Yar’Adua Foundation releases new documentary on food security

The Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Foundation has released a new documentary titled, ‘Swallow: Food Security in Nigeria’s Changing Climate’.

The documentary produced with funding from the European Union, premiered on Sunday, at the Silverbird Galleria,Victoria Island, Lagos.

It explored Nigeria’s food security challenges as well as prospects and opportunities in its food value chain.

Food security is the reliable access to affordable nutritious food for everyone.

Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo who featured in the documentary, said: ”We have moved from 45 million in 1960 to about 193 million today, by the year 2050, we will be over 400 million. It is mind-boggling.”

The documentary listed some of the challenges being faced in the agricultural sector as rainfall, erosion, conflict between farmers and herdsmen, rising sea levels and lack of modern farm equipment.

As a result of these challenges, Nigeria’s food security requires urgent attention in order to avert a major food crisis.

Amina Mohammed, deputy UN secretary general, said there is opportunity to “end hunger in our lifetime”.

”Climate change and poor agricultural practices are exacerbating the problem,” she said.

“Farmers still do things manually and it is hard to have efficient farming that way. ‘Government needs to adopt more ambitious policies and investments plans that focus not only on agriculture, but also on hunger and resilience to climate change.”

Samson Ogbole, co-founder, PS Nutrac, added that youths in Nigeria have a negative attitude to agriculture as a result of old methods of farming.

”If you are saying that youths are not interested in Agriculture, it’s because of the way it is practiced over the years and the way it has been tutored down to us,” he said.

”The farmer must be willing to learn, they must understand the fact that it is not like farming that was done in the past; farming has changed.”

Akinwumi Adesina, president of African Development Bank, advocated for a total transformation in agriculture.

”I believe that for agriculture to be totally transformed, we must totally have agricultural industralisation,” he said.

”We shouldn’t be focusing just on production, we should focus on developing food value change for everything we do.”

Ketil Karlsen, head of delegation of the European Union to Nigeria and Ecowas, told TheCable that the documentary is setting the pace for an ”important debate that has to be done in Nigeria on food security.”

”We need to discuss the way forward. We need to find the right solutions in order make sure that the next generation has sufficient food in the country,” he said.

”People have responded positively to the film and now the important thing is to use the dynamics of these and what we have seen in the film to find a common way forward to connect the dots.

”It is only when the public sector and private sector come together and find the necessary solution that the daunting task is reduced.”