Minister, others attribute mechanization, food value chains to low productivity

Stakeholders in the agricultural sector have said that the underdevelopment of the mechanization and agricultural value chains were responsible for the low productivity in the sector. This was one of the conclusions arrived at during the 26th Nigerian Economic Summit Group, held via Zoom.

The stakeholders during a technical section on tackling food insecurity and malnutrition in the face of the covid-19 pandemic said the two issues had to be tackled before Nigerians could enjoy enough food supply.

One of the participants, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Alhaji Sabo Nanono, said that the reason why the country was experiencing low productivity was because of “our negligence to mechanization”, pointing out that the number of tractor to number of farmers were inadequate and that this situation had to change for improved production to take place.

Nanono said that  672 local governments under the Green Imperative agricultural policy of the Federal Government (FG) had signed ‘’ a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Brazilian government to ensure a repositioned sector where cluster farming would be practiced by the private services, while government will provide the loan, fertilizer, seeds and mechanization.

 

He added that the project would have the legislative backing as it was presently before the National Assembly for approval in the next four weeks while he acknowledged that the research institutes have been poorly, but promised to positively change the situation for better through improved funding.

The representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United State (FAO) in Nigeria Mr. Fred Kafeero raised the need to build a strong partnership resilience in addressing the issue of food insecurity and malnutrition that have faced the country coupled the challenges of increasing population.

Kafeero went further to say that the population must be well fed now and in the future, adding there was need to deal with rural infrastructural deficit and inefficiency occasioned by food wastages, diseases and pest attack on agricultural produce

According to him “the issue of tackling food insecurity and malnutrition is a major challenge as we are already having a change in our diet. The road to move farmers’ produce from one point to the other and electricity, all of these need to be addressed, disease and pest that affect crops and livestock are all major challenges affecting the growth of agriculture.”

The Managing Partner, Sahel Consulting, Mrs. Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli said that the cost of food and its availability to households were too high, adding that not being able to afford healthy food would be a future challenge and biggest burden.

Nwuneli said that more attention had been given to production at the expense of the other value chains, such as infrastructure, cost of transportation of food and extension support, adding that insecurity was now a major issue to all categories of farmers.

Said she, “agriculture can create millions of jobs in the country,  we need to change from just seeing agric from the production level,  it has to go down to the value chain and all our young people can all be trained to be extension workers,  leveraging on innovation and technology, and making them entrepreneurs in the sector.”

The Chief Executive Officer, Tomato Jos, Mira Mehta said that major infrastructures were inadequate for farmers, noting that good road network for food to be taken out of the farm was essential for profitable farming.