Gilbert Ekugbe
The All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) has predicted that Nigeria would experience difficulties in its food supply between the end of 2022 and March 2023.
The AFAN also called on the federal government to provide incentives that would enable farmers to cultivate their farms all-round the year to avert future food crisis.
The National President of AFAN, Mr. Kabir Ibrahim, in a telephone chat with THISDAY, said that “the federal and state governments should work together. There must be better synergy than what obtains now. All stakeholders must be speaking with one voice and the implementation of the new policy should be a joint thing between all stakeholders and all interventions in the agriculture space should be synchronized.
“That is to say that you cannot have the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) doing one thing and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture doing another and because of the flood and insecurity in the food system, the Nigerian farmers should be incentivised to farm right round the year as you can see the flood has washed everything.”
He advised the federal government to invest in climate smart agriculture while also a deploying crop intensification system.
He said: “The food system is ailing around the globe. The world needs to deploy a farming system all year round rather than depending on a rented agriculture.
“The government must invest heavily in agriculture, because agriculture is the best way and only way to take people out of poverty. Reduced poverty and zero hunger are parts of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and we must try to attain those ones to achieve peace because some of these issues with have with insecurity is causes by poverty because anybody busy with other things will not go into kidnapping and banditry.”
Ibrahim pointed out that the defunct Agricultural Promotion Policy (APP), was not fully implemented due to interference in 2019, adding that part of the reasons the former minister was sacked was his inability to fully implement the APP.
He, therefore, urged the minister of Agriculture to fully implement the recently launched National Agricultural Technology and Innovation Policy (NATIP).
