There is a growing concern among Nigerians over food security in year 2025, considering the prevailing cost of food items in the country today.
The last quarter of the year used to be a period for bumper harvest of food crops, when prices of food commodities are expected to be at its lowest ebb.
But reverse is the case this year, as prices of food items continue to soar making it almost difficult for an average Nigerian family to put food on the table.
Compared to what obtained in the last quarter of 2023, prices of food items such as rice, beans of various kinds, yam, flours of various kinds, garri, soup ingredients among others have risen by over 70 per cent.
Some of the reasons attributed to the astronomical rise in food prices this year, according to a farmer who spoke with our correspondent in Osogbo, Mr. Tubosun Kolapo, include unforeseen climate change in 2024, withdrawal from farm for fear of attack, farming apathy among youths, cost of transportation among others.
Kolapo specifically noted that the draught experienced between the month of May and August 2024 was unprecedented, adding that farmers at both subsistence and mechanised level suffered unimaginable loss from farming output.
To avoid future losses as a result of climate change, he called on relevant bodies to be on their toes to guide farmers on when to plant crops, adding that adequate sensitisation should be made to stem the trend of calamity bedeviling farmers as a result of climate change.
In his contribution, an agricultural expert in the department of Agriculture of Odo-Otin local government of Osun State, Mr Goke Adebisi, recommended that government should take up the challenge of large scale farming by employing farming comparative advantage mechanism.
According to him, taking Osun State as an example, ditto Nigeria as a whole, there is no local government in the state that does not have its peculiar soil content that favours certain crop, adding that what government needs to do is to, asides encourage farmers in those areas to major in the particular crop that would give high yield in same areas, cultivate the crop at mechanised level.
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Also speaking, a human rights activist in Osun State, Comrade Waheed Lawal stressed the need for government to encourage youths in farming by making agriculture lucrative to them.
Lawal contended that government should encourage youths to go for farming through the provisions of basic needs such as take off grant, land, farm implements, fertiliser, herbicide and pesticide and above all readiness to buy proceeds at subsidised price that will make farming lucrative to them.
