In the bid to define a pathway to a healthy, secure and sustainable food system and cohesive national and African food policy that addresses the challenges to the food system, the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) engaged a diverse range of stakeholders in the food sector including farmers, relevant government ministries, researchers, nutritionists, academics and CSOs in Abuja on Wednesday, March 24, 2021.
The group’s deliberations were focused on key premises including how a good food system is defined, what should be the guiding principles to promote sustainable food systems that improve nutrition and enable healthy diets, what are the existing barriers to a better food system, and opportunities for better food policy.
In his welcome words, the Director of HOMEF, Nnimmo Bassey, stated: “Policies with provisions guiding farming and food in our nation have generally not been the most progressive. One would expect a nation, nay continent, that has been so dastardly exploited to demand for reparations by way of colonial, ecological or climate debt, but no, our leaders still kowtow to the same temples of exploitation, plead for more loans and sink deeper into the mire of hopeless debt.”
Furthermore, the Director stated that one of the most important lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic is that life is best preserved when beings live in deference to one other, when species are not displaced from their habitats and humans are not denied their rights to shelter, food and dignity.
He added that small scale farmers who actually feed the people are extremely disadvantaged when it comes to supports for food production by a lack of incentives and an abysmal extension agent to farmer ratio.
The government was strongly advised to invest massively in support for small scale farmers by closing the ratio of available extension agents, promoting local seeds varieties, providing storage and processing facilities across the nation, supporting farmers cooperatives, and providing infrastructure for ensuring that harvests get to the markets and small-scale farmers earn a decent income from their labour.
After the extensive discussions by stakeholders the following action points and recommendations were drawn:
- The small-scale farmers who produce food with ecologically sound methods should be supported with needed infrastructure, funding and fair market conditions.
- The government should ensure that food policies are coherent, implementable and that they address the challenges in the food sector.
- Farmers and other stakeholders in the food sector at grassroots level should be involved in decision/policy making processes regarding our food.
- Extension services should be improved to enable farmer knowledge and practice for better productivity. Private extension service should be encouraged.
- There should be better education/sensitization for our farmers on the importance of producing and consuming local foods.
- The Ministry of Agriculture and other stakeholders should discourage the use of inorganic herbicides and pesticides to promote healthy soils for healthy food/nutrition.
- Seed banks should be set up in all states across the nation for preservation of indigenous seeds.
- GMOs should be kept off our food system. The Government should support and promote agro-ecology which ensures optimum food production in ways that and ecologically sound and economically viable.
- An enabling environment should be created for young people in agriculture.
- The quality of our food is key to the assurance of not just our health, but also our socio-economic wellbeing. Government should not be dependent on the private sector for seed reproduction/improvement.
