FG Moves To Stem Rising Food Prices

Against the background of the reported global food price increases, the Federal Government has been implementing strategies to check its impact on the country.

Prof. Sheikh Abdullah, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Thursday.

Abdullah said that available information revealed sharp increases in some basic food items between June and December 2010.

“There has been 57 per cent increase in the prices of grains including wheat, 56 per cent for oil and fat and 77 per cent for sugar,” he said.

The increases, he said, were attributed to various factors including extreme weather conditions such as drought, catastrophic storms and wild fire.

Others factors identified were structural limitations, low income, high population growth rate, land constraints and under investment in rural infrastructure.

The list also included poor agricultural mechanisation and limited farmers’ access to agricultural inputs.

Due to this development, some states in the country recorded poor harvest occasioned by natural disaster such as flooding, inadequate farm input and declining interest in agriculture, particularly among youths, he noted.

According to him, the high cost of food constitutes an “inherent” danger to national security.

He said that the need to address the threat was urgent as the sector accounts for more than 42 per cent of the GDP and employs more than 70 per cent of the nation’s active labour force.

One of the strategies to address the threat was the sustained attention being given to agricultural production and food security by the Federal Government in order to achieve overall national economic development, the minister said.

Secondly, Abdullah said that the government was working towards evolving policies that would address challenges faced by smallholder farmers who constitute the major food producers in the country.

He further said that the government had commenced the training of 10,000 youths in various agricultural fields of their choice.

The initiative, he explained, was to attract the interest of youths to agriculture by making farming attractive and a profitable business.