Tina Amanda
As Nigeria experiences severe economic hardship conditions and insecurity, an Agriculturist, Emmanuel Ogbonda, has called for practical involvement of schools, both primary, secondary, tertiary institutions and all State governments in farming and other agricultural ventures.
Ogbonda who is the Supervising Agric Trade Group, Port Harcourt Chamber of Commerce, made the call in an interview with our correspondent, saying if stringent measures are not taking to fight the current food scarcity, people may start suffering from mal-nutrition, hunger, and death may likely set in.
Ogbonda insisted that the food shortage which is caused by COVID-19 pandemic, flood, climate change and insecurity issues must be tackled as a matter of urgency.
He emphasized that schools should start creating an enabling environment for agriculture to thrive as well as government showing practical interest towards food production, by investing more in the Agric produce that do well in their soils.
“Agric is one important sector that government needs to pay attention to, COVID-19 and insecurity were major problems that affected food production. Weather was not also friendly because farmers were harvesting their crops prematurely, not to talk of flood that ravaged peoples farmlands, destroying crops.
‘Once there is shortage of supply from the source definitely there will be scarcity and that is what is happening presently, food is scarce. If nothing is done people will begin to suffer hunger and the death rate may likely increase.
“We should not continue to suffer food shortage in this our country, our country is rich with good soil that can grow any type of crop. Here in Rivers State, we produce quite a lot of agricultural products, it is time government begin to invest into those agric produce that do well in their soils.
“Schools should be practically involved in agric produce, by allowing school children participate in agriculture. We as Port Harcourt chamber of commerce, we want to start going to schools to sensitize and get them involved in agricultural practices both primary, secondary and the university.
“In the school environment, there used to be large land wasting, these lands could be used for agric development, those land should no longer be allowed to lie fallow.”
Ogbonda, however, urged federal, state and local governments to increase their budget in agriculture and support farmers with subventions to boost Agric produce.
“Government should come out, show practically interest and example by giving loans to farmers, give subventions, subsidies for agric farming. Another problem affecting agriculture in Nigeria is the low budget, government prefer to give high budget to equipments, things that do not bring in money rather than looking into things that will cushion agriculture in Nigeria.
“Government at all levels needs to start increasing their budget in Agric, all states must be involved in order to increase food production in the country.”
