‘Increase Food Production 100% Or Risk Hunger’

Chief Audu Ogbe

With an agenda to ensure a hunger free nation, the federal government has urged Nigerians to increase food production by 100 per cent in order to meet the needs of citizens or risk hunger when the population increases, writes Ruth Tene Natsa.


With increasing population comes an increasing demand for food, a basic human need which cannot be substituted with any other thing, but unfortunately while the demand for food continues to increase its production is still tottering as a result of varying challenges ranging from poor access to land, lack of access to agriculture machinery, poor access to loan facilities, youth drudgery, and even the unavoidable effect of global warming and climate change.

All these and more continue to beset the development of the nation’s agriculture even as the federal government has stressed the need to increase food production by 100 per cent or risk hunger in the near future as the nation’s population increases in a call which is sine qua non to ending food importation and increasing local production to meet the food demands of the Nigerian people.

The minister of agriculture and rural development, Chief Audu Ogbe, who made the call said that agriculture will no longer be a one season event but an all year round activity which would include both wet and dry season farming.

He said, “If we continue looking at agriculture as a rainy season event we would go hungry. While Nigeria can manage its food production if it were to feed itself, it is no longer realistic as neighbouring countries, through porous borders, also depend on Nigeria for their food needs.”

He revealed that the present government was determined to return Nigeria to where it was in the 1960s as an agriculture producing nation which depended on local production rather than the sorry state the nation finds itself today where it depends on food imports, translating to high imports bills. The minister lamented that using over N20 billion annually in importing food was not reasonable and stressed the need for all Nigerians to rise to the challenge of producing its food needs.

Ogbe revealed that Nigeria has 5 per cent of the world’s population within its borders, making it the third most populated country in the world with its over 160 million population, and added that the population which would grow to 200 million people by the year 2020 could be an asset if Nigerians decide to go into food production. He warned, however, it could also become a challenge if food production is neglected, and stressed the need for states to partner with the federal government towards increasing food production at the state and ultimately at the rural level.

“Let’s try seriously and reduce poverty at the rural level to curtail the rural urban drift,” he said.
On irrigation, Ogbe maintained that while the North West was leading in irrigation service, making it possible for all year farming activities, other geopolitical zones were not doing so well, thus the need for state governments to partner the federal governments towards boosting agriculture at the rural level.

 The minister who made the call during a media briefing with journalist in Abuja, said that as a means to meeting the nation’s high demand for food, the Ministry of Agriculture was set to launch the second phase of its agro mechanisation programme in Ilorin, and the sector in the next five years needs a minimum of one million tractors to support farmers in their endeavours.

Ogbe also said that the ministry was targeting clearing more lands and threshers as well as embarking on quality control and certification of crops towards curbing the embarrassment of the rejection of Nigerian produce in the international market. In addition, he stressed the need to collaborate with the Ministry of Water Resources which builds dams for the needs of agriculture and added that the present government was also lobbying banks to again look at the interest rates as paying back loans at an average of 18-25 interest was not realistic for farmers.

“If the interest rate is not reduced we would continue to have challenges in agriculture,” he said.
He assured that the government was not only expecting to benefit from the programmes of the Africa Development Bank (AfDB) from other agricultural support agencies towards ensuring support for the development of agriculture programmes. He said that agro-industrial parks are also in the works and assured that such parks will be viable platforms for employment generation and curbing rural urban migration.

 The minister further lamented a situation where there was one extension worker to every 10,000 farmers and stressed the need to increase the nation’s extension service. Ogbe further revealed that the Labour Intensive Family Enterprise (LIFE) programme to ameliorate the sufferings of the people was vastly targeting to reduce the challenges of women farmers who make up more than 50 per cent of the nation’s agricultural population.
Meanwhile, while inaugurating a committee for the development of the agriculture roadmap, the minister stressed that the present administration will not sit idly to watch agriculture resources waste.