The FG has reiterated its readiness
to ensure a safe food for all and sundry in Nigeria including the unborn babies
and their mothers while pregnant. This commitment was made by the Minister of
State, Federal Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) Senator Heineken
Lokpobiri during a high level Round table on Scaling up food system
intervention for nutrition through public-private partnership in Abuja.
This was statement was made in a
press release issued by Deputy Director. (Information), Federal Ministry of
Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), Mrs. A.B Lere-Adams and made
available to Food farm News.
According to the release, the
Minister said that nutrition was not about just feeding people; it’s about
nurturing growth of Nigerians, communities and entire nation. “The food value
chain starts from the farm and the farmer and ends up at the table of every
livelihood. Nutrition for us in Agriculture is a most crucial issue to address,
since the food of infants, children, youths, the elderly, the sick, the
healthy, the rich the poor, the educated and the uneducated eat determine their
cognitive development which in turn measures the level of our productivity and
of course the economic growth.”
The press statement attributed to a
Global Pane Director, Prof. Sandy Thomas as saying that “nutrition is a new
global priority reflected in the United Nation- designated Decade of Action on
Nutrition” adding that “ the fore sight report of the global panel on
agriculture and food systems for nutrition shows the scale of crisis and that
more than three billion people around the world, Nigeria inclusive, are
currently affected by malnutrition as a direct impact of low quality diets -
results in diseases such as obesity, overweight, underweight, the end result is
Type -2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and certain form of cancer”
Also, it was stated that the Deputy
Governor of Kano state, Prof. Abubakar Hafiz suggested that “there should be as
a matter of urgency, a synergy and effective collaboration among all relevant
tiers of government from Federal, state and local governments including the
Ministries, Departments and Agencies to ensure that sustainable agriculture is
built on the right commodity value chain system.
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