17 Oct 2008: Jimoh Babatunde
NIGERIA, Africa’s largest oil producer has agricultural assets that are more powerful than oil, says Dr. Peter Hartmann, Director-General of the Ibadan-based International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in his message on the occasion of World Food Day on Thursday, 6 October.He also called on Nigeria and other African nations to tap the opportunities presented by the current world food crisis.
Fertilizer farm
According to him, Nigeria and other African countries have the technologies, elevations, ecosystems, arable lands and yield gaps that can be exploited.
“These are very powerful potential assets that other continents do not have,” he added.
The global food crisis which takes a central focus on the World Food Day is hurting millions. But according to IITA, it also presents opportunities for an agricultural and economic turnaround for Nigeria and Africa at large.
“The food crisis, in reality, is a price crisis. It is painful, but temporary,” Hartmann said. “What Africa can do is to turn it around and get a dividend out of it. If we allow the food crisis to pass by, we will miss a fantastic opportunity.”
Noting that the global food system is showing cracks, Hartmann said “this is only the tip of the ‘foodberg’”. He said the food system needed propping up, adding, “this is what Africa should capitalize on while addressing its own food systems.”
Stressing the need for increased production, the director-general said it should be done within ethical boundaries. “Farmers are very responsive - when asked to produce more, they produce more, but when prices collapse, it is the farmers that pay the price,” he explained.
He said more important than putting food on farmers’ tables was putting money in farmers’ pockets. According to him, one important way to achieve this, especially in Africa, is by reducing post-harvest losses.
In related development, the Irish government has said it will continue to support IITA in carrying out research that will tackle global food insecurity.
“From the Irish government’s point of view, I am glad this institute exists and we will work with it to ensure food security,” the Irish Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Kyle O’Sullivan said after holding talks with top officials of IITA in its headquarters in Ibadan recently.
High food prices have reversed the previously positive trend towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by half the proportion of people suffering from hunger worldwide by 2015.
Currently, about 75 million people are below the hunger threshold, bringing the estimated number of undernourished people worldwide to 923 million in 2007, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.
O’Sullivan said the funding of research in food production and security was one way to tackle the global problem.“In the current international climate as regards food security, this is something we are going to support,” he added.
The Irish government has been a long-standing major supporter of IITA’s research work, which has helped in improving food production in a sustainable manner.
O’Sullivan commended the management of the institute, adding, “I am impressed with the standards you have kept in managing this institute in a quite challenging local environment.”
He said that Dublin had resolved to channel its funding away from country specific programs to what they called ‘hunger task force—which looks at the whole issue of food security and not country by country but as a systematic issue.’
Under the new framework for tackling food insecurity, he said that working with the institute was imperative.
“What this means for us is working with institutes which look at food security and food production,” he said. Deputy Director General for R4D Support Dr. Lakshmi Menon, who took the ambassador around the campus, said that the institute was determined to tackle the challenge of improved agricultural production and disease control.
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