‘Food security fund bill can enhance farming’

Many Nigerians, especially those with interest in agriculture, will ask questions such as ‘of what benefit is such a bill to us?’ ‘Do we really need such a fund at present?’An examination of the contents of the bill showed that it seeks to provide for a robust legislative framework that will address the nagging challenges […]

Many Nigerians, especially those with interest in agriculture, will ask questions such as ‘of what benefit is such a bill to us?’ ‘Do we really need such a fund at present?’
An examination of the contents of the bill showed that it seeks to provide for a robust legislative framework that will address the nagging challenges of acute under-funding of the all-important agricultural sector of the economy.
The bill, based on its provisions, will establish a body like the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) in the education sector that would source and channel complimentary funding to agricultural development initiatives such as agricultural infrastructural development, advancement and empowerment of peasant farmers, who constitute more than 60 percent of the population, from subsistent to commercial based farmers.
The bill will further promote small and medium agricultural processing enterprises, and facilitate the transformation of Nigeria from an import and consumption-based nation to that of self-sufficiency and possibly an exporting nation.
The bill will also target the challenges of annual foreign exchange flight of more than $7 billion (N1.35 trillion) via the import dependence of only four food items of wheat, rice, fish and sugar.
Sponsor of the bill, Rep Kaka Kyari Gujbawu (PDP, Borno), while leading debate on that day said it would provide for a window for an adequate funding mechanism to develop and modernise the agricultural sector.
He noted that the FOSAF bill seeks not only to provide a robust legislative framework that would address challenges of under-funding in the agricultural sector but will also boost agricultural activities in the country.
Nigeria, he observed, currently expends less than 5 percent of the annual budget for the agricultural sector, which contributes more than 70 percent to the GDP, and employs more than 70 percent of the population.
“This trend is contrary to the Maputo Declaration of 2003 to which Nigeria is a signatory, whereby commitment was made to assign at least 10 percent of our budgetary allocation to ensure food security and eradicate poverty. Any commitment short of providing window for adequate funding mechanism such as this bill seeks to achieve will not only translate all our developmental efforts as utopian but will remain a surrealistic hope,” he had argued.
Agriculture is crucial for Nigeria’s development in particular, and Africa in general. Majority of the Nigerian population resides in rural areas, and at least 70 percent of the workforce is engaged in agriculture.
In many African countries, growth in agriculture is the most effective strategy for reducing poverty and promoting overall economic growth and in recognition of this, the African Union (AU) Heads of States and Government adopted the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) in June 2003 at the African Union. Summit in Maputo, Mozambique, which set the achievement of 6 percent annual agricultural growth as its main goal.
Participants at the meeting also acknowledged that inadequate investment in the sector was a key constraint to increasing agricultural productivity and growth rates. Thus, African governments pledged to increase agricultural spending to at least 10 percent of total government budgetary resources by 2008.
These commitments explicitly place agriculture at the centre of national growth and poverty reduction strategies aimed at putting countries on track towards achieving the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG1) of halving poverty and hunger by 2015, and set public agricultural spending as the main method for doing so.
Despite a 75 percent increase in the share of agricultural spending from 2000 to 2005, the target remains unmet because of the very low initial base and the declining trends prior to 2000. Only eight countries – Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Mali, Malawi, Ghana, Niger, Senegal and Zimbabwe – reached or surpassed 10 percent.
Sixteen other countries reached expenditure shares between 5 and 10 percent, while 14 countries devoted less than 5 percent of their total budgets to the sector.
 Although a lot of policies and financing mechanisms are being implemented, it is believed that much is still needed to be done to reduce poverty amongst the vast segment of the Nigerian population who reside in rural areas and engage in agriculture and invariably place the nation firmly on the fast lane of modern development.