feeding their families”, FAO noted.
Coastal communities may also be displaced by rising sea levels and will be forced to find new places to live and new ways to earn a living. This no doubt is fresh crisis for Niger Deltans. How much are we prepared for this? And new patterns of pests and diseases will emerge; humans, plants, livestock and fish will be exposed to new pests and diseases that flourish only at specific temperatures and humidity. This will pose new risks for food security, food safety and human health.
