Food security according to Wikipedia is the measure of the availability of food and individuals’ ability to access it. So, the key notes here are availability and accessibility
Currently availability in Nigeria can be traced to farmers ability to go to the farm to be able to farm and bring to the point of consumption, this is being threatened by the following occurrences,
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insecurity especially insurgency in the North-east, armed banditry and banditry in some North-west states as well as North-central states as key drivers to the upcoming food crisis. These regions are mostly the food producing regions in Nigeria
According to the United Nations Committee on World Food Security, food security is defined as meaning that all people, always, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life. The availability of food irrespective of class, gender or region is another one.
The second leg that has to do with access is most unattainable even when availability has not been dealt with. In my recent dealing with food production and availability, the major stakeholders are the farmers being the major player in the agricultural ecosystem and value chain promotions which starts from farming (production) to processing and of course marketing
Under the systems of productions, farmers would require the necessary inputs starting from the access to farmland which is currently bedevilled by land tenure system, availability of right and quality of seeds as this affects the output eventually. If you must embark on maize flour production for example, the contestation between white and yellow maize comes into bare. What about the issues with fertiliser and plant protection equipment’s (PPE), the forex challenges? Nigeria system of agricultural production are still largely seasonal, and rainfed dependent. We must be able now to entered into technology driven system of production using ICT and drones to power production leading to productivity
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Our processing can not emerge because our steel sector is down and like the elephant in the room that refuses to fly. Mechanisation and automation of agriculture is a subject that will ever remain very topical as it will never get off the ground in as much as we continue to depend on export of our equipment and machineries. There is no country in the world that will love your country enough that will give you solution that liberate you from their apron string. If Ajaokuta stell will not fly, then our quest to industrialisation my never fly. For us to be food secure that is talking about availability and accessibility to be sufficient, safe and nutritious, means that we must have to mechanise and automate necessarily.
Fortunately, marketing of produce is an area that we have done well despite the challenges of bad network of roads, lack of infrastructures such as network of rails, airport cooling system to move our agricultural produce across the world. What to be done is to try to develop this sector more as this would help to make our food cheap and affordable on the long run
Dealing with the big three questions of sufficiency, safety, nutritioness of our food. Sufficiency is a game of numbers has to move from production to productivity, the average China farmer does six times better than Nigerian farmer. Food safety starts from handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways that prevent food-borne illness. The last in the mix is how nutritious is the food that we consume. This not being talked about now, reason being that availability of food is still a major challenge that may not leave us soon except that get the right people that understand these dynamics.
Bottom line is that problem of food security is fast now becoming and international challenge as result of other issues like climate change and adaptations
Climate change – Climate change is one of the biggest crises facing humanity. Climate change means the change in the climatic activities & in atmospheric levels. Change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity, altering the composition of the globe.
Some of Causes of Climate change include; Changes in suns energy and slow changes in earth’s orbit.
Changes in ocean circulation. Human activities – burning fossil fuels, deforestation, building developments in cities. Greenhouse gases – excess carbon dioxide from burning fuels and clearing forest and Global warming. The impact are also daulting to include Intense drought, storm, Rising sea levels, melting glaciers, Natural calamities – earthquake, cyclones, flood, Hazardous diseases – cancer from radiations, incurable allergies and Wildfires
The earlier we wake up to solving the problem of food security the better hence we end all being consumed by it