World Food Day: Food
Security, Innovations and Challenges in Nigeria II
The 2015 population estimate for Nigeria
was 186,988,000 with male population of 95,253,000 and female population of
91,734,000 and population density of 201.3 per square kilometer. As I am
writing this article today, Sunday, 22nd October 2017, at 11.25am
American time, the Worldmeters population (www.worldmeters.info/world-population/nigeria-population), the famous tool for estimation of
real-time population of countries globally estimated that Nigerian population
had hit 192,425,377, moving towards having an estimated population of 450
million people in 2050. At conservative cost of N150 per plate of food per
person per meal, a staggering amount of N116 billion Naira worth of food is
required to feed this teeming population per day and 3.5 trillion Naira per
month. For the purpose of analysis, let me give a vivid picture of the enormity
to feed Nigerian population today for a meal of rice alone without the
additives. It requires 24.1 million metric tons of milled rice to serve the
estimated number of 192 million people for a single meal on the assumption that
100 kg of rice can serve 800 people. What are the innovations and challenges to food security in Nigeria?
What is food security? Defining food
security precisely is very difficult and there are more than 200 definitions
and 450 indicators of food security. According to the 1996 World Food Summit
"food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and
economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their
dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy lifestyle. In
another context, the World Health Organization (WHO) maintained that "food
security means that all people at all times have both physical and economic
access to enough food for an active, healthy living…” Therefore, attaining food
security means that consumption and production of food should be governed by
social values that are just and equitable as well as moral and ethical. This
way the ability to acquire food by all can be ensured. In addition, the food should
be nutritionally adequate, personally and culturally acceptable; and the food
should also be obtained in a manner that upholds human dignity. No matter how
food security is defined, having enough to eat regularly for active and healthy
life is the most essential human need. Many developing countries, especially in
South Asia and Africa, are yet to fulfill this vital need. However, some basic
components of food security should guide us to examine the innovations to
achieve food security in Nigeria. What are the essential components of food
security? The components are basically three. The first is quality implying
that the food is safe, healthy and of nutritious value. The second is the
quantity implying that the food is enough to lead a healthy and active
lifestyle. The third is availability implying that a person has financial
capability to purchase the food where one lives. That means the food has to be
accessible and affordable without strain of constraint. Thus, every food
security program targeted to a given community must contain these basic
components to qualify it as “a standard food security project”.
In Nigeria, from the year of Independence
to date, there were several innovations to attain food security for the country
in form of programs and projects mostly championed by the Federal Government. One
of such program was the National Accelerated Food Production Program (NAFPP).
This was a well-conceptualized strategy that incorporated research, extension
and input supply (through a network of agro-service centers) and farmers.
Another one was Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), introduced in 1976 as a
strategy to substantially increase food production and availability on
sustainable manner. The establishment of The River Basin Development
Authorities (RBDAs) across the nation was another effort. The responsibilities
of Extension services were removed from them in 1985 and their farmers were
presumed to benefit from the extension services of ADP within their catchment
areas. This caused a huge vacuum that led to poor and inefficient performance
of RBDAs. Yet another effort was the Green Revolution, launched in 1979 to
replace the OFN. The primary objective of the program was to achieve food
self-sufficiency for Nigeria within a target of five years. However, the
approach placed emphasis on input supply, improvement of infrastructure and
provision of price incentives. Alongside Green Revolution, another effort was
the introduction of Agricultural Development Projects (ADPs) as an extension
approach. A pilot project was started in
1975 at three enclaves; Funtua, Gombe and Gusau, respectively. The ADP extension system was based on the
premise that a combination of essential factors comprising of the right
technology, effective extension, access to physical production-enhancing
inputs, adequate market and other infrastructure facilities are essential to
achieve food security. The ADP system uses Training and Visit extension
delivery system, which recorded huge success with World Bank support funds. The
success led to establishment of the enclave ADPs in six more states. By 1989,
the ADP system had become statewide and covered the whole nation providing
extension services at the grassroots. The strategy worked and recorded tangible
success nationwide while the World Bank support lasted.
One of the defects of the ADP system was
its crop-bias on introduction. The correction of this defect led to the
introduction of the Unified Agricultural Extension Services (UAES) in 1989. The
correction made provision for the inclusion to the other sectors, such as
livestock, fisheries, forestry and natural resource management. Thus, under ADP
system, one village extension agent (VEA) is expected to deliver extension
messages in all agricultural disciplines to the farmers. This was informed by
the need to remove the problems of conflicting messages to the clientele by
multiple agents. It was also expected to make the system cost-effective by
eliminating duplication of efforts.
Some of the recent efforts worth mentioning
are Nigeria Special Program for Food Security (NSPFS), Nigeria Root and Tuber
Expansion Program (RTEP), National Agricultural Land development Authority
(NALDA), Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) and few others by states governments.
In additions to all these programs, there are also several breakthroughs in machinery
inventions and technology innovations related agricultural development and food
security in Nigeria as reported in my past artcles in this Column, which can be
accessed via www.breakthroughwithmkothman.blogspot.com. However, these efforts were tried with
insignificant impacts on the Nigerian farming system as farmers still largely
use hand tools to cultivate their lands. The nation is still incapable of
attaining the status of food secured nation and food items are still massively
imported. Some of the challenges for the poor performance of these efforts are:
1. Planning was a top-down with no involvement
of the clientele
2. There was poor or no linkage with research centers
in all the approaches resulting in the development of inappropriate
technologies,
3. Conflicting roles of extension –education
and law enforcement,
4. A flawed extension philosophy, which saw
the farmers as “traditional, fatalistic, ignorant and resistant” to change,
5. Some of the approaches such as RBDAs failed
due to lack of focus and diversification of efforts that could not be
sustained,
6. Some of the approaches followed one another
in quick successions, left the rural populace probably more confused and
undecided as there were too many instructions coming from government agencies,
7. Some of the approaches such as ADP system
proved to be very expensive hence the serious management problems after the
withdrawal of the world Bank support to the projects,
8. The farmers involvements and participation
in technology development remains low as there was no effective means of
feedback
9. And several other reasons
To address these concerns, an extension and
research institute was upgraded to examine the various approaches, in addition
to capacity building of extension personnel to meet the emerging challenges of
extension delivery services. That institute was Extension Research Liaison
Services (ERLS), a section of Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR), which
was upgraded to National Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison Services
(NAERLS) in 1987.
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