By Mark Orgu, News/Comments
In a special interview with a former Vice Chancellor, University of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, (UAES), Umuagwo, Imo state, Professor Patrick Egbule, during the week, has advised the Federal government to urgently address the food crisis and the high rate of inflation, noting however, that, a hungry man is not only an angry man, but also a frustrated man. Egbule, who is a professor of Agricultural and Workforce education, and also a former President, Vocational and Technical Educators of Nigeria regretted why the country continues to retrogress rather than progress.
Excerpts
How do we solve the problem of food crisis?
The food crisis in Nigeria is real and very serious; there is hunger and anger in the land. They said a hungry man is an angry man, but a hungry man is not only an angry man, he is also a frustrated man. So, food crisis is something that requires good planning-thorough good planning, not something that is solved by adhoc arrangement. Food as we know is the greatest man’s need, because he needs it to stay alive. However, someone who is not well fed cannot be guarantee good health. The implication is that food is very crucial to human existence and it’s not something that should be joked upon, but unfortunately, issues relating to food is not given utmost attention and the government does not do what I call sustained planning to guarantee that food is available for its citizens.
A country that is not food secured is very vulnerable to both internal and external shocks and influences. That is why any country that wants to ensure security, will first of all guarantee the availability of food. When we talk about food insecurity there’re so many dimensions to it. There are about three to four dimensions. We have availability, meaning that the food must be available to all persons that needs it, affordability, that means the food should be available and people should be able to afford it and, accessibility-people should have access to food. So, these three dimensions, any country that wants to talk about food security must sit down to plan and focus on these dimensions.
But, why is everyone blaming government
See, government is everything, and after God, government is next. So, why everybody is talking about, government. Look, Nigeria has a population of over 220 million people and we know, 70% of the population are engaged in agriculture in one way or the other using crude implements. In other words, the kind of agriculture we are practicing is subsistence farming and for we to guarantee food security, we need to graduate from subsistence farming to commercial. So, government have to provide an enabling environment for people to farm. But the irony of it now, is that, majority of those who are farmers are aged and weak. Can a country progress like that? Any country that wants to focus on agriculture need to consider first, the population and its useful potentials and energy towards meaningful production.
Now, when you talked about university research and school; yes, these schools and universities they have a role to play, in fact, in my inaugurate lecture, I advanced what I call ‘Do approach to commercial agricultural production.’ So, we teach skills for productive venture.
My approach means that while we focus on schools, we should also have another aspect of commercial. If a school should have a demonstration farm where they teach skills, they should also have a commercial farm where they focus on commercial production. This commercial farm should be purely commercial. But how many of these schools have the finance to get into commercial agricultural production- That is the problem.
But apart from the universities, what about the local governments, especially on synergy and importance
You see, modern farming is business or it should be seen and engaged as business. What it means is that, once you are doing something as business, you should be expecting to get more outputs than inputs. In other word, it means that, you must make profit. That is the modern trend of farming. It should be seen as a business not as a way of life. A way of life as practiced by our forefather, when they wake up in the morning, go to the farm by 6 o’clock, they eat in the farm, sometimes they sleep there and come back- that is not the way modern farming is done. Modern farming should be done with technology. Now, when we talk about local government, politically, the local governments are dead. That’s why I’m happy with the recent pronouncement by the Supreme Court, whereby funds will go directly to the local governments. It will go a long way to revitalize the system
To make sure that food is available, is through farming at the rural level, and so, if there are very good links between the universities through what we call extension agents, as each university produces its own agents. The special agents are the links between research and the local farmers. Their role is to make sure that they help the local farmers to improve on their production by extending to them some inputs. Recent findings reveal that these agents help the locals in explaining the high yielding varieties of crops, proper use of fertilizer, storage facilities, control of pest, and diseases. So, that’s the role of extension agents.
But now, the Inflation rate is 34.19%
This portends crisis. Already there are projections that, in the coming days, things will get worse, and the naira is going to fall more. The government is just doing trial and error in most of the things they do .They may mean well but the approach is what some of us are quarrelling with. Take for example, the recent pronouncement about the border opening and bringing in food, I laughed, why: Some of these politicians and greedy businessmen will import those things and store them in warehouses, and then bring out 10% or 15% of it, and hoard the rest until prices jump up. That is the Nigeria’s situation By this, local producers are not encouraged when the borders are just opened like that. We need to solve the problem of insecurity. I’m happy with the creation of ministry of livestock development. In agriculture, there are about four areas, we have animal, we have crop, we have fishing and forestry. All these are under the ministry of agriculture. To me, it doesn’t make sense to just single out livestock. Even when you talk about livestock, there are small livestock than big ruminants. So, people are suspicious that government is economical with the truth. The question now is, is the president going to also create ministry of crops and others?
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