Question: How can Nigeria deepen its food security considering the level of hunger in the land?
My response: We need to go to the root cause of why we have hunger in the community of farmers. This paralysis is centuries-old, and let me use a case study from the Igbo Nation. Across the Igbo Nation, new yams are celebrated because the new harvest ends the “unwu” [a period of scarcity or seasonal famine] period.
That “unwu” period is when yams have been planted but they are not yet ready to be harvested. Due to lack of storage facilities, there is always this scarcity because yam, the king of crops, in Igbo mythology, is severely intermittently scarce.
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But as August arrives, and the new yams are ready for harvest, communities celebrate because the “unwu” is going to be over. That is the heart of the new yam festival which you might have read in Chinua Achebe’s books. The festival honours the earth goddess of wealth for bringing her fertility and increasing the wealth of the village! As yams are celebrated during the festival, abundance returns to the land!
Unfortunately, as soon as the next farming period begins around March/April, the “unwu” period returns, and intensifies around June and July. Check your village, there is one crop which goes through this cycle – massive periods of abundance followed by scarcity because there are limited storage and preservation facilities.
Sure – this is not to argue that ancestral Africa did not try to invent how to store and preserve crops. The point is that the methods are not efficient, and not many new methods were discovered on how to consume most of the crops. I have visited George Washington Carver Museum, in Tuskegee University, and his miracle for food security: “A genius in botany and agricultural experimentation, Dr. George Washington Carver discovered more than 100 uses for the sweet potato and a variety of Southern plants. “
Simply, Nigeria’s hunger problem now is not really about low production, but also lack of new ways to preserve and consume whatever is produced. We lose about 37% of whatever that is produced to food waste. It is unfortunate: during the yam festival, yam is everywhere and people celebrate, only for the same people to endure scarcity in a few months.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) loses or wastes around 37% of the food it produces, which is about 120–170 kilograms per person per year. This is a higher rate than the global average of about one-third, and is primarily due to losses that occur at the farmer producer stage of the supply chain. For example, in Kenya, pests destroy up to 30% of the maize that is harvested.
That means that preservation and storage management must deepen even more than over-fixation; producing more is the holy grail for food security! Yes, our governors and political leaders must put the same level of effort they put during the planting season with free fertilizers and seeds, on initiatives that will preserve the little that is produced.
If farmers can feed themselves via better storage, hunger will disappear in Nigeria at scale because more than 70% of workers work in agriculture!
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The fact that you have 70% of your citizens in agriculture will also guarantee hunger, because it depicts inefficiency. Who are the people that will innovate groundbreaking means of preserving and sustaining food? If you have 10% of your population in farming, you are already failing. I see that the government wants to turn all Nigerians into farmers, that is what you get wherever there is poverty of ideas.
Repeating failure does not make one successful, our thinking when it comes problem-solving is almost, always faulty, and that is why we keep coming short. You want to distribute seeds and fertilizers to poor people in the name of farmers and you are expecting food security or banishment to hunger? Come on, what manner of people do we share a country with?
You only need a small population of real farmers to feed everyone all year round. If you have more than 5% of your population there, then you will remain hungry and keep losing. Quit stupidity, it does not pay.