Flooding, dearth of infrastructure logistics and high cost of diesel to transport agricultural commodities may exacerbate food insecurity in the country and lead to further increase in food prices across the country, LEADERSHIP Weekend has learnt.
This is even as farmers are appealing for urgent government intervention to mitigate effects of the disaster, reduce hunger and encourage development of adapting climate change technologies to enhance food security.
Already, several BY CHIKA IZUORA and OLUSHOLA BELLO, Lagos
Flooding, dearth of infrastructure logistics and high cost of diesel to transport agricultural commodities may exacerbate food insecurity in the country and lead to further increase in food prices across the country, LEADERSHIP Weekend has learnt.
This is even as farmers are appealing for urgent government intervention to mitigate effects of the disaster, reduce hunger and encourage development of adapting climate change technologies to enhance food security.
Already, several community farmlands have been impacted by floods across the country, with food production particularly hard hit.
The consequences assumed dangerous dimension last week following reports that about 25 per cent of the country's rice needs was lost in Nasarawa.
The situation further worsened across several states at the weekend, as floods wreaked havoc on homes, farms and businesses in several other states like Kogi, Anambra, Delta, Imo, Bayelsa and Rivers.
Meteorologists have predicted that Lagos and Ogun states may have a fair share of the ravaging flood as well.
It was reported that more than $15 million worth of rice have been washed away as flood submerged 4,500 hectares of the Olam Rice Farmland in Rukubi Doma local government area of Nasarawa State.
Key infrastructure like dykes, canals and drainages worth $8 million have also been damaged.
Vice president of Olam Rice Farm, Anil Nair, said in a statement that the losses were huge and could not be properly estimated until the water recedes.
Nair said his company recently upgraded its milling capacity from 120 metric tonnes to 240 metric tonnes annually as part of its efforts to ensure the country's food availability and security.
He appealed for urgent government intervention to mitigate the effects of the disaster, reduce hunger and encourage development of adapting climate change technologies to enhance food security.
Similarly, farmers across the country have called for urgent intervention in the agriculture sector to avert an impending famine following precipitous downpour, especially in parts of northern Nigeria.
They said support was needed to help farmers in the North and parts of southern Nigeria where unprecedented rainfall was predicted to affect farmlands.
Speaking with LEADERSHIP WEEKEND, the chairman, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), South West zone, Dr. Olufemi Oke, said the country would experience more food crisis as prices of commodities would eventually escalate before the end of the year.
This is as a result of infrastructure gap, logistics and high cost of diesel to transport agro commodities.
Oke said the immediate remedy was for government to clear blocked drainage networks and open flooded dams and canals to free the excessive water.
He complained about much neglect of farmers and advocated deployment of hubs for farmers where infrastructure are located in such clusters to encourage value chain development.
He commended efforts of the Lagos State government on infrastructure development to encourage farmers to boost their yield.
Oke particularly applauded the commissioning of the construction of what will be the largest food security systems and central logistics park in sub-Saharan Africa to reduce vulnerability to food shortages and guarantee uninterrupted food supplies.
The project is being built on 1.2 million square meters of land in Ketu-Ereyun, Epe and regarded the creation of the food park, an element of a five-year Agricultural and Food Systems Road Map (2021-2025) launched in 2021 by the state, to enhance food sufficiency in Lagos and South West.
The hub is expected to create direct wealth for more than five million traders in the agricultural value chain when completed, and also guarantee uninterrupted food supplies to more than 10 million Lagos residents for at least 90 days in a period of scarcity.
Transactions on food items in Lagos are estimated to be N5 trillion yearly, just as farmers daily lose 40 per cent of produce worth millions of naira due to lack of post-harvest storage system.
In his contribution, co-founder of Probity Farms, Ogunlade Olu-Wole, said restoring agricultural production was fundamental to the recovery of farming-based livelihoods.
Olu-Wole stated that where planting is possible, farmers need critical agricultural inputs, such as seeds and fertilizer.
He also supported the deployment of hubs to provide a better buying experience for consumers, help achieve a reduction in logistics costs, while guaranteeing the standardisation of quantity and quality for agricultural products.
According to him, farm clusters will improve productivity, guarantee greater returns for farmers by cutting out several layers of middlemen and facilitate improved access to modern processing and packaging services for farmers and generate useful data for the use of government agencies, private sector players, and multilateral agencies.
He stated that destruction of crops had wiped out farmers' present and future sources of food and income, with spiraling humanitarian consequences unless immediate assistance is provided, warning that delayed assistance would lead to heightened food insecurity, increased public health threats, loss of land tenure agreements due to farmers' inability to pay their debts, population displacement and longer-term dependence on food aid.
He said government can help farmers by identifying agro community groups and support them with inputs like seeds and other possible intervention packages.
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Meanwhile, the chief executive officer, Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE), Dr Muda Yusuf, said: "The outlook for food security is very frightening following one of the worst floods ever experienced in the country. We should be ready to deploy an emergency response depending on how bad the situation turns out to be."
He urged government to work with the stakeholders in the agriculture and agro processing sectors to work out mitigation measures.
A stockbroker with Calyxt Securities Limited, Tunde Oyediran said: "There may be hunger in the land, not only because of flood, but other factors like insecurity, high costs of farm inputs, lack of manpower's among others. Flood has just aggravated it.
"Its impact may not be massive considering the types of food we consume. Our major foods like rice, yam, cassava may not be highly affected. Beans prices may soar and some other crops coming from the North. But as we used to cope when there is scarcity we always import to fill the vacuum."
The managing director of Lancelot Ventures Limited, Mr Adebayo Adeleke, said flood had been part of the tyranny of nature (and at times, man-made terror) over the centuries, saying, people have learnt to cope with, adjust to and accommodate its effects over the centuries.
Adeleke noted that good enough, the circle of growth for Nigerian staple foods are short ( beans, maize, sorghum, cassava, rice). The impact would not linger to have any serious damaging effect. More harvests are lost to terrible roads across the country
