A Senior Agriculture Economist with the World Bank, Dr Adetunji Oredipe, has called for large-scale commercial agricultural enterprises to tackle food insecurity in Nigeria.
Oredipe, who made this call while delivering an annual lecture with the theme, ‘Mitigating Rising Food Prices: The Underlying Issues: A Close View of the Nigerian Food System,’ at the Faculty of Agriculture, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, also advocated for the development and immediate implementation of a National Food Prices Management Plan rather than adopting food price control measures, to tackle the impact of the ongoing food crisis.
Oredipe said to achieve these measures decisive actions must be taken by the Nigerian authorities to create the enabling environment for privately driven large-scale commercial agriculture enterprises similar to what obtained in Latin America, where farming has become a big-time business.
He said, “We must upscale the nation’s ability to increase the supply of food to stem the tide of high food prices. I would like to advocate for decisive action to create the enabling environment for privately driven large-scale commercial agriculture enterprises in the similitude to what happens in Latin America where farming is a big-time business.
“A large-scale commercial farm is a technologically sophisticated, mass-scale commercial agriculture enterprise. In addition to the usual agricultural needs, large-scale farming depends on the rule of law, secure land tenure, adequate infrastructure, affordable energy access, and well-functioning banks and financial markets.
“In addition, large-scale farms can employ both educated people and unskilled labour and offer a pathway to development and economic growth in rural areas that lag behind fast-growing urban areas. To their critics, large-scale farms raise concerns over animal welfare, ecological impacts, and overuse of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. But for the situation in Nigeria today, the model will help to achieve stability and food security. Talking seriously, small-scale farming will not help to unleash the economic potential at scale even when given the best scientific technologies.
“For instance, there is the maximum yield obtainable to a small farm size after which the law of diminishing returns sets in. Large-scale modern mechanised farms would help bring in economies of scale. While we do not displace those small-scale farmers, they could form nuclear farms to large farms within their vicinity.”
The World Bank senior agriculture expert explained that the National Food Prices Monitoring Plan would define what constitutes a major food crisis and prompt timely action across government, private sector, and development partners to prevent and mitigate the impact of the crisis, noting, however, “This is not an attempt to advocate for food price control.”
He further stated that the government needs to directly connect the output of its food production programmes to the strategic commercial food reserve operations, which would enable the government to “intervene in the raw material prices for food and beverage companies, and the major staple food items that constitute the food inflation basket – maize, rice, sorghum, soybeans, and cowpea.”
Oredipe also stated that the objective of the commercial food reserve operations would be to establish a sustainable way to finance the aggregation and disposal of essential commodities for processing companies in the country with the ultimate objective of moderating food price inflation and reducing food importation.
He also urged the government to take several actions including promotion of urban agriculture “to improve its self-sufficiency; protection of existing farm settlements, estates, and clusters from encroachment for non-agricultural uses, promotion of backward integration of firms and industry, investing in value addition on and off-farm to improve the proportion of produce that reached the table all year round, encouraging youth involvement in food production by improving the operating environment, and putting in place a sustainable and commercially viable food bank.”
