Opportunities and Challenges of Agroecology: Thinking, Knowledge and Practice -The Recommendations
Agriculture and food security in Nigeria face significant challenges, exacerbated by a combination of socio-economic factors, cultural norms, climate change, wrong farm practices, and ongoing violent conflicts. The food security situation in Nigeria is in critical condition; by early 2024, the number of food-insecure individuals surged to 100 million, with 18.6 million facing acute hunger.
With food inflation over 40.9%, and farmers spending huge costs on imported farm inputs such as seedlings, pesticides and fertilizers, and local plant and seed varieties going extinct due to poor farm practices like monoculture, heavy dependence on toxic agrochemicals and now genetically modified organism (GMO) for food, the country’s nutrition burden and hunger poverty will continue to increase.
Nigeria is losing her potential to earn foreign revenue from her agricultural food export, as over 70% of her food export is rejected in Europe alone due to its human health and environmental safety risk to their population. Unfortunately, what is regarded as poison and rejected in Europe, and other parts of the World, is what Nigerian citizens eat as food. Little wonder the increasing number of chronic health diseases and environmental pollutions in the country.
The widespread use of toxic agrochemicals, mostly pesticides in Nigeria is having a significant negative impact on the country’s food security and agricultural sector performance: A recent study found that roughly 80% of the pesticides most commonly used by small-scale farmers in Nigeria are considered highly hazardous in other countries and even banned in more advanced countries. There is need for Nigeria to review her farm practices, improve her food and chemical regulation, scale up and deliver standard in her push for organic farming and agroecology, so as to improve food security in Nigeria, improve nutrition, protect her biodiversity and indigenous specifies, and defend her food sovereignty from international lobbyist agrochemical and seed companies.
