The rising food prices in Nigeria are depleting the already weak insufficient food security, desirable healthy life deserved by Nigerians has been eroded by the cost of food and poor purchasing power, according to the United Nations Committee on World Food Security, food security is considered to be a situation where all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. Over decades Nigerians is still battling the case of food insufficiency due to poor budgetary provisions.
In the 2023 budget proposal to the Nigeria National Assembly, the agricultural sector only attracts two percent of the budget which amounts to 1.7 percent against the expected ten percent national budget allocation to agriculture development according to Africa Union Maputo declaration on Agriculture and food security.
In spite of the arable and fertile land in Nigeria, we are still unable to provide enough for the citizen and this leads to the continuous rise in food costs, Nigeria’s agricultural value has not been harnessed and structured to attract private investment and deliberate intervention from the state government, interestingly if the state government invest in Agricultural produce, it will also reflect and increase it internally generated revenue.
Farmer suffered inadequate post-harvest storage facilities that cause their products to waste and rotten away, especially perishable agricultural produce such as tomatoes, yam among others, government are expected to provide storage facilities if at all it will be on rent for smallholder farmers that constitute majorities that are farming in Nigeria.
Access to credit facilities for farmers to use as a take-off for farming seasoned is not available as most commercial banks will ask for unrealistic collaterals, government anchor borrowers are mostly not direct to smallholder farmers and anchor borrowers are mostly attracted to farmers that are visible, farmers are also not getting a considerable profit from the product as the middlemen take advantage of buying their produce cheap and sell it at a higher cost.
The present 2022 ongoing flooding is another challenge facing big farmers, smallholders’ farmers, and even subsistence farmers, government must intervene to create solutions such as irrigation to enable all-round season farming to curb the menace of worse food scarcity in the year 2023.
In the face of changes in climate, the growing global population, and environmental stressors are having a significant negative effect on rising food prices already. Deliberate adaptation strategies and policy responses must be employed by the Nigerian government with considerable funding to mitigate the challenge of food security in Nigeria.
Dr. Aliyu O.Ilias is a Political-Economist, Author ,Customer Service Management,Understanding Customer Experience in Africa & CEMBundle).He writes from Abuja
