By Musa Baba Adamu
President of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Arc Kabir Ibrahim, has said the only way for Nigeria to effectively fight food insecurity was to embrace knowledge and innovation based Agricultural practice.
Arc Ibrahim who stated this in a Paper said Nigeria should draw some lessons from the Netherlands which had succeeded in only feeding itself but also supplying the world food needs leveraging on knowledge and Innovation.
He said for the country to achieve its dream of fighting food insecurity, relevant knowledge and innovation are necessary tools.
According to him: “The declaration of a state of emergency on food security in Nigeria portends the stemming of insecurity, the adoption of climate smart Agriculture, embracing STI, scaling automation as well incentivizing small scale farmers(SHFs)by a seamless provision of subsidy and access to sustainable credit which all together require knowledge and innovation.
“Nigeria’s population at this point is a little over 200,000,000 grappling with an ailing food system incapable of guaranteeing food security but come 2050 the population will even expand to about 400,000,000 as projected therefore requiring more effort for the country to be food secure.
“Relevant knowledge and innovation are necessary tools, above all else, to bring about food security and economic prosperity as shown by some small countries like Singapore and the Netherlands.
“The success story of the Netherlands presents a veritable model easily transferable to Nigeria’s situation at this point.”
Maintaining that Nigeria has a population advantage of well deployed.
“The Netherlands is a small country with a population of 17,000,000 people out of which only 155,000 are farmers but having Food Security and an income from Agriculture second only to the United States of America.
“The main tools for the attainment of this prosperity are Knowledge, Innovation and institutional or governance excellence.
“The University of Wageningan & Research in the Netherlands is a world renown public research institution for Agriculture etc. which has helped to transform the fortunes of the Netherlands and other countries such as China,currently the World’s largest producer of Wheat and Potato.
