The impact of the Current flood ravaging most States of the Country would have been avoided with proper planning.
Agric Expert and Researcher, Dr Mathew Ojo, disclosed this while featuring on the TVC News flagship programme, Business Nigeria on Friday.
Dr Ojo said the trend over the last few years has shown that proper planning would have prevented the devastating impact of the flood on most parts of the Country.
He added that the most devastating flood in Nigeria before now was the one in 2012 which was followed by another in 2019 which was slightly less devastating than what we have this year.
He said proper planning at all levels especially states would have ensured that farmers are able to plant and protect their livelihood in the event of the current flood which was exacerbated by the impact of Climate change.
He called for adequate planning henceforth to ensure that the nation is protected from the vagaries of natural disasters precipitated by Climate Change which he said cannot be stopped now but put into planning for Agricultural production.
He also expressed worries over the rampaging food inflation which has led to a situation where households are struggling to make ends meet or even afford the basics.
Read More Below…
Well, of course, for many people in the research sector, they would have envisioned this kind of thing happening because in the light of global risk coming from climate change, where you have many countries making preparations and also planning ahead to be able to mitigate the effect of climate change, especially as it concerns food production, Nigeria is not at the forefront of doing that. Apart from the challenge of awareness, there’s also the issue of committed effort, both at the federal level and at the state level, to factor in the possible risk or effect of climate change when it comes to food production. Now, you just talked about flooding, and you realize your statistics. It’s not the first time we’ll be having flooding in the country.
We had one that was very devastating in 2012. We had another one slight one in 2019. And now this one that is reported to have led to over 600 deaths and displaced around 1.4 million household or houses. And also that is also reported about, I think 110.
That’s about 270 or about acres of farmland destroyed. So when you look at all this, one thing is glaring and it’s also the effect or the consequences of lack of proper planning when it comes to things like this. Now, how does all this affect food in a country like ours? You’ve already mentioned it. When you have about 70% of producers exposed to the risk of flooding, especially if their farmlands are located in cold areas, then you can just translate that to what that would mean.
Flooding in the past has affected food security in the country. First in the area of food availability. Why? Because all the factors of production are affected by flood. The producer that the farmer is affected. The land is affected, the labor, those who probably work with him are affected. The capital are also affected. So when that happens, and farms are devastated by this, the entire factors of production that would have made food available are impacted negatively. And that’s why there will be fears concerning food availability in the country once you have this kind of disaster coming. And then it also affects not just food availability, it affects accessibility.
Accessibility in the terms of farmers who probably are not affected personally may not be able to assess their farms physically because maybe the roads leading to their farms or the bridges and all that would have been destroyed by flood. So it becomes physically impossible and impractical for them to go to farm. So if they can’t go to farm, you have food crops wasted there. And so many things they would have harvested probably would be spoke on the farm.
There’s also the issue of economic assets, of course, price. When you have these food crops not being available, for example, the yam you’ve mentioned, the cassava, the maize and also maybe rice.
When these food crops are affected, the prices at the market, of course, will go up. And then means that a country that is already battling with the food inflation of around 23, 24%, as at the last count, and you have a country that is already spending up to $10 billion on food importation annually.
Now, you cannot just translate that to see what that means in terms of food prices in the coming months and then how that will affect household. There’s also the issue of food quality. If you have food stock somewhere and flood comes in and sorts it up, farmers normally would try to see the most they can salvage and sell that will affect the kind of quality of food you get at the market because they just have to survive. And then you also look at the issue of stability.
How stable would the supply be in the light of all this that we are talking about? So it goes to tell us that we need to factor in some of these things. And when I’m talking, usually I like to be specific because this is not just a federal government issue. Unfortunately, we have a country where if you have this kind of disaster happening, you have governors of states throwing their hands up in the air and calling on federal government and the question would be, okay, are there not things that can be done at the state level? Agreed, if this is nature.
But we can plan for it, okay? We can plan for it such that the effect it will have on our food production in particular will not be this disastrous or it will not have this kind of impact on us nationally. And also maybe subnationally.
So these, I think, are the things that we need to start asking ourselves and how we can go forward. Find a way to address some of these things in terms of inflation. Already people are struggling, households are struggling. If you look at what inflation was ten years ago compared to what it is now, for example, in 2012, food inflation was just 9.9% in August compared to what it was in August last month.
This year, in the month of September, and we will live in our September, August to August, 10 years, it has risen by over 134% in just ten years. So it causes for concern, as I always say, but it also shows the lack of planning on our part.
Of course, that’s a very good question. The first thing is this. In our agricultural planning, there is something agriculture that are drawn at the national level and at the state level, efforts should first be made to factor in things like this. Okay? So we don’t just have plannings to assume that lives out the impact of possible effect of climate change on production.
I was in the apartment of a team that was drawing the plan for development plan for Nigeria, I think two years or three years ago. And the entire company brought a plan, and they didn’t factor properly climate change effect until somebody had to raise it to be looked at.
So agricultural planning in Nigeria cannot be done without factoring these kind of issues. So you model your plan, you bring in, let’s say that we have flooding, and from the report, we have 26 states affected out of 36. So you factor that in, if it happens and it affects the entire state, what do we do? What is the plan B for us? So this can be factored in at the point of planning nationally and then states, because I will not stop talking about states.
Some states are so lazy when it comes to ideas and planning. And everybody works for the federal government. That’s one. Number two, each state can look at the state of their own state. There are no areas that are prone to what’s called to flood and areas that are not prone to flood. So in terms of planning where people can go to, because at times it’s difficult for you to tell people, leave your home and move to a place and stay there it takes time, but we can have a plan B where in your state you have located areas that are less prone to flooding and then create space for farming, create space for food production in those areas.
Unfortunately, such areas are left for the Rich Almighty, but the Rich Almighty also need food. So that is one thing that we can do. Number three is we need to start thinking on how to, in the next five years, increase the capacity of our strategic food reserve in the country. I mentioned this earlier, there can be no better time than this because I think I was reading somewhere that the President ordered that you released around 12,000 metric tons, tons of grains.
The question is, what would that do in the midst of all this? But then if we have planned that increment over the years, we probably would have piled up enough that we’ll be able to evaluate the effect of this kind of disaster. So we need to also look at that, how to ensure that each state statistically has these reserves and then they are in the areas where they cannot be easily affected by flood, and then we build up the storage over time.
What I think we can also do, because farmers also need to start learning how to adapt some of these things, okay, apart from some of these flood caused by baby dams and all that continuous rain can also contribute.
So how do farmers prepare for this? Okay, how do we prepare our farmers for all things like this in terms of training them, in terms of teaching them adaptation practices and how to prepare when they are also planning to go into production.
What I fear the most is the number of households that will further fall below or drop into poverty. Okay, so let’s put it in perspective. I think a few days back, a few weeks back, the minister I was talking about, that we are only currently using about 45% of the agricultural land available in Nigeria. So if you look at that, just 44%. So 56% not yet used. We’re having issues with food production and then the issue of insecurity came in that prevent or preventing some farmers to assess their farmlands.
Then we have boundary and we have now flood. So if it’s just around 44% who have been able to use who knows how many percentage has been reduced by the combination of all these. Maybe we are doing like top 40 or maybe 30 something percent in terms of using agricultural land. And that translates to you not being able to produce. Okay, so the whole thing has to do with the food has to be available.
First when it is not available, then immediately it translates to higher price. The ones that are available are sold at a higher price. And when they are sold at a higher price, it becomes difficult for households to be able to afford some of these prices. So that is where the challenge is, where people are not able to eat and feed themselves. I mean, one thing that is common for both the rich and the poor is that they have to eat.
So it doesn’t contact anybody and it gets to who has the money to buy what they need to eat. So some people have been pauperised economically because of non availability of food. That is disturbing because the easiest thing to translate or to get out of this would be crime. We’ve done research and we’ve come in our analysis we’ve seen that when you have people not being employed, gainfully employed, it easily translates into crime. And yet you have farmers who target have gone and the opportunity of going to their farm and at least produce something for themselves.
If they are able to produce, they don’t do something else and food is not available, prices go high. My concern is I don’t know what food inflation will be in the coming months. It’s already disturbing to me because if at 23.24% or 34% people are crying, the government needs to urgently look at what can be done. And unfortunately this is a year preceding election so you find people are not listening.
Most people are concerned about electioneering campaigns and all that. But honestly speaking, Nigerians need to plan ahead because with this flood disaster that we are grappling with, with the issue of insecurity, food availability for the coming years may be a challenge for the entire country. It will definitely be, yes. And I’m just going to ask you perhaps what kind of people are we?
And if we do pay attention to information and warnings, for instance, on the part of government, the part of government and even the farmers themselves, does this perhaps tell about the kind of people that we are? Yes, it does. I think my major problem with the country like ours, but those at the helms of affairs and those who are supposed to plan is the uttered disregard for data.
Okay, now you have a government that is not willing easily to fund data collection. And when you have people presenting data to the government so that we can at least have that awareness to start planning, you’ll find government officials coming up and spending hours over minutes trying to refute such data. What data does is to give you the awareness to pay attention in case you are not it’s not necessarily about rubbish in your government, but unfortunately, where you have independent organization telling you, okay, 79% of this is happening, 22% of this is, and attention is not done. So you see, we are a country that hardly use data for what it ought to be useful.
We just hear and the news goes around and everybody keeps quiet. If we have been paying attention to both gathering of data and using data to inform decision making, I’m sure we’ll be at a better place as a nation collective. But like I said, it’s reported. Newspaper said over 110,000 land affected. Others are reporting lower. You really can’t tell the exact figure because no such data is readily available. And honestly, with my journey underestimating the impact that this flood, this current one, is going to have on food production in Nigeria, food producti. Then the farmers themselves, the individuals who hitherto have been gainfully employed, become jobless, their families become exposed to any kind of risk available to wherever they are put back.
And I bet you after a few weeks or a few months, they forget them. Nobody remembers that some farmers have been displaced. Nobody goes to them to find out their welfare. What plans do we have? If we have over 70% of the population into farming and maybe majority of them are affected by floods. What plans do we have to ensure that. Okay. When they are displaced from where they are and take them to somewhere they can still continue to do something a bit small. They can have small plot of land to maybe grow vegetables or grow maize. Which will be ready in three months time or thereabout for feeding and also for income. Practically nothing, I bet you.
So that is where I am most concerned. That is what disturbs me. You have a nation that does not look ahead for its citizens. It becomes challenging. All right? They are farmers. They produce the food we eat. We need to take care of them when they are faced by disaster or whatever you want to call it, when they are challenged in ensuring that they produce.
Thank you very much for that question. I think a few years back I was involved in a research project that looked at taking advantage of flooding, okay. To boost production. I think that research was funded by International Water Management Institute. Remember what we did and what we found out. You see, when you have flood, especially areas where the river banks overflow is banked and it has receded because during flooding, you also have good part of the soil being washed to a particular place. We found that during the research covering from Anmanbra to Kogi and I think Benue, those three states farmers take advantage of the recession flood to quickly plant. They plant vegetables because the soil is still moist and can easily produce for them. So in every disaster, we should look for the opportunities there in the dairy. And part of the opportunities is once we have settled the issue of farmers, where they will be, because they probably are the most properly displaced now they can take advantage of the receding flood to quickly plant short crops that will be ready in the next one month or two months or three months.
Then another thing we also need to look at to take advantage of is ensure that farmers are well educated on coping strategies, how to come back from this kind of thing. Because psychologically, emotionally, many of them are already devastated. Of course, Nigeria doesn’t pay attention to that. How do we bring them back to the state where they are willing to produce? We need to pay attention to that. So if we plan properly, if we take control and take care of those who are affected and help them to regain their stand back, I’m sure we can make the most of these disasters and then for the future plan to ensure that the effect is not as bad as we currently experience in terms of food production.
The impact of the Current flood ravaging most States of the Country would have been avoided with proper planning.
Agric Expert and Researcher, Dr Mathew Ojo, disclosed this while featuring on the TVC News flagship programme, Business Nigeria on Friday.
Dr Ojo said the trend over the last few years has shown that proper planning would have prevented the devastating impact of the flood on most parts of the Country.
He added that the most devastating flood in Nigeria before now was the one in 2012 which was followed by another in 2019 which was slightly less devastating than what we have this year.
He said proper planning at all levels especially states would have ensured that farmers are able to plant and protect their livelihood in the event of the current flood which was exacerbated by the impact of Climate change.
He called for adequate planning henceforth to ensure that the nation is protected from the vagaries of natural disasters precipitated by Climate Change which he said cannot be stopped now but put into planning for Agricultural production.
He also expressed worries over the rampaging food inflation which has led to a situation where households are struggling to make ends meet or even afford the basics.
Read More Below…
Well, of course, for many people in the research sector, they would have envisioned this kind of thing happening because in the light of global risk coming from climate change, where you have many countries making preparations and also planning ahead to be able to mitigate the effect of climate change, especially as it concerns food production, Nigeria is not at the forefront of doing that. Apart from the challenge of awareness, there’s also the issue of committed effort, both at the federal level and at the state level, to factor in the possible risk or effect of climate change when it comes to food production. Now, you just talked about flooding, and you realize your statistics. It’s not the first time we’ll be having flooding in the country.
We had one that was very devastating in 2012. We had another one slight one in 2019. And now this one that is reported to have led to over 600 deaths and displaced around 1.4 million household or houses. And also that is also reported about, I think 110.
That’s about 270 or about acres of farmland destroyed. So when you look at all this, one thing is glaring and it’s also the effect or the consequences of lack of proper planning when it comes to things like this. Now, how does all this affect food in a country like ours? You’ve already mentioned it. When you have about 70% of producers exposed to the risk of flooding, especially if their farmlands are located in cold areas, then you can just translate that to what that would mean.
Flooding in the past has affected food security in the country. First in the area of food availability. Why? Because all the factors of production are affected by flood. The producer that the farmer is affected. The land is affected, the labor, those who probably work with him are affected. The capital are also affected. So when that happens, and farms are devastated by this, the entire factors of production that would have made food available are impacted negatively. And that’s why there will be fears concerning food availability in the country once you have this kind of disaster coming. And then it also affects not just food availability, it affects accessibility.
Accessibility in the terms of farmers who probably are not affected personally may not be able to assess their farms physically because maybe the roads leading to their farms or the bridges and all that would have been destroyed by flood. So it becomes physically impossible and impractical for them to go to farm. So if they can’t go to farm, you have food crops wasted there. And so many things they would have harvested probably would be spoke on the farm.
There’s also the issue of economic assets, of course, price. When you have these food crops not being available, for example, the yam you’ve mentioned, the cassava, the maize and also maybe rice.
When these food crops are affected, the prices at the market, of course, will go up. And then means that a country that is already battling with the food inflation of around 23, 24%, as at the last count, and you have a country that is already spending up to $10 billion on food importation annually.
Now, you cannot just translate that to see what that means in terms of food prices in the coming months and then how that will affect household. There’s also the issue of food quality. If you have food stock somewhere and flood comes in and sorts it up, farmers normally would try to see the most they can salvage and sell that will affect the kind of quality of food you get at the market because they just have to survive. And then you also look at the issue of stability.
How stable would the supply be in the light of all this that we are talking about? So it goes to tell us that we need to factor in some of these things. And when I’m talking, usually I like to be specific because this is not just a federal government issue. Unfortunately, we have a country where if you have this kind of disaster happening, you have governors of states throwing their hands up in the air and calling on federal government and the question would be, okay, are there not things that can be done at the state level? Agreed, if this is nature.
But we can plan for it, okay? We can plan for it such that the effect it will have on our food production in particular will not be this disastrous or it will not have this kind of impact on us nationally. And also maybe subnationally.
So these, I think, are the things that we need to start asking ourselves and how we can go forward. Find a way to address some of these things in terms of inflation. Already people are struggling, households are struggling. If you look at what inflation was ten years ago compared to what it is now, for example, in 2012, food inflation was just 9.9% in August compared to what it was in August last month.
This year, in the month of September, and we will live in our September, August to August, 10 years, it has risen by over 134% in just ten years. So it causes for concern, as I always say, but it also shows the lack of planning on our part.
Of course, that’s a very good question. The first thing is this. In our agricultural planning, there is something agriculture that are drawn at the national level and at the state level, efforts should first be made to factor in things like this. Okay? So we don’t just have plannings to assume that lives out the impact of possible effect of climate change on production.
I was in the apartment of a team that was drawing the plan for development plan for Nigeria, I think two years or three years ago. And the entire company brought a plan, and they didn’t factor properly climate change effect until somebody had to raise it to be looked at.
So agricultural planning in Nigeria cannot be done without factoring these kind of issues. So you model your plan, you bring in, let’s say that we have flooding, and from the report, we have 26 states affected out of 36. So you factor that in, if it happens and it affects the entire state, what do we do? What is the plan B for us? So this can be factored in at the point of planning nationally and then states, because I will not stop talking about states.
Some states are so lazy when it comes to ideas and planning. And everybody works for the federal government. That’s one. Number two, each state can look at the state of their own state. There are no areas that are prone to what’s called to flood and areas that are not prone to flood. So in terms of planning where people can go to, because at times it’s difficult for you to tell people, leave your home and move to a place and stay there it takes time, but we can have a plan B where in your state you have located areas that are less prone to flooding and then create space for farming, create space for food production in those areas.
Unfortunately, such areas are left for the Rich Almighty, but the Rich Almighty also need food. So that is one thing that we can do. Number three is we need to start thinking on how to, in the next five years, increase the capacity of our strategic food reserve in the country. I mentioned this earlier, there can be no better time than this because I think I was reading somewhere that the President ordered that you released around 12,000 metric tons, tons of grains.
The question is, what would that do in the midst of all this? But then if we have planned that increment over the years, we probably would have piled up enough that we’ll be able to evaluate the effect of this kind of disaster. So we need to also look at that, how to ensure that each state statistically has these reserves and then they are in the areas where they cannot be easily affected by flood, and then we build up the storage over time.
What I think we can also do, because farmers also need to start learning how to adapt some of these things, okay, apart from some of these flood caused by baby dams and all that continuous rain can also contribute.
So how do farmers prepare for this? Okay, how do we prepare our farmers for all things like this in terms of training them, in terms of teaching them adaptation practices and how to prepare when they are also planning to go into production.
What I fear the most is the number of households that will further fall below or drop into poverty. Okay, so let’s put it in perspective. I think a few days back, a few weeks back, the minister I was talking about, that we are only currently using about 45% of the agricultural land available in Nigeria. So if you look at that, just 44%. So 56% not yet used. We’re having issues with food production and then the issue of insecurity came in that prevent or preventing some farmers to assess their farmlands.
Then we have boundary and we have now flood. So if it’s just around 44% who have been able to use who knows how many percentage has been reduced by the combination of all these. Maybe we are doing like top 40 or maybe 30 something percent in terms of using agricultural land. And that translates to you not being able to produce. Okay, so the whole thing has to do with the food has to be available.
First when it is not available, then immediately it translates to higher price. The ones that are available are sold at a higher price. And when they are sold at a higher price, it becomes difficult for households to be able to afford some of these prices. So that is where the challenge is, where people are not able to eat and feed themselves. I mean, one thing that is common for both the rich and the poor is that they have to eat.
So it doesn’t contact anybody and it gets to who has the money to buy what they need to eat. So some people have been pauperised economically because of non availability of food. That is disturbing because the easiest thing to translate or to get out of this would be crime. We’ve done research and we’ve come in our analysis we’ve seen that when you have people not being employed, gainfully employed, it easily translates into crime. And yet you have farmers who target have gone and the opportunity of going to their farm and at least produce something for themselves.
If they are able to produce, they don’t do something else and food is not available, prices go high. My concern is I don’t know what food inflation will be in the coming months. It’s already disturbing to me because if at 23.24% or 34% people are crying, the government needs to urgently look at what can be done. And unfortunately this is a year preceding election so you find people are not listening.
Most people are concerned about electioneering campaigns and all that. But honestly speaking, Nigerians need to plan ahead because with this flood disaster that we are grappling with, with the issue of insecurity, food availability for the coming years may be a challenge for the entire country. It will definitely be, yes. And I’m just going to ask you perhaps what kind of people are we?
And if we do pay attention to information and warnings, for instance, on the part of government, the part of government and even the farmers themselves, does this perhaps tell about the kind of people that we are? Yes, it does. I think my major problem with the country like ours, but those at the helms of affairs and those who are supposed to plan is the uttered disregard for data.
Okay, now you have a government that is not willing easily to fund data collection. And when you have people presenting data to the government so that we can at least have that awareness to start planning, you’ll find government officials coming up and spending hours over minutes trying to refute such data. What data does is to give you the awareness to pay attention in case you are not it’s not necessarily about rubbish in your government, but unfortunately, where you have independent organization telling you, okay, 79% of this is happening, 22% of this is, and attention is not done. So you see, we are a country that hardly use data for what it ought to be useful.
We just hear and the news goes around and everybody keeps quiet. If we have been paying attention to both gathering of data and using data to inform decision making, I’m sure we’ll be at a better place as a nation collective. But like I said, it’s reported. Newspaper said over 110,000 land affected. Others are reporting lower. You really can’t tell the exact figure because no such data is readily available. And honestly, with my journey underestimating the impact that this flood, this current one, is going to have on food production in Nigeria, food producti. Then the farmers themselves, the individuals who hitherto have been gainfully employed, become jobless, their families become exposed to any kind of risk available to wherever they are put back.
And I bet you after a few weeks or a few months, they forget them. Nobody remembers that some farmers have been displaced. Nobody goes to them to find out their welfare. What plans do we have? If we have over 70% of the population into farming and maybe majority of them are affected by floods. What plans do we have to ensure that. Okay. When they are displaced from where they are and take them to somewhere they can still continue to do something a bit small. They can have small plot of land to maybe grow vegetables or grow maize. Which will be ready in three months time or thereabout for feeding and also for income. Practically nothing, I bet you.
So that is where I am most concerned. That is what disturbs me. You have a nation that does not look ahead for its citizens. It becomes challenging. All right? They are farmers. They produce the food we eat. We need to take care of them when they are faced by disaster or whatever you want to call it, when they are challenged in ensuring that they produce.
Thank you very much for that question. I think a few years back I was involved in a research project that looked at taking advantage of flooding, okay. To boost production. I think that research was funded by International Water Management Institute. Remember what we did and what we found out. You see, when you have flood, especially areas where the river banks overflow is banked and it has receded because during flooding, you also have good part of the soil being washed to a particular place. We found that during the research covering from Anmanbra to Kogi and I think Benue, those three states farmers take advantage of the recession flood to quickly plant. They plant vegetables because the soil is still moist and can easily produce for them. So in every disaster, we should look for the opportunities there in the dairy. And part of the opportunities is once we have settled the issue of farmers, where they will be, because they probably are the most properly displaced now they can take advantage of the receding flood to quickly plant short crops that will be ready in the next one month or two months or three months.
Then another thing we also need to look at to take advantage of is ensure that farmers are well educated on coping strategies, how to come back from this kind of thing. Because psychologically, emotionally, many of them are already devastated. Of course, Nigeria doesn’t pay attention to that. How do we bring them back to the state where they are willing to produce? We need to pay attention to that. So if we plan properly, if we take control and take care of those who are affected and help them to regain their stand back, I’m sure we can make the most of these disasters and then for the future plan to ensure that the effect is not as bad as we currently experience in terms of food production.
The impact of the Current flood ravaging most States of the Country would have been avoided with proper planning.
Agric Expert and Researcher, Dr Mathew Ojo, disclosed this while featuring on the TVC News flagship programme, Business Nigeria on Friday.
Dr Ojo said the trend over the last few years has shown that proper planning would have prevented the devastating impact of the flood on most parts of the Country.
He added that the most devastating flood in Nigeria before now was the one in 2012 which was followed by another in 2019 which was slightly less devastating than what we have this year.
He said proper planning at all levels especially states would have ensured that farmers are able to plant and protect their livelihood in the event of the current flood which was exacerbated by the impact of Climate change.
He called for adequate planning henceforth to ensure that the nation is protected from the vagaries of natural disasters precipitated by Climate Change which he said cannot be stopped now but put into planning for Agricultural production.
He also expressed worries over the rampaging food inflation which has led to a situation where households are struggling to make ends meet or even afford the basics.
Read More Below…
Well, of course, for many people in the research sector, they would have envisioned this kind of thing happening because in the light of global risk coming from climate change, where you have many countries making preparations and also planning ahead to be able to mitigate the effect of climate change, especially as it concerns food production, Nigeria is not at the forefront of doing that. Apart from the challenge of awareness, there’s also the issue of committed effort, both at the federal level and at the state level, to factor in the possible risk or effect of climate change when it comes to food production. Now, you just talked about flooding, and you realize your statistics. It’s not the first time we’ll be having flooding in the country.
We had one that was very devastating in 2012. We had another one slight one in 2019. And now this one that is reported to have led to over 600 deaths and displaced around 1.4 million household or houses. And also that is also reported about, I think 110.
That’s about 270 or about acres of farmland destroyed. So when you look at all this, one thing is glaring and it’s also the effect or the consequences of lack of proper planning when it comes to things like this. Now, how does all this affect food in a country like ours? You’ve already mentioned it. When you have about 70% of producers exposed to the risk of flooding, especially if their farmlands are located in cold areas, then you can just translate that to what that would mean.
Flooding in the past has affected food security in the country. First in the area of food availability. Why? Because all the factors of production are affected by flood. The producer that the farmer is affected. The land is affected, the labor, those who probably work with him are affected. The capital are also affected. So when that happens, and farms are devastated by this, the entire factors of production that would have made food available are impacted negatively. And that’s why there will be fears concerning food availability in the country once you have this kind of disaster coming. And then it also affects not just food availability, it affects accessibility.
Accessibility in the terms of farmers who probably are not affected personally may not be able to assess their farms physically because maybe the roads leading to their farms or the bridges and all that would have been destroyed by flood. So it becomes physically impossible and impractical for them to go to farm. So if they can’t go to farm, you have food crops wasted there. And so many things they would have harvested probably would be spoke on the farm.
There’s also the issue of economic assets, of course, price. When you have these food crops not being available, for example, the yam you’ve mentioned, the cassava, the maize and also maybe rice.
When these food crops are affected, the prices at the market, of course, will go up. And then means that a country that is already battling with the food inflation of around 23, 24%, as at the last count, and you have a country that is already spending up to $10 billion on food importation annually.
Now, you cannot just translate that to see what that means in terms of food prices in the coming months and then how that will affect household. There’s also the issue of food quality. If you have food stock somewhere and flood comes in and sorts it up, farmers normally would try to see the most they can salvage and sell that will affect the kind of quality of food you get at the market because they just have to survive. And then you also look at the issue of stability.
How stable would the supply be in the light of all this that we are talking about? So it goes to tell us that we need to factor in some of these things. And when I’m talking, usually I like to be specific because this is not just a federal government issue. Unfortunately, we have a country where if you have this kind of disaster happening, you have governors of states throwing their hands up in the air and calling on federal government and the question would be, okay, are there not things that can be done at the state level? Agreed, if this is nature.
But we can plan for it, okay? We can plan for it such that the effect it will have on our food production in particular will not be this disastrous or it will not have this kind of impact on us nationally. And also maybe subnationally.
So these, I think, are the things that we need to start asking ourselves and how we can go forward. Find a way to address some of these things in terms of inflation. Already people are struggling, households are struggling. If you look at what inflation was ten years ago compared to what it is now, for example, in 2012, food inflation was just 9.9% in August compared to what it was in August last month.
This year, in the month of September, and we will live in our September, August to August, 10 years, it has risen by over 134% in just ten years. So it causes for concern, as I always say, but it also shows the lack of planning on our part.
Of course, that’s a very good question. The first thing is this. In our agricultural planning, there is something agriculture that are drawn at the national level and at the state level, efforts should first be made to factor in things like this. Okay? So we don’t just have plannings to assume that lives out the impact of possible effect of climate change on production.
I was in the apartment of a team that was drawing the plan for development plan for Nigeria, I think two years or three years ago. And the entire company brought a plan, and they didn’t factor properly climate change effect until somebody had to raise it to be looked at.
So agricultural planning in Nigeria cannot be done without factoring these kind of issues. So you model your plan, you bring in, let’s say that we have flooding, and from the report, we have 26 states affected out of 36. So you factor that in, if it happens and it affects the entire state, what do we do? What is the plan B for us? So this can be factored in at the point of planning nationally and then states, because I will not stop talking about states.
Some states are so lazy when it comes to ideas and planning. And everybody works for the federal government. That’s one. Number two, each state can look at the state of their own state. There are no areas that are prone to what’s called to flood and areas that are not prone to flood. So in terms of planning where people can go to, because at times it’s difficult for you to tell people, leave your home and move to a place and stay there it takes time, but we can have a plan B where in your state you have located areas that are less prone to flooding and then create space for farming, create space for food production in those areas.
Unfortunately, such areas are left for the Rich Almighty, but the Rich Almighty also need food. So that is one thing that we can do. Number three is we need to start thinking on how to, in the next five years, increase the capacity of our strategic food reserve in the country. I mentioned this earlier, there can be no better time than this because I think I was reading somewhere that the President ordered that you released around 12,000 metric tons, tons of grains.
The question is, what would that do in the midst of all this? But then if we have planned that increment over the years, we probably would have piled up enough that we’ll be able to evaluate the effect of this kind of disaster. So we need to also look at that, how to ensure that each state statistically has these reserves and then they are in the areas where they cannot be easily affected by flood, and then we build up the storage over time.
What I think we can also do, because farmers also need to start learning how to adapt some of these things, okay, apart from some of these flood caused by baby dams and all that continuous rain can also contribute.
So how do farmers prepare for this? Okay, how do we prepare our farmers for all things like this in terms of training them, in terms of teaching them adaptation practices and how to prepare when they are also planning to go into production.
What I fear the most is the number of households that will further fall below or drop into poverty. Okay, so let’s put it in perspective. I think a few days back, a few weeks back, the minister I was talking about, that we are only currently using about 45% of the agricultural land available in Nigeria. So if you look at that, just 44%. So 56% not yet used. We’re having issues with food production and then the issue of insecurity came in that prevent or preventing some farmers to assess their farmlands.
Then we have boundary and we have now flood. So if it’s just around 44% who have been able to use who knows how many percentage has been reduced by the combination of all these. Maybe we are doing like top 40 or maybe 30 something percent in terms of using agricultural land. And that translates to you not being able to produce. Okay, so the whole thing has to do with the food has to be available.
First when it is not available, then immediately it translates to higher price. The ones that are available are sold at a higher price. And when they are sold at a higher price, it becomes difficult for households to be able to afford some of these prices. So that is where the challenge is, where people are not able to eat and feed themselves. I mean, one thing that is common for both the rich and the poor is that they have to eat.
So it doesn’t contact anybody and it gets to who has the money to buy what they need to eat. So some people have been pauperised economically because of non availability of food. That is disturbing because the easiest thing to translate or to get out of this would be crime. We’ve done research and we’ve come in our analysis we’ve seen that when you have people not being employed, gainfully employed, it easily translates into crime. And yet you have farmers who target have gone and the opportunity of going to their farm and at least produce something for themselves.
If they are able to produce, they don’t do something else and food is not available, prices go high. My concern is I don’t know what food inflation will be in the coming months. It’s already disturbing to me because if at 23.24% or 34% people are crying, the government needs to urgently look at what can be done. And unfortunately this is a year preceding election so you find people are not listening.
Most people are concerned about electioneering campaigns and all that. But honestly speaking, Nigerians need to plan ahead because with this flood disaster that we are grappling with, with the issue of insecurity, food availability for the coming years may be a challenge for the entire country. It will definitely be, yes. And I’m just going to ask you perhaps what kind of people are we?
And if we do pay attention to information and warnings, for instance, on the part of government, the part of government and even the farmers themselves, does this perhaps tell about the kind of people that we are? Yes, it does. I think my major problem with the country like ours, but those at the helms of affairs and those who are supposed to plan is the uttered disregard for data.
Okay, now you have a government that is not willing easily to fund data collection. And when you have people presenting data to the government so that we can at least have that awareness to start planning, you’ll find government officials coming up and spending hours over minutes trying to refute such data. What data does is to give you the awareness to pay attention in case you are not it’s not necessarily about rubbish in your government, but unfortunately, where you have independent organization telling you, okay, 79% of this is happening, 22% of this is, and attention is not done. So you see, we are a country that hardly use data for what it ought to be useful.
We just hear and the news goes around and everybody keeps quiet. If we have been paying attention to both gathering of data and using data to inform decision making, I’m sure we’ll be at a better place as a nation collective. But like I said, it’s reported. Newspaper said over 110,000 land affected. Others are reporting lower. You really can’t tell the exact figure because no such data is readily available. And honestly, with my journey underestimating the impact that this flood, this current one, is going to have on food production in Nigeria, food producti. Then the farmers themselves, the individuals who hitherto have been gainfully employed, become jobless, their families become exposed to any kind of risk available to wherever they are put back.
And I bet you after a few weeks or a few months, they forget them. Nobody remembers that some farmers have been displaced. Nobody goes to them to find out their welfare. What plans do we have? If we have over 70% of the population into farming and maybe majority of them are affected by floods. What plans do we have to ensure that. Okay. When they are displaced from where they are and take them to somewhere they can still continue to do something a bit small. They can have small plot of land to maybe grow vegetables or grow maize. Which will be ready in three months time or thereabout for feeding and also for income. Practically nothing, I bet you.
So that is where I am most concerned. That is what disturbs me. You have a nation that does not look ahead for its citizens. It becomes challenging. All right? They are farmers. They produce the food we eat. We need to take care of them when they are faced by disaster or whatever you want to call it, when they are challenged in ensuring that they produce.
Thank you very much for that question. I think a few years back I was involved in a research project that looked at taking advantage of flooding, okay. To boost production. I think that research was funded by International Water Management Institute. Remember what we did and what we found out. You see, when you have flood, especially areas where the river banks overflow is banked and it has receded because during flooding, you also have good part of the soil being washed to a particular place. We found that during the research covering from Anmanbra to Kogi and I think Benue, those three states farmers take advantage of the recession flood to quickly plant. They plant vegetables because the soil is still moist and can easily produce for them. So in every disaster, we should look for the opportunities there in the dairy. And part of the opportunities is once we have settled the issue of farmers, where they will be, because they probably are the most properly displaced now they can take advantage of the receding flood to quickly plant short crops that will be ready in the next one month or two months or three months.
Then another thing we also need to look at to take advantage of is ensure that farmers are well educated on coping strategies, how to come back from this kind of thing. Because psychologically, emotionally, many of them are already devastated. Of course, Nigeria doesn’t pay attention to that. How do we bring them back to the state where they are willing to produce? We need to pay attention to that. So if we plan properly, if we take control and take care of those who are affected and help them to regain their stand back, I’m sure we can make the most of these disasters and then for the future plan to ensure that the effect is not as bad as we currently experience in terms of food production.
The impact of the Current flood ravaging most States of the Country would have been avoided with proper planning.
Agric Expert and Researcher, Dr Mathew Ojo, disclosed this while featuring on the TVC News flagship programme, Business Nigeria on Friday.
Dr Ojo said the trend over the last few years has shown that proper planning would have prevented the devastating impact of the flood on most parts of the Country.
He added that the most devastating flood in Nigeria before now was the one in 2012 which was followed by another in 2019 which was slightly less devastating than what we have this year.
He said proper planning at all levels especially states would have ensured that farmers are able to plant and protect their livelihood in the event of the current flood which was exacerbated by the impact of Climate change.
He called for adequate planning henceforth to ensure that the nation is protected from the vagaries of natural disasters precipitated by Climate Change which he said cannot be stopped now but put into planning for Agricultural production.
He also expressed worries over the rampaging food inflation which has led to a situation where households are struggling to make ends meet or even afford the basics.
Read More Below…
Well, of course, for many people in the research sector, they would have envisioned this kind of thing happening because in the light of global risk coming from climate change, where you have many countries making preparations and also planning ahead to be able to mitigate the effect of climate change, especially as it concerns food production, Nigeria is not at the forefront of doing that. Apart from the challenge of awareness, there’s also the issue of committed effort, both at the federal level and at the state level, to factor in the possible risk or effect of climate change when it comes to food production. Now, you just talked about flooding, and you realize your statistics. It’s not the first time we’ll be having flooding in the country.
We had one that was very devastating in 2012. We had another one slight one in 2019. And now this one that is reported to have led to over 600 deaths and displaced around 1.4 million household or houses. And also that is also reported about, I think 110.
That’s about 270 or about acres of farmland destroyed. So when you look at all this, one thing is glaring and it’s also the effect or the consequences of lack of proper planning when it comes to things like this. Now, how does all this affect food in a country like ours? You’ve already mentioned it. When you have about 70% of producers exposed to the risk of flooding, especially if their farmlands are located in cold areas, then you can just translate that to what that would mean.
Flooding in the past has affected food security in the country. First in the area of food availability. Why? Because all the factors of production are affected by flood. The producer that the farmer is affected. The land is affected, the labor, those who probably work with him are affected. The capital are also affected. So when that happens, and farms are devastated by this, the entire factors of production that would have made food available are impacted negatively. And that’s why there will be fears concerning food availability in the country once you have this kind of disaster coming. And then it also affects not just food availability, it affects accessibility.
Accessibility in the terms of farmers who probably are not affected personally may not be able to assess their farms physically because maybe the roads leading to their farms or the bridges and all that would have been destroyed by flood. So it becomes physically impossible and impractical for them to go to farm. So if they can’t go to farm, you have food crops wasted there. And so many things they would have harvested probably would be spoke on the farm.
There’s also the issue of economic assets, of course, price. When you have these food crops not being available, for example, the yam you’ve mentioned, the cassava, the maize and also maybe rice.
When these food crops are affected, the prices at the market, of course, will go up. And then means that a country that is already battling with the food inflation of around 23, 24%, as at the last count, and you have a country that is already spending up to $10 billion on food importation annually.
Now, you cannot just translate that to see what that means in terms of food prices in the coming months and then how that will affect household. There’s also the issue of food quality. If you have food stock somewhere and flood comes in and sorts it up, farmers normally would try to see the most they can salvage and sell that will affect the kind of quality of food you get at the market because they just have to survive. And then you also look at the issue of stability.
How stable would the supply be in the light of all this that we are talking about? So it goes to tell us that we need to factor in some of these things. And when I’m talking, usually I like to be specific because this is not just a federal government issue. Unfortunately, we have a country where if you have this kind of disaster happening, you have governors of states throwing their hands up in the air and calling on federal government and the question would be, okay, are there not things that can be done at the state level? Agreed, if this is nature.
But we can plan for it, okay? We can plan for it such that the effect it will have on our food production in particular will not be this disastrous or it will not have this kind of impact on us nationally. And also maybe subnationally.
So these, I think, are the things that we need to start asking ourselves and how we can go forward. Find a way to address some of these things in terms of inflation. Already people are struggling, households are struggling. If you look at what inflation was ten years ago compared to what it is now, for example, in 2012, food inflation was just 9.9% in August compared to what it was in August last month.
This year, in the month of September, and we will live in our September, August to August, 10 years, it has risen by over 134% in just ten years. So it causes for concern, as I always say, but it also shows the lack of planning on our part.
Of course, that’s a very good question. The first thing is this. In our agricultural planning, there is something agriculture that are drawn at the national level and at the state level, efforts should first be made to factor in things like this. Okay? So we don’t just have plannings to assume that lives out the impact of possible effect of climate change on production.
I was in the apartment of a team that was drawing the plan for development plan for Nigeria, I think two years or three years ago. And the entire company brought a plan, and they didn’t factor properly climate change effect until somebody had to raise it to be looked at.
So agricultural planning in Nigeria cannot be done without factoring these kind of issues. So you model your plan, you bring in, let’s say that we have flooding, and from the report, we have 26 states affected out of 36. So you factor that in, if it happens and it affects the entire state, what do we do? What is the plan B for us? So this can be factored in at the point of planning nationally and then states, because I will not stop talking about states.
Some states are so lazy when it comes to ideas and planning. And everybody works for the federal government. That’s one. Number two, each state can look at the state of their own state. There are no areas that are prone to what’s called to flood and areas that are not prone to flood. So in terms of planning where people can go to, because at times it’s difficult for you to tell people, leave your home and move to a place and stay there it takes time, but we can have a plan B where in your state you have located areas that are less prone to flooding and then create space for farming, create space for food production in those areas.
Unfortunately, such areas are left for the Rich Almighty, but the Rich Almighty also need food. So that is one thing that we can do. Number three is we need to start thinking on how to, in the next five years, increase the capacity of our strategic food reserve in the country. I mentioned this earlier, there can be no better time than this because I think I was reading somewhere that the President ordered that you released around 12,000 metric tons, tons of grains.
The question is, what would that do in the midst of all this? But then if we have planned that increment over the years, we probably would have piled up enough that we’ll be able to evaluate the effect of this kind of disaster. So we need to also look at that, how to ensure that each state statistically has these reserves and then they are in the areas where they cannot be easily affected by flood, and then we build up the storage over time.
What I think we can also do, because farmers also need to start learning how to adapt some of these things, okay, apart from some of these flood caused by baby dams and all that continuous rain can also contribute.
So how do farmers prepare for this? Okay, how do we prepare our farmers for all things like this in terms of training them, in terms of teaching them adaptation practices and how to prepare when they are also planning to go into production.
What I fear the most is the number of households that will further fall below or drop into poverty. Okay, so let’s put it in perspective. I think a few days back, a few weeks back, the minister I was talking about, that we are only currently using about 45% of the agricultural land available in Nigeria. So if you look at that, just 44%. So 56% not yet used. We’re having issues with food production and then the issue of insecurity came in that prevent or preventing some farmers to assess their farmlands.
Then we have boundary and we have now flood. So if it’s just around 44% who have been able to use who knows how many percentage has been reduced by the combination of all these. Maybe we are doing like top 40 or maybe 30 something percent in terms of using agricultural land. And that translates to you not being able to produce. Okay, so the whole thing has to do with the food has to be available.
First when it is not available, then immediately it translates to higher price. The ones that are available are sold at a higher price. And when they are sold at a higher price, it becomes difficult for households to be able to afford some of these prices. So that is where the challenge is, where people are not able to eat and feed themselves. I mean, one thing that is common for both the rich and the poor is that they have to eat.
So it doesn’t contact anybody and it gets to who has the money to buy what they need to eat. So some people have been pauperised economically because of non availability of food. That is disturbing because the easiest thing to translate or to get out of this would be crime. We’ve done research and we’ve come in our analysis we’ve seen that when you have people not being employed, gainfully employed, it easily translates into crime. And yet you have farmers who target have gone and the opportunity of going to their farm and at least produce something for themselves.
If they are able to produce, they don’t do something else and food is not available, prices go high. My concern is I don’t know what food inflation will be in the coming months. It’s already disturbing to me because if at 23.24% or 34% people are crying, the government needs to urgently look at what can be done. And unfortunately this is a year preceding election so you find people are not listening.
Most people are concerned about electioneering campaigns and all that. But honestly speaking, Nigerians need to plan ahead because with this flood disaster that we are grappling with, with the issue of insecurity, food availability for the coming years may be a challenge for the entire country. It will definitely be, yes. And I’m just going to ask you perhaps what kind of people are we?
And if we do pay attention to information and warnings, for instance, on the part of government, the part of government and even the farmers themselves, does this perhaps tell about the kind of people that we are? Yes, it does. I think my major problem with the country like ours, but those at the helms of affairs and those who are supposed to plan is the uttered disregard for data.
Okay, now you have a government that is not willing easily to fund data collection. And when you have people presenting data to the government so that we can at least have that awareness to start planning, you’ll find government officials coming up and spending hours over minutes trying to refute such data. What data does is to give you the awareness to pay attention in case you are not it’s not necessarily about rubbish in your government, but unfortunately, where you have independent organization telling you, okay, 79% of this is happening, 22% of this is, and attention is not done. So you see, we are a country that hardly use data for what it ought to be useful.
We just hear and the news goes around and everybody keeps quiet. If we have been paying attention to both gathering of data and using data to inform decision making, I’m sure we’ll be at a better place as a nation collective. But like I said, it’s reported. Newspaper said over 110,000 land affected. Others are reporting lower. You really can’t tell the exact figure because no such data is readily available. And honestly, with my journey underestimating the impact that this flood, this current one, is going to have on food production in Nigeria, food producti. Then the farmers themselves, the individuals who hitherto have been gainfully employed, become jobless, their families become exposed to any kind of risk available to wherever they are put back.
And I bet you after a few weeks or a few months, they forget them. Nobody remembers that some farmers have been displaced. Nobody goes to them to find out their welfare. What plans do we have? If we have over 70% of the population into farming and maybe majority of them are affected by floods. What plans do we have to ensure that. Okay. When they are displaced from where they are and take them to somewhere they can still continue to do something a bit small. They can have small plot of land to maybe grow vegetables or grow maize. Which will be ready in three months time or thereabout for feeding and also for income. Practically nothing, I bet you.
So that is where I am most concerned. That is what disturbs me. You have a nation that does not look ahead for its citizens. It becomes challenging. All right? They are farmers. They produce the food we eat. We need to take care of them when they are faced by disaster or whatever you want to call it, when they are challenged in ensuring that they produce.
Thank you very much for that question. I think a few years back I was involved in a research project that looked at taking advantage of flooding, okay. To boost production. I think that research was funded by International Water Management Institute. Remember what we did and what we found out. You see, when you have flood, especially areas where the river banks overflow is banked and it has receded because during flooding, you also have good part of the soil being washed to a particular place. We found that during the research covering from Anmanbra to Kogi and I think Benue, those three states farmers take advantage of the recession flood to quickly plant. They plant vegetables because the soil is still moist and can easily produce for them. So in every disaster, we should look for the opportunities there in the dairy. And part of the opportunities is once we have settled the issue of farmers, where they will be, because they probably are the most properly displaced now they can take advantage of the receding flood to quickly plant short crops that will be ready in the next one month or two months or three months.
Then another thing we also need to look at to take advantage of is ensure that farmers are well educated on coping strategies, how to come back from this kind of thing. Because psychologically, emotionally, many of them are already devastated. Of course, Nigeria doesn’t pay attention to that. How do we bring them back to the state where they are willing to produce? We need to pay attention to that. So if we plan properly, if we take control and take care of those who are affected and help them to regain their stand back, I’m sure we can make the most of these disasters and then for the future plan to ensure that the effect is not as bad as we currently experience in terms of food production.
The impact of the Current flood ravaging most States of the Country would have been avoided with proper planning.
Agric Expert and Researcher, Dr Mathew Ojo, disclosed this while featuring on the TVC News flagship programme, Business Nigeria on Friday.
Dr Ojo said the trend over the last few years has shown that proper planning would have prevented the devastating impact of the flood on most parts of the Country.
He added that the most devastating flood in Nigeria before now was the one in 2012 which was followed by another in 2019 which was slightly less devastating than what we have this year.
He said proper planning at all levels especially states would have ensured that farmers are able to plant and protect their livelihood in the event of the current flood which was exacerbated by the impact of Climate change.
He called for adequate planning henceforth to ensure that the nation is protected from the vagaries of natural disasters precipitated by Climate Change which he said cannot be stopped now but put into planning for Agricultural production.
He also expressed worries over the rampaging food inflation which has led to a situation where households are struggling to make ends meet or even afford the basics.
Read More Below…
Well, of course, for many people in the research sector, they would have envisioned this kind of thing happening because in the light of global risk coming from climate change, where you have many countries making preparations and also planning ahead to be able to mitigate the effect of climate change, especially as it concerns food production, Nigeria is not at the forefront of doing that. Apart from the challenge of awareness, there’s also the issue of committed effort, both at the federal level and at the state level, to factor in the possible risk or effect of climate change when it comes to food production. Now, you just talked about flooding, and you realize your statistics. It’s not the first time we’ll be having flooding in the country.
We had one that was very devastating in 2012. We had another one slight one in 2019. And now this one that is reported to have led to over 600 deaths and displaced around 1.4 million household or houses. And also that is also reported about, I think 110.
That’s about 270 or about acres of farmland destroyed. So when you look at all this, one thing is glaring and it’s also the effect or the consequences of lack of proper planning when it comes to things like this. Now, how does all this affect food in a country like ours? You’ve already mentioned it. When you have about 70% of producers exposed to the risk of flooding, especially if their farmlands are located in cold areas, then you can just translate that to what that would mean.
Flooding in the past has affected food security in the country. First in the area of food availability. Why? Because all the factors of production are affected by flood. The producer that the farmer is affected. The land is affected, the labor, those who probably work with him are affected. The capital are also affected. So when that happens, and farms are devastated by this, the entire factors of production that would have made food available are impacted negatively. And that’s why there will be fears concerning food availability in the country once you have this kind of disaster coming. And then it also affects not just food availability, it affects accessibility.
Accessibility in the terms of farmers who probably are not affected personally may not be able to assess their farms physically because maybe the roads leading to their farms or the bridges and all that would have been destroyed by flood. So it becomes physically impossible and impractical for them to go to farm. So if they can’t go to farm, you have food crops wasted there. And so many things they would have harvested probably would be spoke on the farm.
There’s also the issue of economic assets, of course, price. When you have these food crops not being available, for example, the yam you’ve mentioned, the cassava, the maize and also maybe rice.
When these food crops are affected, the prices at the market, of course, will go up. And then means that a country that is already battling with the food inflation of around 23, 24%, as at the last count, and you have a country that is already spending up to $10 billion on food importation annually.
Now, you cannot just translate that to see what that means in terms of food prices in the coming months and then how that will affect household. There’s also the issue of food quality. If you have food stock somewhere and flood comes in and sorts it up, farmers normally would try to see the most they can salvage and sell that will affect the kind of quality of food you get at the market because they just have to survive. And then you also look at the issue of stability.
How stable would the supply be in the light of all this that we are talking about? So it goes to tell us that we need to factor in some of these things. And when I’m talking, usually I like to be specific because this is not just a federal government issue. Unfortunately, we have a country where if you have this kind of disaster happening, you have governors of states throwing their hands up in the air and calling on federal government and the question would be, okay, are there not things that can be done at the state level? Agreed, if this is nature.
But we can plan for it, okay? We can plan for it such that the effect it will have on our food production in particular will not be this disastrous or it will not have this kind of impact on us nationally. And also maybe subnationally.
So these, I think, are the things that we need to start asking ourselves and how we can go forward. Find a way to address some of these things in terms of inflation. Already people are struggling, households are struggling. If you look at what inflation was ten years ago compared to what it is now, for example, in 2012, food inflation was just 9.9% in August compared to what it was in August last month.
This year, in the month of September, and we will live in our September, August to August, 10 years, it has risen by over 134% in just ten years. So it causes for concern, as I always say, but it also shows the lack of planning on our part.
Of course, that’s a very good question. The first thing is this. In our agricultural planning, there is something agriculture that are drawn at the national level and at the state level, efforts should first be made to factor in things like this. Okay? So we don’t just have plannings to assume that lives out the impact of possible effect of climate change on production.
I was in the apartment of a team that was drawing the plan for development plan for Nigeria, I think two years or three years ago. And the entire company brought a plan, and they didn’t factor properly climate change effect until somebody had to raise it to be looked at.
So agricultural planning in Nigeria cannot be done without factoring these kind of issues. So you model your plan, you bring in, let’s say that we have flooding, and from the report, we have 26 states affected out of 36. So you factor that in, if it happens and it affects the entire state, what do we do? What is the plan B for us? So this can be factored in at the point of planning nationally and then states, because I will not stop talking about states.
Some states are so lazy when it comes to ideas and planning. And everybody works for the federal government. That’s one. Number two, each state can look at the state of their own state. There are no areas that are prone to what’s called to flood and areas that are not prone to flood. So in terms of planning where people can go to, because at times it’s difficult for you to tell people, leave your home and move to a place and stay there it takes time, but we can have a plan B where in your state you have located areas that are less prone to flooding and then create space for farming, create space for food production in those areas.
Unfortunately, such areas are left for the Rich Almighty, but the Rich Almighty also need food. So that is one thing that we can do. Number three is we need to start thinking on how to, in the next five years, increase the capacity of our strategic food reserve in the country. I mentioned this earlier, there can be no better time than this because I think I was reading somewhere that the President ordered that you released around 12,000 metric tons, tons of grains.
The question is, what would that do in the midst of all this? But then if we have planned that increment over the years, we probably would have piled up enough that we’ll be able to evaluate the effect of this kind of disaster. So we need to also look at that, how to ensure that each state statistically has these reserves and then they are in the areas where they cannot be easily affected by flood, and then we build up the storage over time.
What I think we can also do, because farmers also need to start learning how to adapt some of these things, okay, apart from some of these flood caused by baby dams and all that continuous rain can also contribute.
So how do farmers prepare for this? Okay, how do we prepare our farmers for all things like this in terms of training them, in terms of teaching them adaptation practices and how to prepare when they are also planning to go into production.
What I fear the most is the number of households that will further fall below or drop into poverty. Okay, so let’s put it in perspective. I think a few days back, a few weeks back, the minister I was talking about, that we are only currently using about 45% of the agricultural land available in Nigeria. So if you look at that, just 44%. So 56% not yet used. We’re having issues with food production and then the issue of insecurity came in that prevent or preventing some farmers to assess their farmlands.
Then we have boundary and we have now flood. So if it’s just around 44% who have been able to use who knows how many percentage has been reduced by the combination of all these. Maybe we are doing like top 40 or maybe 30 something percent in terms of using agricultural land. And that translates to you not being able to produce. Okay, so the whole thing has to do with the food has to be available.
First when it is not available, then immediately it translates to higher price. The ones that are available are sold at a higher price. And when they are sold at a higher price, it becomes difficult for households to be able to afford some of these prices. So that is where the challenge is, where people are not able to eat and feed themselves. I mean, one thing that is common for both the rich and the poor is that they have to eat.
So it doesn’t contact anybody and it gets to who has the money to buy what they need to eat. So some people have been pauperised economically because of non availability of food. That is disturbing because the easiest thing to translate or to get out of this would be crime. We’ve done research and we’ve come in our analysis we’ve seen that when you have people not being employed, gainfully employed, it easily translates into crime. And yet you have farmers who target have gone and the opportunity of going to their farm and at least produce something for themselves.
If they are able to produce, they don’t do something else and food is not available, prices go high. My concern is I don’t know what food inflation will be in the coming months. It’s already disturbing to me because if at 23.24% or 34% people are crying, the government needs to urgently look at what can be done. And unfortunately this is a year preceding election so you find people are not listening.
Most people are concerned about electioneering campaigns and all that. But honestly speaking, Nigerians need to plan ahead because with this flood disaster that we are grappling with, with the issue of insecurity, food availability for the coming years may be a challenge for the entire country. It will definitely be, yes. And I’m just going to ask you perhaps what kind of people are we?
And if we do pay attention to information and warnings, for instance, on the part of government, the part of government and even the farmers themselves, does this perhaps tell about the kind of people that we are? Yes, it does. I think my major problem with the country like ours, but those at the helms of affairs and those who are supposed to plan is the uttered disregard for data.
Okay, now you have a government that is not willing easily to fund data collection. And when you have people presenting data to the government so that we can at least have that awareness to start planning, you’ll find government officials coming up and spending hours over minutes trying to refute such data. What data does is to give you the awareness to pay attention in case you are not it’s not necessarily about rubbish in your government, but unfortunately, where you have independent organization telling you, okay, 79% of this is happening, 22% of this is, and attention is not done. So you see, we are a country that hardly use data for what it ought to be useful.
We just hear and the news goes around and everybody keeps quiet. If we have been paying attention to both gathering of data and using data to inform decision making, I’m sure we’ll be at a better place as a nation collective. But like I said, it’s reported. Newspaper said over 110,000 land affected. Others are reporting lower. You really can’t tell the exact figure because no such data is readily available. And honestly, with my journey underestimating the impact that this flood, this current one, is going to have on food production in Nigeria, food producti. Then the farmers themselves, the individuals who hitherto have been gainfully employed, become jobless, their families become exposed to any kind of risk available to wherever they are put back.
And I bet you after a few weeks or a few months, they forget them. Nobody remembers that some farmers have been displaced. Nobody goes to them to find out their welfare. What plans do we have? If we have over 70% of the population into farming and maybe majority of them are affected by floods. What plans do we have to ensure that. Okay. When they are displaced from where they are and take them to somewhere they can still continue to do something a bit small. They can have small plot of land to maybe grow vegetables or grow maize. Which will be ready in three months time or thereabout for feeding and also for income. Practically nothing, I bet you.
So that is where I am most concerned. That is what disturbs me. You have a nation that does not look ahead for its citizens. It becomes challenging. All right? They are farmers. They produce the food we eat. We need to take care of them when they are faced by disaster or whatever you want to call it, when they are challenged in ensuring that they produce.
Thank you very much for that question. I think a few years back I was involved in a research project that looked at taking advantage of flooding, okay. To boost production. I think that research was funded by International Water Management Institute. Remember what we did and what we found out. You see, when you have flood, especially areas where the river banks overflow is banked and it has receded because during flooding, you also have good part of the soil being washed to a particular place. We found that during the research covering from Anmanbra to Kogi and I think Benue, those three states farmers take advantage of the recession flood to quickly plant. They plant vegetables because the soil is still moist and can easily produce for them. So in every disaster, we should look for the opportunities there in the dairy. And part of the opportunities is once we have settled the issue of farmers, where they will be, because they probably are the most properly displaced now they can take advantage of the receding flood to quickly plant short crops that will be ready in the next one month or two months or three months.
Then another thing we also need to look at to take advantage of is ensure that farmers are well educated on coping strategies, how to come back from this kind of thing. Because psychologically, emotionally, many of them are already devastated. Of course, Nigeria doesn’t pay attention to that. How do we bring them back to the state where they are willing to produce? We need to pay attention to that. So if we plan properly, if we take control and take care of those who are affected and help them to regain their stand back, I’m sure we can make the most of these disasters and then for the future plan to ensure that the effect is not as bad as we currently experience in terms of food production.
The impact of the Current flood ravaging most States of the Country would have been avoided with proper planning.
Agric Expert and Researcher, Dr Mathew Ojo, disclosed this while featuring on the TVC News flagship programme, Business Nigeria on Friday.
Dr Ojo said the trend over the last few years has shown that proper planning would have prevented the devastating impact of the flood on most parts of the Country.
He added that the most devastating flood in Nigeria before now was the one in 2012 which was followed by another in 2019 which was slightly less devastating than what we have this year.
He said proper planning at all levels especially states would have ensured that farmers are able to plant and protect their livelihood in the event of the current flood which was exacerbated by the impact of Climate change.
He called for adequate planning henceforth to ensure that the nation is protected from the vagaries of natural disasters precipitated by Climate Change which he said cannot be stopped now but put into planning for Agricultural production.
He also expressed worries over the rampaging food inflation which has led to a situation where households are struggling to make ends meet or even afford the basics.
Read More Below…
Well, of course, for many people in the research sector, they would have envisioned this kind of thing happening because in the light of global risk coming from climate change, where you have many countries making preparations and also planning ahead to be able to mitigate the effect of climate change, especially as it concerns food production, Nigeria is not at the forefront of doing that. Apart from the challenge of awareness, there’s also the issue of committed effort, both at the federal level and at the state level, to factor in the possible risk or effect of climate change when it comes to food production. Now, you just talked about flooding, and you realize your statistics. It’s not the first time we’ll be having flooding in the country.
We had one that was very devastating in 2012. We had another one slight one in 2019. And now this one that is reported to have led to over 600 deaths and displaced around 1.4 million household or houses. And also that is also reported about, I think 110.
That’s about 270 or about acres of farmland destroyed. So when you look at all this, one thing is glaring and it’s also the effect or the consequences of lack of proper planning when it comes to things like this. Now, how does all this affect food in a country like ours? You’ve already mentioned it. When you have about 70% of producers exposed to the risk of flooding, especially if their farmlands are located in cold areas, then you can just translate that to what that would mean.
Flooding in the past has affected food security in the country. First in the area of food availability. Why? Because all the factors of production are affected by flood. The producer that the farmer is affected. The land is affected, the labor, those who probably work with him are affected. The capital are also affected. So when that happens, and farms are devastated by this, the entire factors of production that would have made food available are impacted negatively. And that’s why there will be fears concerning food availability in the country once you have this kind of disaster coming. And then it also affects not just food availability, it affects accessibility.
Accessibility in the terms of farmers who probably are not affected personally may not be able to assess their farms physically because maybe the roads leading to their farms or the bridges and all that would have been destroyed by flood. So it becomes physically impossible and impractical for them to go to farm. So if they can’t go to farm, you have food crops wasted there. And so many things they would have harvested probably would be spoke on the farm.
There’s also the issue of economic assets, of course, price. When you have these food crops not being available, for example, the yam you’ve mentioned, the cassava, the maize and also maybe rice.
When these food crops are affected, the prices at the market, of course, will go up. And then means that a country that is already battling with the food inflation of around 23, 24%, as at the last count, and you have a country that is already spending up to $10 billion on food importation annually.
Now, you cannot just translate that to see what that means in terms of food prices in the coming months and then how that will affect household. There’s also the issue of food quality. If you have food stock somewhere and flood comes in and sorts it up, farmers normally would try to see the most they can salvage and sell that will affect the kind of quality of food you get at the market because they just have to survive. And then you also look at the issue of stability.
How stable would the supply be in the light of all this that we are talking about? So it goes to tell us that we need to factor in some of these things. And when I’m talking, usually I like to be specific because this is not just a federal government issue. Unfortunately, we have a country where if you have this kind of disaster happening, you have governors of states throwing their hands up in the air and calling on federal government and the question would be, okay, are there not things that can be done at the state level? Agreed, if this is nature.
But we can plan for it, okay? We can plan for it such that the effect it will have on our food production in particular will not be this disastrous or it will not have this kind of impact on us nationally. And also maybe subnationally.
So these, I think, are the things that we need to start asking ourselves and how we can go forward. Find a way to address some of these things in terms of inflation. Already people are struggling, households are struggling. If you look at what inflation was ten years ago compared to what it is now, for example, in 2012, food inflation was just 9.9% in August compared to what it was in August last month.
This year, in the month of September, and we will live in our September, August to August, 10 years, it has risen by over 134% in just ten years. So it causes for concern, as I always say, but it also shows the lack of planning on our part.
Of course, that’s a very good question. The first thing is this. In our agricultural planning, there is something agriculture that are drawn at the national level and at the state level, efforts should first be made to factor in things like this. Okay? So we don’t just have plannings to assume that lives out the impact of possible effect of climate change on production.
I was in the apartment of a team that was drawing the plan for development plan for Nigeria, I think two years or three years ago. And the entire company brought a plan, and they didn’t factor properly climate change effect until somebody had to raise it to be looked at.
So agricultural planning in Nigeria cannot be done without factoring these kind of issues. So you model your plan, you bring in, let’s say that we have flooding, and from the report, we have 26 states affected out of 36. So you factor that in, if it happens and it affects the entire state, what do we do? What is the plan B for us? So this can be factored in at the point of planning nationally and then states, because I will not stop talking about states.
Some states are so lazy when it comes to ideas and planning. And everybody works for the federal government. That’s one. Number two, each state can look at the state of their own state. There are no areas that are prone to what’s called to flood and areas that are not prone to flood. So in terms of planning where people can go to, because at times it’s difficult for you to tell people, leave your home and move to a place and stay there it takes time, but we can have a plan B where in your state you have located areas that are less prone to flooding and then create space for farming, create space for food production in those areas.
Unfortunately, such areas are left for the Rich Almighty, but the Rich Almighty also need food. So that is one thing that we can do. Number three is we need to start thinking on how to, in the next five years, increase the capacity of our strategic food reserve in the country. I mentioned this earlier, there can be no better time than this because I think I was reading somewhere that the President ordered that you released around 12,000 metric tons, tons of grains.
The question is, what would that do in the midst of all this? But then if we have planned that increment over the years, we probably would have piled up enough that we’ll be able to evaluate the effect of this kind of disaster. So we need to also look at that, how to ensure that each state statistically has these reserves and then they are in the areas where they cannot be easily affected by flood, and then we build up the storage over time.
What I think we can also do, because farmers also need to start learning how to adapt some of these things, okay, apart from some of these flood caused by baby dams and all that continuous rain can also contribute.
So how do farmers prepare for this? Okay, how do we prepare our farmers for all things like this in terms of training them, in terms of teaching them adaptation practices and how to prepare when they are also planning to go into production.
What I fear the most is the number of households that will further fall below or drop into poverty. Okay, so let’s put it in perspective. I think a few days back, a few weeks back, the minister I was talking about, that we are only currently using about 45% of the agricultural land available in Nigeria. So if you look at that, just 44%. So 56% not yet used. We’re having issues with food production and then the issue of insecurity came in that prevent or preventing some farmers to assess their farmlands.
Then we have boundary and we have now flood. So if it’s just around 44% who have been able to use who knows how many percentage has been reduced by the combination of all these. Maybe we are doing like top 40 or maybe 30 something percent in terms of using agricultural land. And that translates to you not being able to produce. Okay, so the whole thing has to do with the food has to be available.
First when it is not available, then immediately it translates to higher price. The ones that are available are sold at a higher price. And when they are sold at a higher price, it becomes difficult for households to be able to afford some of these prices. So that is where the challenge is, where people are not able to eat and feed themselves. I mean, one thing that is common for both the rich and the poor is that they have to eat.
So it doesn’t contact anybody and it gets to who has the money to buy what they need to eat. So some people have been pauperised economically because of non availability of food. That is disturbing because the easiest thing to translate or to get out of this would be crime. We’ve done research and we’ve come in our analysis we’ve seen that when you have people not being employed, gainfully employed, it easily translates into crime. And yet you have farmers who target have gone and the opportunity of going to their farm and at least produce something for themselves.
If they are able to produce, they don’t do something else and food is not available, prices go high. My concern is I don’t know what food inflation will be in the coming months. It’s already disturbing to me because if at 23.24% or 34% people are crying, the government needs to urgently look at what can be done. And unfortunately this is a year preceding election so you find people are not listening.
Most people are concerned about electioneering campaigns and all that. But honestly speaking, Nigerians need to plan ahead because with this flood disaster that we are grappling with, with the issue of insecurity, food availability for the coming years may be a challenge for the entire country. It will definitely be, yes. And I’m just going to ask you perhaps what kind of people are we?
And if we do pay attention to information and warnings, for instance, on the part of government, the part of government and even the farmers themselves, does this perhaps tell about the kind of people that we are? Yes, it does. I think my major problem with the country like ours, but those at the helms of affairs and those who are supposed to plan is the uttered disregard for data.
Okay, now you have a government that is not willing easily to fund data collection. And when you have people presenting data to the government so that we can at least have that awareness to start planning, you’ll find government officials coming up and spending hours over minutes trying to refute such data. What data does is to give you the awareness to pay attention in case you are not it’s not necessarily about rubbish in your government, but unfortunately, where you have independent organization telling you, okay, 79% of this is happening, 22% of this is, and attention is not done. So you see, we are a country that hardly use data for what it ought to be useful.
We just hear and the news goes around and everybody keeps quiet. If we have been paying attention to both gathering of data and using data to inform decision making, I’m sure we’ll be at a better place as a nation collective. But like I said, it’s reported. Newspaper said over 110,000 land affected. Others are reporting lower. You really can’t tell the exact figure because no such data is readily available. And honestly, with my journey underestimating the impact that this flood, this current one, is going to have on food production in Nigeria, food producti. Then the farmers themselves, the individuals who hitherto have been gainfully employed, become jobless, their families become exposed to any kind of risk available to wherever they are put back.
And I bet you after a few weeks or a few months, they forget them. Nobody remembers that some farmers have been displaced. Nobody goes to them to find out their welfare. What plans do we have? If we have over 70% of the population into farming and maybe majority of them are affected by floods. What plans do we have to ensure that. Okay. When they are displaced from where they are and take them to somewhere they can still continue to do something a bit small. They can have small plot of land to maybe grow vegetables or grow maize. Which will be ready in three months time or thereabout for feeding and also for income. Practically nothing, I bet you.
So that is where I am most concerned. That is what disturbs me. You have a nation that does not look ahead for its citizens. It becomes challenging. All right? They are farmers. They produce the food we eat. We need to take care of them when they are faced by disaster or whatever you want to call it, when they are challenged in ensuring that they produce.
Thank you very much for that question. I think a few years back I was involved in a research project that looked at taking advantage of flooding, okay. To boost production. I think that research was funded by International Water Management Institute. Remember what we did and what we found out. You see, when you have flood, especially areas where the river banks overflow is banked and it has receded because during flooding, you also have good part of the soil being washed to a particular place. We found that during the research covering from Anmanbra to Kogi and I think Benue, those three states farmers take advantage of the recession flood to quickly plant. They plant vegetables because the soil is still moist and can easily produce for them. So in every disaster, we should look for the opportunities there in the dairy. And part of the opportunities is once we have settled the issue of farmers, where they will be, because they probably are the most properly displaced now they can take advantage of the receding flood to quickly plant short crops that will be ready in the next one month or two months or three months.
Then another thing we also need to look at to take advantage of is ensure that farmers are well educated on coping strategies, how to come back from this kind of thing. Because psychologically, emotionally, many of them are already devastated. Of course, Nigeria doesn’t pay attention to that. How do we bring them back to the state where they are willing to produce? We need to pay attention to that. So if we plan properly, if we take control and take care of those who are affected and help them to regain their stand back, I’m sure we can make the most of these disasters and then for the future plan to ensure that the effect is not as bad as we currently experience in terms of food production.
The impact of the Current flood ravaging most States of the Country would have been avoided with proper planning.
Agric Expert and Researcher, Dr Mathew Ojo, disclosed this while featuring on the TVC News flagship programme, Business Nigeria on Friday.
Dr Ojo said the trend over the last few years has shown that proper planning would have prevented the devastating impact of the flood on most parts of the Country.
He added that the most devastating flood in Nigeria before now was the one in 2012 which was followed by another in 2019 which was slightly less devastating than what we have this year.
He said proper planning at all levels especially states would have ensured that farmers are able to plant and protect their livelihood in the event of the current flood which was exacerbated by the impact of Climate change.
He called for adequate planning henceforth to ensure that the nation is protected from the vagaries of natural disasters precipitated by Climate Change which he said cannot be stopped now but put into planning for Agricultural production.
He also expressed worries over the rampaging food inflation which has led to a situation where households are struggling to make ends meet or even afford the basics.
Read More Below…
Well, of course, for many people in the research sector, they would have envisioned this kind of thing happening because in the light of global risk coming from climate change, where you have many countries making preparations and also planning ahead to be able to mitigate the effect of climate change, especially as it concerns food production, Nigeria is not at the forefront of doing that. Apart from the challenge of awareness, there’s also the issue of committed effort, both at the federal level and at the state level, to factor in the possible risk or effect of climate change when it comes to food production. Now, you just talked about flooding, and you realize your statistics. It’s not the first time we’ll be having flooding in the country.
We had one that was very devastating in 2012. We had another one slight one in 2019. And now this one that is reported to have led to over 600 deaths and displaced around 1.4 million household or houses. And also that is also reported about, I think 110.
That’s about 270 or about acres of farmland destroyed. So when you look at all this, one thing is glaring and it’s also the effect or the consequences of lack of proper planning when it comes to things like this. Now, how does all this affect food in a country like ours? You’ve already mentioned it. When you have about 70% of producers exposed to the risk of flooding, especially if their farmlands are located in cold areas, then you can just translate that to what that would mean.
Flooding in the past has affected food security in the country. First in the area of food availability. Why? Because all the factors of production are affected by flood. The producer that the farmer is affected. The land is affected, the labor, those who probably work with him are affected. The capital are also affected. So when that happens, and farms are devastated by this, the entire factors of production that would have made food available are impacted negatively. And that’s why there will be fears concerning food availability in the country once you have this kind of disaster coming. And then it also affects not just food availability, it affects accessibility.
Accessibility in the terms of farmers who probably are not affected personally may not be able to assess their farms physically because maybe the roads leading to their farms or the bridges and all that would have been destroyed by flood. So it becomes physically impossible and impractical for them to go to farm. So if they can’t go to farm, you have food crops wasted there. And so many things they would have harvested probably would be spoke on the farm.
There’s also the issue of economic assets, of course, price. When you have these food crops not being available, for example, the yam you’ve mentioned, the cassava, the maize and also maybe rice.
When these food crops are affected, the prices at the market, of course, will go up. And then means that a country that is already battling with the food inflation of around 23, 24%, as at the last count, and you have a country that is already spending up to $10 billion on food importation annually.
Now, you cannot just translate that to see what that means in terms of food prices in the coming months and then how that will affect household. There’s also the issue of food quality. If you have food stock somewhere and flood comes in and sorts it up, farmers normally would try to see the most they can salvage and sell that will affect the kind of quality of food you get at the market because they just have to survive. And then you also look at the issue of stability.
How stable would the supply be in the light of all this that we are talking about? So it goes to tell us that we need to factor in some of these things. And when I’m talking, usually I like to be specific because this is not just a federal government issue. Unfortunately, we have a country where if you have this kind of disaster happening, you have governors of states throwing their hands up in the air and calling on federal government and the question would be, okay, are there not things that can be done at the state level? Agreed, if this is nature.
But we can plan for it, okay? We can plan for it such that the effect it will have on our food production in particular will not be this disastrous or it will not have this kind of impact on us nationally. And also maybe subnationally.
So these, I think, are the things that we need to start asking ourselves and how we can go forward. Find a way to address some of these things in terms of inflation. Already people are struggling, households are struggling. If you look at what inflation was ten years ago compared to what it is now, for example, in 2012, food inflation was just 9.9% in August compared to what it was in August last month.
This year, in the month of September, and we will live in our September, August to August, 10 years, it has risen by over 134% in just ten years. So it causes for concern, as I always say, but it also shows the lack of planning on our part.
Of course, that’s a very good question. The first thing is this. In our agricultural planning, there is something agriculture that are drawn at the national level and at the state level, efforts should first be made to factor in things like this. Okay? So we don’t just have plannings to assume that lives out the impact of possible effect of climate change on production.
I was in the apartment of a team that was drawing the plan for development plan for Nigeria, I think two years or three years ago. And the entire company brought a plan, and they didn’t factor properly climate change effect until somebody had to raise it to be looked at.
So agricultural planning in Nigeria cannot be done without factoring these kind of issues. So you model your plan, you bring in, let’s say that we have flooding, and from the report, we have 26 states affected out of 36. So you factor that in, if it happens and it affects the entire state, what do we do? What is the plan B for us? So this can be factored in at the point of planning nationally and then states, because I will not stop talking about states.
Some states are so lazy when it comes to ideas and planning. And everybody works for the federal government. That’s one. Number two, each state can look at the state of their own state. There are no areas that are prone to what’s called to flood and areas that are not prone to flood. So in terms of planning where people can go to, because at times it’s difficult for you to tell people, leave your home and move to a place and stay there it takes time, but we can have a plan B where in your state you have located areas that are less prone to flooding and then create space for farming, create space for food production in those areas.
Unfortunately, such areas are left for the Rich Almighty, but the Rich Almighty also need food. So that is one thing that we can do. Number three is we need to start thinking on how to, in the next five years, increase the capacity of our strategic food reserve in the country. I mentioned this earlier, there can be no better time than this because I think I was reading somewhere that the President ordered that you released around 12,000 metric tons, tons of grains.
The question is, what would that do in the midst of all this? But then if we have planned that increment over the years, we probably would have piled up enough that we’ll be able to evaluate the effect of this kind of disaster. So we need to also look at that, how to ensure that each state statistically has these reserves and then they are in the areas where they cannot be easily affected by flood, and then we build up the storage over time.
What I think we can also do, because farmers also need to start learning how to adapt some of these things, okay, apart from some of these flood caused by baby dams and all that continuous rain can also contribute.
So how do farmers prepare for this? Okay, how do we prepare our farmers for all things like this in terms of training them, in terms of teaching them adaptation practices and how to prepare when they are also planning to go into production.
What I fear the most is the number of households that will further fall below or drop into poverty. Okay, so let’s put it in perspective. I think a few days back, a few weeks back, the minister I was talking about, that we are only currently using about 45% of the agricultural land available in Nigeria. So if you look at that, just 44%. So 56% not yet used. We’re having issues with food production and then the issue of insecurity came in that prevent or preventing some farmers to assess their farmlands.
Then we have boundary and we have now flood. So if it’s just around 44% who have been able to use who knows how many percentage has been reduced by the combination of all these. Maybe we are doing like top 40 or maybe 30 something percent in terms of using agricultural land. And that translates to you not being able to produce. Okay, so the whole thing has to do with the food has to be available.
First when it is not available, then immediately it translates to higher price. The ones that are available are sold at a higher price. And when they are sold at a higher price, it becomes difficult for households to be able to afford some of these prices. So that is where the challenge is, where people are not able to eat and feed themselves. I mean, one thing that is common for both the rich and the poor is that they have to eat.
So it doesn’t contact anybody and it gets to who has the money to buy what they need to eat. So some people have been pauperised economically because of non availability of food. That is disturbing because the easiest thing to translate or to get out of this would be crime. We’ve done research and we’ve come in our analysis we’ve seen that when you have people not being employed, gainfully employed, it easily translates into crime. And yet you have farmers who target have gone and the opportunity of going to their farm and at least produce something for themselves.
If they are able to produce, they don’t do something else and food is not available, prices go high. My concern is I don’t know what food inflation will be in the coming months. It’s already disturbing to me because if at 23.24% or 34% people are crying, the government needs to urgently look at what can be done. And unfortunately this is a year preceding election so you find people are not listening.
Most people are concerned about electioneering campaigns and all that. But honestly speaking, Nigerians need to plan ahead because with this flood disaster that we are grappling with, with the issue of insecurity, food availability for the coming years may be a challenge for the entire country. It will definitely be, yes. And I’m just going to ask you perhaps what kind of people are we?
And if we do pay attention to information and warnings, for instance, on the part of government, the part of government and even the farmers themselves, does this perhaps tell about the kind of people that we are? Yes, it does. I think my major problem with the country like ours, but those at the helms of affairs and those who are supposed to plan is the uttered disregard for data.
Okay, now you have a government that is not willing easily to fund data collection. And when you have people presenting data to the government so that we can at least have that awareness to start planning, you’ll find government officials coming up and spending hours over minutes trying to refute such data. What data does is to give you the awareness to pay attention in case you are not it’s not necessarily about rubbish in your government, but unfortunately, where you have independent organization telling you, okay, 79% of this is happening, 22% of this is, and attention is not done. So you see, we are a country that hardly use data for what it ought to be useful.
We just hear and the news goes around and everybody keeps quiet. If we have been paying attention to both gathering of data and using data to inform decision making, I’m sure we’ll be at a better place as a nation collective. But like I said, it’s reported. Newspaper said over 110,000 land affected. Others are reporting lower. You really can’t tell the exact figure because no such data is readily available. And honestly, with my journey underestimating the impact that this flood, this current one, is going to have on food production in Nigeria, food producti. Then the farmers themselves, the individuals who hitherto have been gainfully employed, become jobless, their families become exposed to any kind of risk available to wherever they are put back.
And I bet you after a few weeks or a few months, they forget them. Nobody remembers that some farmers have been displaced. Nobody goes to them to find out their welfare. What plans do we have? If we have over 70% of the population into farming and maybe majority of them are affected by floods. What plans do we have to ensure that. Okay. When they are displaced from where they are and take them to somewhere they can still continue to do something a bit small. They can have small plot of land to maybe grow vegetables or grow maize. Which will be ready in three months time or thereabout for feeding and also for income. Practically nothing, I bet you.
So that is where I am most concerned. That is what disturbs me. You have a nation that does not look ahead for its citizens. It becomes challenging. All right? They are farmers. They produce the food we eat. We need to take care of them when they are faced by disaster or whatever you want to call it, when they are challenged in ensuring that they produce.
Thank you very much for that question. I think a few years back I was involved in a research project that looked at taking advantage of flooding, okay. To boost production. I think that research was funded by International Water Management Institute. Remember what we did and what we found out. You see, when you have flood, especially areas where the river banks overflow is banked and it has receded because during flooding, you also have good part of the soil being washed to a particular place. We found that during the research covering from Anmanbra to Kogi and I think Benue, those three states farmers take advantage of the recession flood to quickly plant. They plant vegetables because the soil is still moist and can easily produce for them. So in every disaster, we should look for the opportunities there in the dairy. And part of the opportunities is once we have settled the issue of farmers, where they will be, because they probably are the most properly displaced now they can take advantage of the receding flood to quickly plant short crops that will be ready in the next one month or two months or three months.
Then another thing we also need to look at to take advantage of is ensure that farmers are well educated on coping strategies, how to come back from this kind of thing. Because psychologically, emotionally, many of them are already devastated. Of course, Nigeria doesn’t pay attention to that. How do we bring them back to the state where they are willing to produce? We need to pay attention to that. So if we plan properly, if we take control and take care of those who are affected and help them to regain their stand back, I’m sure we can make the most of these disasters and then for the future plan to ensure that the effect is not as bad as we currently experience in terms of food production.
The impact of the Current flood ravaging most States of the Country would have been avoided with proper planning.
Agric Expert and Researcher, Dr Mathew Ojo, disclosed this while featuring on the TVC News flagship programme, Business Nigeria on Friday.
Dr Ojo said the trend over the last few years has shown that proper planning would have prevented the devastating impact of the flood on most parts of the Country.
He added that the most devastating flood in Nigeria before now was the one in 2012 which was followed by another in 2019 which was slightly less devastating than what we have this year.
He said proper planning at all levels especially states would have ensured that farmers are able to plant and protect their livelihood in the event of the current flood which was exacerbated by the impact of Climate change.
He called for adequate planning henceforth to ensure that the nation is protected from the vagaries of natural disasters precipitated by Climate Change which he said cannot be stopped now but put into planning for Agricultural production.
He also expressed worries over the rampaging food inflation which has led to a situation where households are struggling to make ends meet or even afford the basics.
Read More Below…
Well, of course, for many people in the research sector, they would have envisioned this kind of thing happening because in the light of global risk coming from climate change, where you have many countries making preparations and also planning ahead to be able to mitigate the effect of climate change, especially as it concerns food production, Nigeria is not at the forefront of doing that. Apart from the challenge of awareness, there’s also the issue of committed effort, both at the federal level and at the state level, to factor in the possible risk or effect of climate change when it comes to food production. Now, you just talked about flooding, and you realize your statistics. It’s not the first time we’ll be having flooding in the country.
We had one that was very devastating in 2012. We had another one slight one in 2019. And now this one that is reported to have led to over 600 deaths and displaced around 1.4 million household or houses. And also that is also reported about, I think 110.
That’s about 270 or about acres of farmland destroyed. So when you look at all this, one thing is glaring and it’s also the effect or the consequences of lack of proper planning when it comes to things like this. Now, how does all this affect food in a country like ours? You’ve already mentioned it. When you have about 70% of producers exposed to the risk of flooding, especially if their farmlands are located in cold areas, then you can just translate that to what that would mean.
Flooding in the past has affected food security in the country. First in the area of food availability. Why? Because all the factors of production are affected by flood. The producer that the farmer is affected. The land is affected, the labor, those who probably work with him are affected. The capital are also affected. So when that happens, and farms are devastated by this, the entire factors of production that would have made food available are impacted negatively. And that’s why there will be fears concerning food availability in the country once you have this kind of disaster coming. And then it also affects not just food availability, it affects accessibility.
Accessibility in the terms of farmers who probably are not affected personally may not be able to assess their farms physically because maybe the roads leading to their farms or the bridges and all that would have been destroyed by flood. So it becomes physically impossible and impractical for them to go to farm. So if they can’t go to farm, you have food crops wasted there. And so many things they would have harvested probably would be spoke on the farm.
There’s also the issue of economic assets, of course, price. When you have these food crops not being available, for example, the yam you’ve mentioned, the cassava, the maize and also maybe rice.
When these food crops are affected, the prices at the market, of course, will go up. And then means that a country that is already battling with the food inflation of around 23, 24%, as at the last count, and you have a country that is already spending up to $10 billion on food importation annually.
Now, you cannot just translate that to see what that means in terms of food prices in the coming months and then how that will affect household. There’s also the issue of food quality. If you have food stock somewhere and flood comes in and sorts it up, farmers normally would try to see the most they can salvage and sell that will affect the kind of quality of food you get at the market because they just have to survive. And then you also look at the issue of stability.
How stable would the supply be in the light of all this that we are talking about? So it goes to tell us that we need to factor in some of these things. And when I’m talking, usually I like to be specific because this is not just a federal government issue. Unfortunately, we have a country where if you have this kind of disaster happening, you have governors of states throwing their hands up in the air and calling on federal government and the question would be, okay, are there not things that can be done at the state level? Agreed, if this is nature.
But we can plan for it, okay? We can plan for it such that the effect it will have on our food production in particular will not be this disastrous or it will not have this kind of impact on us nationally. And also maybe subnationally.
So these, I think, are the things that we need to start asking ourselves and how we can go forward. Find a way to address some of these things in terms of inflation. Already people are struggling, households are struggling. If you look at what inflation was ten years ago compared to what it is now, for example, in 2012, food inflation was just 9.9% in August compared to what it was in August last month.
This year, in the month of September, and we will live in our September, August to August, 10 years, it has risen by over 134% in just ten years. So it causes for concern, as I always say, but it also shows the lack of planning on our part.
Of course, that’s a very good question. The first thing is this. In our agricultural planning, there is something agriculture that are drawn at the national level and at the state level, efforts should first be made to factor in things like this. Okay? So we don’t just have plannings to assume that lives out the impact of possible effect of climate change on production.
I was in the apartment of a team that was drawing the plan for development plan for Nigeria, I think two years or three years ago. And the entire company brought a plan, and they didn’t factor properly climate change effect until somebody had to raise it to be looked at.
So agricultural planning in Nigeria cannot be done without factoring these kind of issues. So you model your plan, you bring in, let’s say that we have flooding, and from the report, we have 26 states affected out of 36. So you factor that in, if it happens and it affects the entire state, what do we do? What is the plan B for us? So this can be factored in at the point of planning nationally and then states, because I will not stop talking about states.
Some states are so lazy when it comes to ideas and planning. And everybody works for the federal government. That’s one. Number two, each state can look at the state of their own state. There are no areas that are prone to what’s called to flood and areas that are not prone to flood. So in terms of planning where people can go to, because at times it’s difficult for you to tell people, leave your home and move to a place and stay there it takes time, but we can have a plan B where in your state you have located areas that are less prone to flooding and then create space for farming, create space for food production in those areas.
Unfortunately, such areas are left for the Rich Almighty, but the Rich Almighty also need food. So that is one thing that we can do. Number three is we need to start thinking on how to, in the next five years, increase the capacity of our strategic food reserve in the country. I mentioned this earlier, there can be no better time than this because I think I was reading somewhere that the President ordered that you released around 12,000 metric tons, tons of grains.
The question is, what would that do in the midst of all this? But then if we have planned that increment over the years, we probably would have piled up enough that we’ll be able to evaluate the effect of this kind of disaster. So we need to also look at that, how to ensure that each state statistically has these reserves and then they are in the areas where they cannot be easily affected by flood, and then we build up the storage over time.
What I think we can also do, because farmers also need to start learning how to adapt some of these things, okay, apart from some of these flood caused by baby dams and all that continuous rain can also contribute.
So how do farmers prepare for this? Okay, how do we prepare our farmers for all things like this in terms of training them, in terms of teaching them adaptation practices and how to prepare when they are also planning to go into production.
What I fear the most is the number of households that will further fall below or drop into poverty. Okay, so let’s put it in perspective. I think a few days back, a few weeks back, the minister I was talking about, that we are only currently using about 45% of the agricultural land available in Nigeria. So if you look at that, just 44%. So 56% not yet used. We’re having issues with food production and then the issue of insecurity came in that prevent or preventing some farmers to assess their farmlands.
Then we have boundary and we have now flood. So if it’s just around 44% who have been able to use who knows how many percentage has been reduced by the combination of all these. Maybe we are doing like top 40 or maybe 30 something percent in terms of using agricultural land. And that translates to you not being able to produce. Okay, so the whole thing has to do with the food has to be available.
First when it is not available, then immediately it translates to higher price. The ones that are available are sold at a higher price. And when they are sold at a higher price, it becomes difficult for households to be able to afford some of these prices. So that is where the challenge is, where people are not able to eat and feed themselves. I mean, one thing that is common for both the rich and the poor is that they have to eat.
So it doesn’t contact anybody and it gets to who has the money to buy what they need to eat. So some people have been pauperised economically because of non availability of food. That is disturbing because the easiest thing to translate or to get out of this would be crime. We’ve done research and we’ve come in our analysis we’ve seen that when you have people not being employed, gainfully employed, it easily translates into crime. And yet you have farmers who target have gone and the opportunity of going to their farm and at least produce something for themselves.
If they are able to produce, they don’t do something else and food is not available, prices go high. My concern is I don’t know what food inflation will be in the coming months. It’s already disturbing to me because if at 23.24% or 34% people are crying, the government needs to urgently look at what can be done. And unfortunately this is a year preceding election so you find people are not listening.
Most people are concerned about electioneering campaigns and all that. But honestly speaking, Nigerians need to plan ahead because with this flood disaster that we are grappling with, with the issue of insecurity, food availability for the coming years may be a challenge for the entire country. It will definitely be, yes. And I’m just going to ask you perhaps what kind of people are we?
And if we do pay attention to information and warnings, for instance, on the part of government, the part of government and even the farmers themselves, does this perhaps tell about the kind of people that we are? Yes, it does. I think my major problem with the country like ours, but those at the helms of affairs and those who are supposed to plan is the uttered disregard for data.
Okay, now you have a government that is not willing easily to fund data collection. And when you have people presenting data to the government so that we can at least have that awareness to start planning, you’ll find government officials coming up and spending hours over minutes trying to refute such data. What data does is to give you the awareness to pay attention in case you are not it’s not necessarily about rubbish in your government, but unfortunately, where you have independent organization telling you, okay, 79% of this is happening, 22% of this is, and attention is not done. So you see, we are a country that hardly use data for what it ought to be useful.
We just hear and the news goes around and everybody keeps quiet. If we have been paying attention to both gathering of data and using data to inform decision making, I’m sure we’ll be at a better place as a nation collective. But like I said, it’s reported. Newspaper said over 110,000 land affected. Others are reporting lower. You really can’t tell the exact figure because no such data is readily available. And honestly, with my journey underestimating the impact that this flood, this current one, is going to have on food production in Nigeria, food producti. Then the farmers themselves, the individuals who hitherto have been gainfully employed, become jobless, their families become exposed to any kind of risk available to wherever they are put back.
And I bet you after a few weeks or a few months, they forget them. Nobody remembers that some farmers have been displaced. Nobody goes to them to find out their welfare. What plans do we have? If we have over 70% of the population into farming and maybe majority of them are affected by floods. What plans do we have to ensure that. Okay. When they are displaced from where they are and take them to somewhere they can still continue to do something a bit small. They can have small plot of land to maybe grow vegetables or grow maize. Which will be ready in three months time or thereabout for feeding and also for income. Practically nothing, I bet you.
So that is where I am most concerned. That is what disturbs me. You have a nation that does not look ahead for its citizens. It becomes challenging. All right? They are farmers. They produce the food we eat. We need to take care of them when they are faced by disaster or whatever you want to call it, when they are challenged in ensuring that they produce.
Thank you very much for that question. I think a few years back I was involved in a research project that looked at taking advantage of flooding, okay. To boost production. I think that research was funded by International Water Management Institute. Remember what we did and what we found out. You see, when you have flood, especially areas where the river banks overflow is banked and it has receded because during flooding, you also have good part of the soil being washed to a particular place. We found that during the research covering from Anmanbra to Kogi and I think Benue, those three states farmers take advantage of the recession flood to quickly plant. They plant vegetables because the soil is still moist and can easily produce for them. So in every disaster, we should look for the opportunities there in the dairy. And part of the opportunities is once we have settled the issue of farmers, where they will be, because they probably are the most properly displaced now they can take advantage of the receding flood to quickly plant short crops that will be ready in the next one month or two months or three months.
Then another thing we also need to look at to take advantage of is ensure that farmers are well educated on coping strategies, how to come back from this kind of thing. Because psychologically, emotionally, many of them are already devastated. Of course, Nigeria doesn’t pay attention to that. How do we bring them back to the state where they are willing to produce? We need to pay attention to that. So if we plan properly, if we take control and take care of those who are affected and help them to regain their stand back, I’m sure we can make the most of these disasters and then for the future plan to ensure that the effect is not as bad as we currently experience in terms of food production.
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