Salary earners can’t provide daily food for their families — Audu Ogbeh

Former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh, has said salary earners can no longer afford to provide food for families due to rising prices of food items.

Ogbeh noted Nigeria’s population, estimated at 200 million, is projected as 450 million in 20 years, a figure he said it may be unable to feed owing to poor agricultural yield and lack of mechanised farming.

He spoke on World Hunger Day and National Farmers Day Campaign Launch, hosted by 1 Hectare 1 Family, with support from Alliance for Science.

The former minister noted few peasant farmers can handle one hectare of land in a year, as agriculture is rain-fed and can be flood-hit.

He said: “Governments are too poor to finance agriculture the way many countries do, so agriculture has become a peasant occupation and peasant capacity is too low, few peasants can handle one hectare of land in a year, and agriculture is rain-fed and can be destroyed by flood.

“There are dams in the country, Kano is the highest with 24, Oyo, second, and Kano uses its dams well, Oyo does not.

”Salary earners cannot afford to provide daily food for their families because of high prices of food items.

“Nigeria’s population is estimated at 200 million and it is projected to reach 450 million in 20 years.

“It means in 20 years, we will be about 450 million, making us the third most populated on earth. That is dangerous because if it happens it will be impossible to deal with the crisis to follow.

“Hunger is here, just last week my elder sister in her 80s called me and said we went to market to buy tomatoes and we bought five tomatoes for N500, one for N100 and egg is going for N100 per egg and a kilo of yam for N1200, the truth is hunger is here.

“So, you can imagine if you are a low income earner, how much money does it cost to feed your family every day, and how terrible is it for a man if he cannot give his wife enough to buy food and run the house”, Ogbeh said.

Executive Director of Alliance for Science, Dr Sheila Ochugboju, said the technology is there to end hunger.

Ochugboju noted the Alliance will partner Nigeria to tackle chronic hunger.

“We stress application of agricultural innovations, especially biotechnologies, to produce climate resilient crops.

“You may be thinking it’s expensive to end hunger, but estimates say with $9 billion yearly on input, we can improve quality of seeds and input to produce more.”

“With $2 billion, we can improve the storage and the transportation and actually get the foods to market, with $3 billion, we can help and empower excluded communities such as farmers and cooperatives.

“Let’s start a movement. Let’s ask our African governments to honour farmers in their countries. Every African country should have a National Farmers day”, she added