Rising Food Crisis and the World Bank

The current food crisis plaguing the world and particularly sub-Saharan Africa including Nigeria is indeed an irony considering the huge agricultural potentials in these countries. The World Bank has expressed concern over the rising food crisis and urged the developed nations to raise $500 million to assist the World Food Programme, WFP, to meet emergency needs around the world.
India and Thailand, the world’s two major producers of rice have said they may not have enough of the commodity for export this year. This has therefore put pressure on the price of the commodity worldwide.
The projected national demand for rice in Nigeria is put at 4.64 million metric tons annually while current rate of consumption is put at 2.3 metric tons. Current local production of the commodity is a meagre 525,000 metric tons per annum. It follows straightaway that the country will have to import the shortfall which is projected at the cost of $267 million.
The government response to the food crisis last week was ad hoc in manner showing that there is no concrete agricultural policy in place in the country. According to the Minister of Agriculture and Water Resources, Sayyadi Abba Ruma, the “government will facilitate provision of lands for large scale farming and co-operatives and government also intend to adjust import levies to reflect current challenges in development of local production, the rice value chain, especially by establishing agric processing centres and agric parks.”
This is like preparing for a war that has already started and it is a demonstration of the nation’s lack of seriousness on issues pertaining to agriculture. Easy flow of money from the oil wells in the Niger Delta is said to have contributed to the lack of seriousness on agricultural matters.
Agriculture and food security is one of the promises of the Yar’Adua’s administration. Almost one year in office, nothing tangible is seen yet in that direction. Former President Obasanjo with all his farming credentials ruled the country for eight years and left office with agriculture taking the back seat.
The FADAMA project is a World Bank assisted programme. Again, as a result of lack of commitment to agricultural matters, not much is coming from there.
This is April and the planting season has indeed started. But all that is coming from the Agriculture ministry are stories of fertilizer contract scandals and not the product being distributed to farmers.
The colonial administration built rails to evacuate agricultural products from the hinterlands to the coast for exports. They also built roads for the same purpose. Today the rails are in bad shape and road development almost abandoned. As a result, most agricultural produce cannot easily be evacuated to markets where they are needed leading to huge waste during period of good harvest.
Lack of storage facilities, processing plants and agricultural extension services have also added to make this a huge problem for the farmers, discouraging most of them from attempting to embark on large scale farming. There is also the problem of electricity among other infrastructure failures.
Nigeria does not need the World Bank or any other foreign body to help it fix some of these problems. While it is appreciated that the Bretton Wood institution is ready to lend a helping hand, we however believe the solution lies largely with Nigeria and its citizens.One sure way of resolving the food crisis is for the government to come up with a workable agricultural policy. Such a policy should be able to identify the various food belts within the country.
For instance, the Middle Belt states, particularly, Benue, Kwara, Kogi, Plateau and Nasarawa are noted for yam and potato farming. These states could then be classified as the tubers belt of the country. Kano, Kaduna and Katsina states are noted for onions, tomatoes and similar commodities. They should be classified along that line.
The South-west could be classified as vegetable belt while the South-south and South-east could be classified as palm oil belt.Once this is identified, the policy and funding would then be structured along this line to ensure maximum yield. It is sheer dissipation of energy for a farmer in Benue State, for instance, that is well skilled in yam production to be cultivating vegetable, rice, cassava, onions all at the same time. The best in him would not be attained.
The policy should also include agricultural subsidy as it is done in the United States and Europe. This should be done to eliminate high prices of food items and reduce social tension in the society while also protecting the farmers from losses.
A hungry man, it is said, is an angry man. Therefore, if food prices could be made affordable to the generality of the people through a well subsidized policy, the angry number of people in the society would be reduced to the benefit of all