When the Government Is Against Food (In)Security
— Chidindu Mmadu-Okoli, Joshua Agama, Gabriel Eze
At the conclusion of the World Food Summit in 1996, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) declared, “Food is a human right…Food should not be used as an instrument for political and economic pressure.” All member-bodies reached a commitment to ensure that all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food.
As a member country of the United Nations, Nigeria, Africa’s most populated country, is a strong part of these commitments by the FAO. Its efforts in the agricultural industry are not just required to meet the needs of the hungry, whose voices often go unheard, but to feed the future through sustainable frameworks that allow for availability and accessibility to safe, healthy foods for all, in the long run.
Thus, when people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food, which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life, they are said to have achieved food security. The presence or absence of these factors are closely indicated by the activities of the main players in the agricultural value chain, from policies, to farm, and to fork.
The Four Pillars of Food Security
The FAO uses extensive tools, indicators and scales to measure food security globally. Through various levels of assessments, four factors are the major indicators of food security: availability, access, utilization, and stability. Food availability refers to the total (household/local/national) food production and the crop diversity, i.e. varieties of plants used in agriculture. Food access looks at the sufficiency of household food consumption, percentage of household expenditure on food, number of meals taken daily and how this changes over time, as well as household dietary diversity, i.e. the number of unique foods consumed by household members over a given period. Food utilization measures the degree of household/individual access to services and utilities such as healthcare, water, energy and sanitation. Food price and supply are the measures for food stability. Hence, major threats to food security will include world population growth, the increase in demand for food, food price, the disappearance of the variety of agricultural plant species, the increase in the area of scarcity of water and the limitation of the availability of land, alongside food losses and food waste.
The underlying causes of food insecurity arise from a negative shift in these four pillars or indicators. These causes which could be natural (flood or drought) or man-made (conflict, poverty, market demands, policies, and population growth), strongly create challenges and gaps in food production, distribution and access. For instance, with low agricultural yield due to poor farming methods, there is little or no availability of food, consequently, limited supply and access.
Food (in)security: where do the government’s policies point us?
The state of food security in Nigeria depends largely on the government’s policies on building or improving functional infrastructure. Chiefest of these social and economic infrastructures are road networks, which form the most important element of the nation’s transportation network, carrying about 95 percent of all the goods and passengers. A lack of good roads and the presence of poorly maintained road networks limit the reach of smallholder farmers to traders and investors who are the major links to end users.
While market actors grapple with the terrible state of the roads, certain government agents have bestowed it upon themselves to tax them illegally at checkpoints. In an individual account, Mr. Agama, a Yenagoa-based yam trader, who initially thought that yams bought and transported from Zak Ibiam (Benue State), the largest yam market in West Africa, were sold at exorbitant prices in Yenagoa, discovered through a first-hand experience, that several factors greatly influenced the selling price decisions.
“I decided to participate in this lucrative business after my NYSC service year in 2018. The size of the yam I can get for ₦500 in Benue may cost as much as ₦2,000 in Bayelsa. I felt the difference was too great. Regardless of the other factors involved in the trade, I thought traders in Bayelsa were being inconsiderate.”
Upon his first visit to Daudu, another major yam market in the Benue State, he saw for himself
“Asides the cost of the yam you pay to the sellers, markets thugs tax you for buying from the market. The easiest part of my experience was buying the yams. The major psychological and financial stress began at transporting the yams to Bayelsa. There were no direct food trucks journeying from Benue to Bayelsa (as most of them only get to Port Harcourt). Although the costs of using these trucks were less expensive compared to passenger vehicles, they were only available at Zak Ibiam, and would only carry a certain number of yams. Alternatively, I had to pay a passenger vehicle to convey myself and goods down to Bayelsa. To avoid exaggeration, I would say we met over a 100 police checkpoints from Benue to Bayelsa. At each one, the police requested at least ₦100 to let us go. Any form of argument or refusal cost us our time, as they won’t let us go until we complied.”
Mr. Agama shared, as he now understood, after that first trip, the reasons why yams in Yenagoa were not so affordable.
Road access and illegal taxations are just but some of the many problems. Another challenge is a deliberate attempt to hoard food, which goes against the commitment of the nation to the FAO’s declaration at the 1996 World Food Summit. Communal, religious and other violent clashes between farmers and herders do not only destroy plantations, but also make it hard for farmers to recover from their losses. Recently, the Southern part of Nigeria experienced food blockade by the Amalgamated Union of Food and Cattle Dealers of Nigeria (AFUCDN) who blocked the supply of food, due to the violent clashes between farmers and cattle rearers. This happened in February 2021, 3 months after the prices of onions skyrocketed by 200% in the country. Additionally, the recent looting of CA-COVID-19 palliatives across warehouses in various Nigerian states, points to how food access and distribution processes by the government had not been properly managed. The Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID), a private-led initiative, made generous contributions by providing food items to help Nigerians care for their dietary needs during the lockdown. These were donated to the federal government and were made available to the various state governments for distribution. However, these state governments, through political machineries, stored these palliatives in warehouses secured under lock and key.
Knowing that food production, supply, and pricing which, in turn, influence access, availability and affordability, are strong indicators of food security in any nation, these challenges of food crises that we constantly experience, directly and clearly poke holes into the extent of relevance, applicability and sustainability of various government’s interventions. Therefore, one would have to question if the government is in total support of our nation’s food security.
The Way Forward
Food security, through sustainable agricultural techniques, provides a gateway for poverty reduction, increased productivity, rural transformation, employment, and improved national health profile of the citizenry. From 1935 till date, several agricultural development initiatives have been rolled out by past governments in Nigeria, most of which were aimed at addressing barriers to food security, from production, to distribution and access. The National Program for Food Security is one of such initiatives focused on sustainable access, availability and affordability of quality food to all Nigerians whilst becoming a significant net provider of food to the global community. It would achieve this vision by bringing solutions to the entire agricultural food chain. Some of the interventions are rolled out as agricultural constituency projects with the aim of strengthening production from the grassroot systems.
With these well detailed plans set up by the government, the contribution of farming to the national GDP has been erratic between 2019–2020. The National Bureau of Statistics reports that GDP from agriculture in Nigeria decreased by 4% in the fourth quarter of 2020 when compared to the third quarter. Although this could be as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown, we see that other nations, like America, reported food surplus, which had to be buried to prevent environmental pollution. With less access to arable land for crop and animal productions, vulnerable populations like women, children under the age of 5 and people with chronic or regular health needs are also at risk. With Nigeria ranking the second-highest in child mortality (117.2 deaths in 1000 births), 32% of under-5-year-old children who require nutritional diversity now account for these deaths through severe acute malnutrition.
To solve these challenges, the government must go back to its drawing board. Past and present interventions must solve for sustainability and must meet the needs of Nigerians, especially the vulnerable populations. Efforts should be channeled to funding and sustaining policies that accelerate food safety through increased production: engaging competent professionals and decision makers at all levels of the agricultural sector, attracting and recruiting farmers for large scale farming, review of land mapping and acquisition procedures, good road networks, focus on growing crops of strategic importance, establishing and expanding one-stop agric extension services to train and teach new farming methods in local government areas. Others include improving and enhancing agricultural production through irrigation, increased mechanization, as well as the provision of strategic inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, soil and agro-climatological services. These are to be done in partnership with the public and private sectors across all levels and are greatly dependent on several factors like Land Use Act and other fiscal policies, micro-financing, energy and industrial capacity, education and access to the rural areas.
More so, encouraging and fast-tracking urban agriculture will not just reduce the pressure on rural areas for food production, but will preserve the green space in our cities, whilst creating jobs, income and a sense of community for the urban dwellers. To also solve the challenge with bad road networks, rail routes can be revamped to allow for movement of agricultural produce. These will solve the problems of road-side extortions, armed robbery and less road accidents.
Policies and interventions aimed at helping farmers improve crop yield are essential, as increase in yield leads to increase in the amount of food supplied. With abundant supply that meets the demands and dietary needs of Nigerians, we eliminate possible barriers against the free distribution of food from harvest to consumption. However, this should be accompanied by a ban, reduction or harmonization on produce tax at farms, markets, highways, or during purchase by end users, which makes it even harder for food to be affordable.
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