Agriculturalist tasks govt on food sufficiency

The National Coordinator for Zero Hunger Commodity Association in Nigeria, Dr. Tunde Arosanyin, has identified agricultural revolution as panacea to food suffiency and economic development.

Arosanyin made the assertion in an interview with newsmen in Ilorin. He stressed the need for government at all levels to show a strong commitment if agriculture was to drive the national economy.

According, government will need to rigourously pursue the implementation of the Green Alternative as a way of using agriculture to address starvation and other national economic challenges.

“What government needs to do is to simply see to what I term as agricultural revolution of Nigeria, a panacea to food security and economic development.

“I did a fantastic write up and sent to Mr President, Minister for Agriculture and the Chairman, Senate Committee on Agriculture.

“The package is holistic and what we are saying in that document is that we should identify in the first phase 500 farmers in each of the 774 local governments and give them supporting input for one hectare.

“Looking at the map of Nigeria. We have ecological crop distribution. We know the area of crops where Katsina will do well. We know where Ebonyi will do well; where Kwara and Kogi will do well and we have said in this document that we will identify at least two to three commodities per state.

“If the farmers are into one arable crop, then government will encourage into one cash crop”, he said.

The agriculturalist explained farming remained an aspect that had lifted the national economy despite the lip service being paid to it by the government.
“Agriculture even as we are still practicing it is still the only aspect of the economy that has recorded a 3.2 per cent growth in the economy.

“The other areas are still trailing and it points economically that it is still the pivot that can be used to take Nigeria out of recession.

“With the acute hunger in the land, government will have to look at the document holistically and see how we can harvest some of the salient points in it.

“I believe that the document is enough to take us out of recession and to take us out of food crisis”, he said.

Arosanyin also chided government for low budgetary provision for agriculture, which he said negated the Maputo declaration that stated that Africa countries must at least devote ten per cent of their annual budget to agriculture.

“In the 2016 budget, it was just about three per cent for agriculture. This one (2017 budget) is within that range; less than five per cent.

“I still did not believe that if we don’t adhere to Maputo declaration that state that all African countries should at least give 10 per cent of the annual budget to agriculture before we can really have a substantial and robust development in the agricultural sector.

“I believe the budgetary provision is still low if we must use agriculture to drive this economy, we have to appropriate much more than what we are doing presently”, said the former Kogi chairman of the All Farmers’ Association.

On Zero Hunger Programme, the national coordinator said that the association had worked with the former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who happens to be the overall chairman of the programme to prepare the working document.

He explained that Zero Hunger was a United Nations’ programmed under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the motive of many challenges like hunger, starvation as well as to address the economic
challenges in the country.

He asserted that sensitization programme for farmers would soon commence particularly on the pattern of weather for the year.

“The rainfall is going to be a bit erratic. It is not going to be as extensive as it used to be. Now that moisture content in soil is okay, they can start planting,” he said.