Education
Don Advocates Organic Trajectory For Food Production
A Professor of Agricultural Economics in Ignatius Ajuru University of Education (IAUE), Prof. Sixtus Anyanwu, has called for the use of Organic Agriculture for an increased agricultural productivity, poison-free food consumption and sustainable food security.
Anyanwu made the call during his Inaugural Lecture titled The Contemporary Trajectories for Increased Agricultural Productivity in Nigeria’ at the university’s main campus, Rumuolumeni, PortHarcourt, last Wednesday.
Anyanwu said the call became imperative following the challenges posed by the inorganic agricultural system not only on the economy but the health of the Nigerian population.
Anyanwu stated that the trajectory for the reported increased agricultural productivity required reexamination to determine it’s roles in the contemporary global warming occasioned by soil, ground water and general environmental pollution, adding that if such pathways were implicated in the exacerbation of human misery or fails the test of environmental sustainability, then, an alternative trajectory becomes a desideratum.
The Agricultural expert who noted with dismay the apparent scarcity of inorganic fertilizers, tardiness in its supply as well as the environmental hazards associated with its use stressed the need for the extensive practice of the organic manure and indeed organic agriculture.
Anyanwu said: Increased agricultural productivity is dependent on the fertility of the soil. In the 1950s, most of the nutrient needs of crops were supplied by the natural fertility of the soil and added manure while inorganic fertilizers comprised only an insignificant percentage of the nutrients needed for grain production.
“However, certain inadvertent environmental and human health externalities of the mineral fertiliser driven trajectory for increased agricultural productivity has made the interrogation of this pathway a desideratum in the search for a more sustainable food security paradigm”.
While explaining that organic agriculture was a form of agriculture that uses sustainable natural resources and strategies such as the application of bio-fertilisers, biological pest control and crop rotation, Anyanwu revealed that extensive usage of organic manure was already culturally acceptable to the farmers because livestocks rearing was already an integral part of their farming systems.
The expert therefore recommended that organic agriculture trajectory be considered due to the salient attributes and available data based empirical evidence particularly of a safe consumption of agricultural produce.
By: Lady Godknows Ogbulu
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