Why Climate-Smart Agriculture Is Crucial For Food Security – NABG DG
Dr Manzo Daniel Maigari is the Director General of the Nigeria AgriBusiness Group (NABG) working with both the public and private sectors toward creating an enabling environment for the enhancement of agribusiness in the country. At the end of a two-day workshop focused on developing a national framework for Climate-Smart Agriculture, the veterinary doctor and former Kaduna State Commissioner for Agriculture and Forestry, spoke to media representatives on the essence of the workshop attended by globally reputed academics and experts knowledgeable in strategies aimed at combating global warming in a world facing decreasing agricultural productivity, among others. SEGUN ADEBAYO captures highlights of the interaction.
You have just completed a two-day workshop aimed at developing a national framework on Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) on the theme: ‘Cleaner, Safer, Rewarding Agriculture’. What has been the outcome of this workshop?
As you rightly observed, the National AgriBusiness Group (NABG), in conjunction with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), reached out to players from the private sector and the NGOs for concerted efforts aimed at coming up with a comprehensive document that enriches the resilient national framework that has been developed by the government under the direct supervision of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. The sole aim of the workshop is not only to enrich that document but to also make it upgradeable to a policy document that can be approved at the level of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and enable us to mainstream Climate-Smart Agriculture in all spheres of the Nigerian society. You can see that officials of government from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and NiMET; experts and NGOs involved in issues of environment attended and shared their invaluable knowledge on issues relating to climate, global warming, and how technology is being deployed to tackle challenges associated with climate change. Throughout the two-day workshop, we saw a robust interaction between the public and informal sectors. Apart from papers and technical sessions that took place during the workshop, the advantages of adopting smart-climate agriculture were thoroughly discussed. These discussions were geared towards the evolution of a national framework policy on CSA.
With this climate-smart agriculture you are talking about; you know most farmers are domiciled in rural areas, how can climate-smart agriculture be deployed for enhanced productivity in the agricultural sector?
You know, when you talk about sustainability, it means having a livelihood that does not harm the environment beyond its regenerative capacity. God created the world to have the regenerative capacity, with little damage to the ecosystem, but industrialization and urbanization have threatened that. We are depleting the natural resources and destroying the ecosystem beyond the capacity of the earth to regenerate. This is what is causing climate change. We must imbibe practices that cause minimal harm to the ecosystems. It should be sustainable so that it can be regenerative enough that will enable us to hand over something to the next generation. Without climate-smart agriculture, Nigeria cannot meet the singular task of realising food security. It is only through the CSA that agricultural productivity can be enhanced to ensure adequate food production of the nation’s teeming populace.
In agriculture, what are those things that can be said to constitute harmful agricultural practices? Is it the use of fertilisers or chemicals or what are they?
When you talk about climate change; you are talking about Greenhouse gas emissions that trap energy within the atmosphere. This retains temperatures within the atmosphere, instead of dissipating them out. This brings about an increase in temperature that eventually causes global warming. Once you disrupt a natural process, this is what it causes, and some of the human activities, including the felling of trees and subsistence farming; happen for up to four or five years, and when the productivity drops, they go to another land and do the same thing. That is shifting cultivation, but today because of the population, that luxury isn’t there anymore. There is limited land for cultivation today, so farmers commence the cutting down of trees and start using fertilizers for their crops and other products. These fertilizers are rich in nitrates that enter the atmosphere, retain heat and cause global warming. When you allow biological materials to rot, they emit methane, which goes into the atmosphere to retain heat, and it is also a culprit. So what do we do? When you cut down trees, you rid the environment of trees which helps to absorb the carbon produced by humans by respiration. The excess carbon goes up into the atmosphere to cause global warming. One of the key pillars of resolving this problem is agroforestry. Farmers know that losing vegetation cover is making the land useless, but they do not know what to do. When they finish the farming cycle for the year, they burn the fields, generating yet more carbon which goes up to cause the same damage. Unless you look for strategies to curtail the production of that carbon; it will keep piling up and global warming will continue. So, farmers do not know that they are the cause of this problem. By this policy framework, we intend to bring all the farmers and players together and embark on the deployment of awareness strategies, and re-orientation, among other advocacy programmes for awareness purposes. We will bring in NGOs that have the capacity in the green sector, and those interested in afforestation to unite and engage in tackling the challenges of climate change confronting the environment. Where there is a need for cleaning, it will be done. The policy will highlight those needful areas and then bring in experts to advance solutions. At the end of the day, we intend to mitigate the situation and then adapt to prevailing templates necessary in enhancing smart-climate agriculture. For example, if you move around you see fruits that are in excess after the harvesting season, and when they rot, they increase global warming. The ability to deal with all of these will go a long way in facilitating the emergence of climate-smart agriculture and at the same time dealing with issues relating to global warming.
In all of this, what would the current efforts on smart-climate agriculture impact on Nigeria’s food security?
First, when you harvest, and there is waste, it is called post-harvest loss. This policy framework will encourage the government to come up with strategies to cut down on this post-harvest loss. Doing this alone has reduced methane emissions into the atmosphere, and enhanced food security. We are hungry, and at the same time, food is wasted and causing problems for the environment. We will come up with strategies wherein the loss will find its way to the table. All that is just needed is the required synergy between the players and stakeholders. When the policy becomes effective, productivity would be raised and food security would be enhanced. Most importantly, their livelihoods will be improved because they will make more money. It’s a win-win situation for everyone, and we understand that the government alone cannot do it, so we are helping to create that platform to make every stakeholder find expression in the programme. If our nation hopes to confront decreasing productivity in agriculture, then only the deployment of Climate-Smart Agriculture can save the day for us. We can’t afford to continue with the old system and hope to solve the problem of food security and production.
When the private sector collaborates in this manner, the question is usually the support from the side of the government. Do you think the government is really out to support this initiative?
The government does not have a choice. But like I said, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has a resilient document, and that’s the template on which we are working and hoping to update so that it can be approved and mainstreamed into all sectors of agriculture in Nigeria. The country’s competitive capacity is in agriculture, the government may not fully understand it, but that is why we are bringing all stakeholders together to appreciate the prospects since no single stakeholder knows it all.
How long can we wait for the final document?
We are hoping that by the end of next year, the document should be at the Federal Executive Council (FEC), but the implementation will be over time, in the long run, because it is something we will have to keep on doing and improving upon in the years and decades ahead.
