Deploying agric biotechnology to end hunger in Nigeria

Hunger, analysts say, should be really seen by many people as the greatest of all violence against humanity, just like Mahatma Ghandi of India did long time ago, there is need for a genuine and total war to be declared against it in countries of the world where it is biting hard.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, from Africa to Asia and Latin America to the Near East, there are 805 million people in the world who do not get enough food to eat for a normal active life.

Experts maintain that hunger is the biggest single risk to global health and must be conquered to ensure healthy living and productive life. Even as concerned authorities in Nigeria insist that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing hunger by half in 2015 has been achieved, it is strongly believed that many Nigerians still go to bed on empty stomachs.

In order to properly fight the war against hunger in Nigeria, agricultural biotechnology researchers maintain that the most needed weapon is genetic engineering, which can be deployed to generate crop varieties and animal breeds with higher yield and nutritional content, resistant to pest, diseases, drought and flood among others.

One of the researchers, Malam Muhammad Umar Lawan, a plant breeder with the Institute of Agricultural Research (IAR), Zaria in Kaduna State, told our reporter that for Nigeria to be food secured and hunger free, agricultural biotechnology must be used to produce genetically modified (GM) foods to feed the teeming population.

“Let’s tell ourselves the truth; in crops where conventional breeding doesn’t work, we have to apply genetic engineering. It is scientific. GM foods is not only about food security and hunger, but will yield more income to the nation, lead to reduction in cost of production and improve nutritional content of crops to tackle health issues especially among women and children,” the researcher pointed out.

Lawan maintained that GM foods are safe as all rules are strictly adhered to by researchers, adding that the foods will properly address all the indices of food security including quantity, quality, availability and affordability if well positioned by the government and other stakeholders.

According to the Country Coordinator of Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology in Africa (OFAB), Mrs. Rose M. Gidado, who is a microbiologist and director with the National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), to get a food secure Africa including Nigeria, “conventional agric cannot do it alone, we need agric biotechnology as well.”

Mrs Gidado said all stakeholders must be well informed about agricultural biotechnology and GM foods so as to allay perceived fears, misconceptions and opposition among people.

The Country Coordinator said GM foods were science based, stressing that the mounting opposition against it were due to various reasons including business interests of some agrochemical and fertilizer producers, who are afraid of losing market if crop varieties that don’t depend on their products are introduced.

She, however, pointed out that application of agricultural biotechnology in Nigeria depends on the passage of the bio-safety bill by the National Assembly and its eventual signing into law by the President.

“Without the bio-safety bill, all our agricultural biotechnology work will be in vain. We call on the law makers to pass the bill before they leave office and urge the President not to delay in signing it into law as well,” she appealed.

The microbiologist disclosed that the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) in conjunction with Nigerian researchers, have developed genetically modified beans, cassava and sorghum, which are currently undergoing confined field trial, to help  Nigerian  farmers  overcome  various  challenges.