Granting farmers access to finance ‘ll scale up nutrition – GAIN

By Ochiaka Ugwu

The Executive Director of Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (gain), Lawrence Haddad has made case for granting small holders farmers access to finance stating that it would scale up nutrition.
Mr. Haddad who made this known Tuesday during an interactive session with newsmen in Abuja stated that Small Medium Enterprise especially small farmers should be encouraged by granting them access to finance.
He said that it would enable the farmers grow healthy food that will help in scaling up nutrition given the fact that the main objective of gain was to improve nutrition.
He informed on the importance of diversifying food production saying that we need to spend more on growing vegetable to be able to feed the brain.
While highlighting areas and emphasizing GAIN’s commitment to working with partners in Nigeria to achieve the ambitious goals, Haddad expressed GAIN’s willingness to collaborate with journalists to share information and stories about its work.
His words, “There is need for partnership with the media to communicate our programmes and initiatives. It is about humanity by making it possible for a good number of people to have access to nutritious diet.
“How can we make more people get access to nutritious food? We can reduce malnutrition in many ways by making food more available and affordable. We need to accelerate the breeding process. Agro-Ecology is too vital by having a healthy environment and recycling food and nutrition” he noted.
Nigerian Country Director of GAIN, Micheal Ojo who said that 80 percent of our farmers were at the subsistence level noted that we needed combination of solutions to upscale nutrition.
He called for the strengthening of food chain which he said must be resilience and robust to achieve the desired results.