Daily Independent (Lagos)
29 June 2009
editorial
The sweeping scourge of global hunger, affecting one sixth of all humanity and now reaching a historical high, has expectedly elicited the concern of the United Nations Organisation, through its Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO.
As recently admitted by the FAO's Director General, Jacques Diof: "The silent hunger crisis poses a serious risk for world peace and security". And certainly so, going by the rapid rise in the number of victims, from across the continents, who go to bed hungry, every night.
Hunger, in this context, is technically defined as a situation whereby a person consumes less than 2,000 calories per day, or, in the case of acute hunger, below 1,800 calories. The recent alarming rate of worldwide hunger has been traced to the twin evils of the calamitous climate change and the global financial crisis. For the less developed countries with the greatest number of hungry people, food prices have fallen more slowly in the absence of mechanised farming, as agriculture is impeded by ravaging drought, desertification and deforestation, among other constraints.
The global attention now drawn to the hunger crisis is not a surprise. In 2007, Daniel Shephard, editor of the UN publication, Choices, had warned that "the number of the chronically hungry people (had) gone back to 800 million after decreasing in the early nineties". Back then Asia recorded the largest number of those caught in the jaws of hunger with 233 million people in India and 119 million in China. Latin America had 55 million, the Arab states 32 million and Sub-Sahara Africa 183 million people, accounting for one-third of the continent's population.
What was instructive in the frightening figures was that some 80 million Chinese had escaped the horrors of hunger over the last decade, due largely to rapid industrialization. The scenario in Sub-Sahara Africa, however, remained alarming because of the limitations placed on food production by unchecked environmental degradation, droughts, floods and poor policy frameworks characterized by the lack of political will to match words with action.
The main concern centres on the fact that over the past three years, about 100 million additional people each year have found themselves enmeshed in the web of preventable hunger. With the figures rising from 800 million in 2007, to 900 million in 2008 and now a billion hungry people, it underscores the crying need for urgent intervention from governments, corporate organizations and richly endowed individuals whose resources could feed more hungry mouths through increased employment generation.
Interestingly, by the turn of the millennium, food production had tripled globally since the early seventies, meaning that there is enough food to feed the world's population, but lack of effective distribution network and needed infrastructure has contributed to household food insecurity. This brings to focus the efforts of the FAO.
Founded at an international conference in Quebec, Canada on October 16, 1945, the FAO aims to raise global levels of nutrition and standard of living through improved production processing, marketing and distribution of all food and agricultural products from farms and forests. In carrying out its functions the FAO promotes investment in agriculture, better soil management, improved crop yields, transfer of technology and development of agricultural research in developing countries, including Nigeria.
To borrow a leaf from FAO and stave off the spreading hunger, Nigeria's policy makers must, as a matter of priority, recognize the rural-based farmers as critical stakeholders in the agricultural sector. Conscious efforts should be made to provide them the enabling environment to boost food production, agro-processing and preservation. Good access roads, stable power and water supply, if provided in the rural communities where real farming takes place, would facilitate the transportation of sundry fruits and tubers, the bulk of which now rot away in the rural farms.
The employment of graduates of agriculture and related fields of study by the government has become an imperative. Such specialised workers will assist rural farmers with the formation of cooperative societies, to enable them to enjoy micro-credit facilities. They would also enlighten the farmers on the use of high-yielding, disease-resistant, hybrid seeds and seedlings, as well as impart to them knowledge of modern machinery for cultivation, sowing, harvesting and preservation. In addition, they would teach them the use of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, together with modern irrigation methods for all-year farming.
Government must also engage in profitable public-private partnerships and fund agricultural research institutes appropriately. Above all, now is the time to take prompt and proactive action to prevent the looming national food crisis. We should not wait to take panic measurers only when it is too late. A hungry citizenry is an angry, ungovernable one.
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