Opinion
Food Scarcity: Perils Ahead
Vincent Ochonma
The current storm of food scarcity across the world is increasingly drawing a fresh attention to the postulation of the English clergyman and economist, Thomas Malthus over 200 years ago.
In his words: “assuming then my postulation as granted, that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio…”.
In the same vein, Paul Ehrich stated years ago that the world will undergo famines – hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programme embarked upon now.
But because of the tremendous agricultural and industrial changes made during the 19th century, such as the discovery of new mineral resources, improvement in transportation which allowed for more efficient trade and remarkable increase in crop yields, especially in the developed world, the early scholars’ predictions were either neglected or rejected.
Today, with the serious imbalance between the world population and material resources, the predictions are being resurrected. The global population has risen from 4.4 billion in 1980 to about 6.5 billion in 2007. By 2050, it is estimated that the world population will hit nine billion.
Apparently, the 50% food production increase is not catching up with the population explosion. Thus, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Programme; 854 million people do not have enough food for active and healthy life.
Faced with rising food prices which have made basic staples such as rice, corn, wheat, and soya bean unaffordable for many people, experts say that the worst is yet to come.
Already, the food crisis situation has, in recent times, triggered revolts and instability in many parts of the world including Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Cameroun, and Haiti where a crowd of hungry citizens once marched through Port-au-Prince throwing stones and bottles and chanting, “we are hungry.”
But why have food prices continued to gallop? The factors responsible for the soaring food prices are numerous. They include global warming, population explosion and general food scarcity. Others are bad weather in key food producing countries, the increase in land allocated to bio-fuels, and wars which have made millions of people in refugee camps dependent on food aid.
In the particular case of Nigeria, the food crisis is not a recent phenomenon. It began as agriculture ceased to be a leading sector in the country’s economy, following the discovery of oil and the subsequent boom arising from its products. While the contribution of agriculture to the GDP amounted to 65.39 per cent up till the early 1960s, it declined to 34.06 per cent between 1973 and 1974. And since then, it has continued to drop abysmally.
Even with several programmes and policies, it has been very difficult to effect meaningful changes in agricultural production in the country.
In 2008, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua set up a ministerial committee under the chairmanship of Vice President Goodluck Jonathan to find a solution to the increasing prices of wheat and wheat flour. And a plan was made to release, at appropriate intervals, grains from strategic reserve so as to meet any expected shortfall and reduce the prices of staples in the country.
To meet food security challenges for a period of four years, according to media reports, government also mapped out 16 different strategies including promotion of large scale commercial agriculture between 500 and 3000 hectares, encouragement of formation of specialised co-operative societies, development of agricultural land mapping programme and self-sufficiency plans for food crops, production of fertilisers in the country, and the rehabilitation of degraded irrigation infrastructure under the Rivers Basin and Rural Development Authorities to ensure all-season farming.
In spite of these efforts, the fact is that the subsistence type of agriculture which is characterised by low productivity still predominates. Food production statistics are not available. Credit is difficult to obtain. Illiteracy is high and infrastructure is lacking. And worse still, it is hard to assess the desire or willingness of Nigerians to respond to increased agricultural production.
In the face of these constraints, the unsettled question to be addressed is; what does it take the country to rise above its food crisis?
It has become clear from historical experience that success depends on partnership between government and the people. It is the people who try out new crops or invest in agricultural projects. They do this whenever incentives are present.
Government at all levels must recognise that food production is a major priority item that calls for definite policies and programmes. In such policies and programmes, it should be emphasised that government must provide basic infrastructure, establish production credit banks, build mechanisation centre (for supply of machinery, insecticides, and fertilisers), as well as providing technical advice to farmers.
Provision should also be made for the development of agricultural research base which will be essential in the generation of new technology and ideas for agricultural production.
Food production research must be developed for mainly two groups, namely the small-scale farmers and the large-scale commercial farmers.
The small-scale farmers require improved technology that is useful for them, because they will perhaps continue to feed the rural population. Meanwhile, modern commercial agriculture must also be developed in the country to feed its increasing population.
Quote:”Communities have rights to peace, safety, and quality of life. Noise pollution, crowds, or other impacts from religious activities can affect these rights. Balancing these interests requires consideration and dialogue”.
“All work and no play”, its said, “makes Jack a dull boy.” Despite this age-long maxim that recognises the role of play in early childhood development, play appears to be eluding many Nigerian kids. The deprivation of play opportunities comes in different forms for the Nigerian child depending on family’s social setting or status, but the effect is much the same. For children in Nigerian poor families, life is becoming as much a hassle as it is for their struggling parents. Due to harsh economic conditions, many families resort to engaging their kids prematurely in trading activities especially in hawking, to help boost family revenues, when these kids should be enjoying leisure after school. Some of these children barely attend schools while being forced to spend much of their childhood hustling in the streets. For children from well-off families, time could be as crunchy as it is for their busy parents when, obsessed with setting agenda for the future of their kids, parents arrange stringent educational regiment too early for their kids.
These group of children are made to get-off the bed by 5.30am every weekday, get ready for private school buses that call at 6.00am, otherwise report by however means to school at 7.20am.The situation is worse for kids in the city of Lagos where the need to beat urban traffic rush-hours is very high. Most children are further subjected to extra hours of lessons after school at 2.00pm, only to be released with loads of homework. On many occasions children who leave home for school at 6.30am get back by 3.30pm. With hardly enough time to eat, do school assignments and take afternoon naps, these children hardly had time for plays before dinners. In Nigeria, kids of ages between 3 and 12 spend averages of 9 hours a day and 45 hours a week to and from schools, and additional hours doing home assignments and domestic jobs, whereas their peers in developed countries spend about half that duration and have more time for leisure.
Any remaining spare time left after school work or street hustle is further stolen, when kids who usually are fascinated by gadgets, are exposed to household electronics like phones, tablets and gaming consoles. Electronic games may create a sense of leisure, but the difference with human interactions is that kids doing games interface mostly with machines or with programme structured in ways that entrap a child’s pysch directionally, according to the game’s programming, in ways that may not encourage independent thinking. Moreso, attraction to such gadgets displaces kids’ attention from important television and radio programmes. The prevalent tight, academic schedules for some Nigerian kids, though intended for academic excellence, encroaches on childhood leisure time needed to achieve an all-round childhood development, and could make children to resent formal education altogether. Besides, academic excellence or economic pursuit, is not all there is to living a well-nurtured life.
Children’s leisure time, defined as time left over after sleeping, eating, personal hygiene and attending school or day-care, is very crucial to childhood development. Sociologists recommend that children should have at least 40 per ceny of the day as leisure. According to Berry Brazelton, a former pediatrician at Harvard Medical School, “Play is the most powerful way a child explores the world and learns about him or herself.” Unstructured play encourages independent thinking and allows the young to negotiate their relationships with their peers, and in the process build self-confidence and self-control. Play is one of the important ways in which young children gain essential knowledge and skills. Leisure time enhances learning as fun enables children to learn at their own level and pace. Young children naturally explore and learn many skills by making cognitive connections from events that catch their attention.
Unstructured plays help children developed their cognitive, physical and communication skills that make them acquire social qualities necessary in navigating relationships in adult life. Plays enable children assess how others feel and learn perspectives as well as empathy through observing differences in facial expressions, body language and even tone of voice, which helps them copy how to express themselves to others, and therefore develop socially acceptable behavours that build relationships. In cooperative activities, children willingly take things in turn and may delegate roles. Children can also share the glory of winnings through competitive games, which is all great for working together in task sharing. Aside encouraging parents to ensure adequate leisure time for their kids at home, schools should make plays and exercises an integral part of the educational curriculum. The educational curriculum set by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) includes specific training durations and break periods, as well as sporting activities, as part of the school system.
Due to poor government funding, sports in public schools have declined, while most private schools lack sporting infrastructure or even play grounds. These make recreational activities and sports implementation almost impossible in schools. Also, the increasing rate of urbanisation in Nigerian communities is gradually eroding ancient playgrounds, while established urban centres have lost community playgrounds. With tightening apartment spaces now being the norm in most urban residential areas, many kids are forced to wriggle within burglary-proof enclosures. Nigerian governments and the relevant agencies should ensure that existing child labour protection laws, educational and urban development codes are implemented in the country, to enable proper nurturing of children as the future stakeholders of our society. Private schools, especially, should be supervised to ensure they follow the educational curriculum standards set by NERDC.
In a bid to impress parents and draw more patronage as better option than public schools, private schools, most of whom operate in cramped environments, have continued to set high regiments of training schedules beyond the capacity of most kids, and even encourage enrollment of pre-school age kids who can not sit still to listen for an extended periods of time. Schools, from creche to secondary levels, without playgrounds and recreational facilities should not be allowed to operate, and should be made to understand and implement appropriate curriculum and training durations. Many Nigerian kids, whether from rich or poor families, appear to have been set-up inadvertently, in the same leisure denial that affects their parents. All work and no play could lead to some messed-up kids who grow up not understanding social cues, and being unemotional and self-centered, manifest later as obsessive-compulsive adults.
By: Joseph Nwankwo
We thank God who is above all human contrivance and arrogance. Congratulations, Your Excellency Amaopusenibo Sir Siminalayi Joseph Fubara. Your victory takes us back to the Bible as a living document of a God that rules in the affairs of all His creation. In a manner of speaking, welcome back from your first war with Phillistines, Your Excellency! Yes, first example is David and Goliath! And like David, Your Excellency stands over Goliath in victory. But that is not enough. Our real enemy is that Your Excellency is Governor of a State with a wretched economy. Indigenes of Your State are today reduced to battalions of beggars waiting for who will hire their loyalty on the usual “pay-as-you-go” basis.
Your Excellency, it brings us to another Bible- based parallel. Conscientious Rivers indigenes above 50, should identify with and commit our all to this second parallel. It is to liberate the economy and people of Rivers people from 23 years enslavement and poverty, for us to regain our dignity and pride. When the economy of Egypt was drifting into a disaster zone, even Pharaoh did not know it. He also did not know what to do. But God sent a Joseph to build the economy into a fortress of good fortune that overcame the economic and social disaster Egypt did not know was ahead. Your Excellency for 23 years, Rivers State has been ruled without any logical, credible and consistent PLAN of how to overcome mass poverty from our dehydrated local economies.
Your Excellency, Rivers State cannot survive one month without Federal allocation! So called IGR only about 10 per cent of Federal allocation.It is also not based on what we produce but on tax from other people’s productivity that pass through our State. Pharaoh did not know what to do in the case of Egypt. May it please God to position another Joseph in Governor Siminalayi Joseph Fubara to heal Rivers State and build an economy that all Africa will come to access in order to chart a new course out of worsening economic hardship that is caused by near zero investment in productivity and endemic reckless looting. They are the twin chambers nursing a corporate cancer unfolding across Nigeria and Africa. The hard work begins today, Your Excellency.
We need an economic blueprint that will enrich every Rivers senatorial district from investment to grow productivity and to enrich every Rivers person from career-based productive labour, just as Pharaoh was enriched by Joseph’s economic Blueprint. Let Rivers State stop the trend of waiting the lives of young Rivers people recruited by Phillistines into cultism, thuggery and easy money, as a career. These Phillistines believe they have only lost one phase of many legal battles and battles by other means. But from comments in the public media, their eyes are fixed on 4-years of war and more! Your Excellency, we the people will not let you forget what you owe us. We have to make unbelievers see that your leadership is different and that we are uprooting the old order of an unproductive Feudal System. That system makes a few persons and their cronies to monopolise our collective wealth, while the majority are left in misery. Let’s put an end to enslavement by cabals and mass poverty in Rivers State. That is when the Phillistines will surrender.
By: Amaopusenibo Brown