A CASE FOR FOOD SUPPLY AND HARD LIFE

 BY: ISA MUHAMMAD INUWA                                     24-4-08.

  There is no gainsaying the fact that people in Nigeria are living in
 a very difficult condition of life, more so that presently, the world
 is engulfed in a serious and ravaging recession due to glaring scarcity
 of food stuff and an accompanying inflation which left currencies of
 many countries less valuable and their purchasing power much low, that
 one can only buy few things with much amount of money, which was the
 reverse case in the past.
   Countries in the so-called developing world were already backward in
 terms of food subsistence and self reliance by all means, lagging far
 behind the developed nations, on whom they depend for food importation
 and food aids to survive. The Agricultural potentialities of third
 world countries were already hijacked and made solely dependent on the
 foreign farming aids such as modern tools, farm chemicals, pesticides and
 fertilizer, before they could think of achieving any bumper harvest. The
 situation is worsened for some African countries during the last
 farming season as a result of droughts that left many farmers with very low
 harvest for both self sustenance and for sale at the markets. This is
 one main cause for food shortage and consequent hike in prices of food
 this time around.
   On the other hand, developed nations of the world are known for
 embarking on large scale farming in form of highly mechanized modern
 farming system that most often gives them yields far more than their needs.
 In such case, they are known for storing surplus food stuff that can
 survive them for quite some years to come, to the extent that they can
 supply such surplus to less endowed countries without having any problem
 of shortage. However, everything is subjected to its kind of politics,
 particularly by the advanced European countries. For instance, some of
 those countries were said to dump some of their surpluses into the sea,
 rather than to export them to needy countries, just for the sake of
 politics in the field of food supply and markets. For those countries,
 supplying their surplus to any less endowed nation would make them
 sufficient and consequently independent of food importation, there by blocking
 the markets and sales of food to such
countries.
   It could be recalled that in the past decades, Nigeria was known for
 its mass production of food through agriculture and in addition, the
 country produced cash crop for international markets, such as groundnut,
 cocoa and cotton. In fact, Agriculture was the first and foremost main
 source of Nigeria’s revenue, before the discovery and excavation of
 oil wells. Now that the countries is even richer than before, with
 additional lucrative sources of oil and gas as well the Agricultural
 potentials, there is no reason why the country would continue to rely mainly
 on imported food for the people. In situations such as the present
 however, food importation could serve as a matter of necessity for Nigeria,
 until the emergency situation is over, then Nigeria could revert to
 dedicate on serious large scale farming to ensure mass food production
 for the ever increasing needs of its large population.
   But the biggest question is that “what are Nigerian authorities
 and the government doing to salvage the situation, by coming to the
 rescue of the common man, through some policies to cushion the people’s
 sufferings?â€� It seems that nothing of this nature is yet on ground for
 Nigerians, in spite of the eight years of the country’s Democracy,
 with the Executive and the Legislative arms of government in place, no
 single move is yet done to address the people’s sufferings. Instead,
 the teeming Nigerians who always go to polls and vote their
 representatives into power are eventually left to find solutions for themselves. It
 is just for the government to put the necessary machineries and
 wherewithal on ground and guide the people through, so that everything about
 the economic activities would move smoothly. But instead of supporting
 the private sector, say the large scale and small scale farmers as well
 as the small scale entrepreneurs, Nigerian
 governments operate as if they have no obligation and totally have no
 stake in the private sector development. This is one main reason why
 things went in disarray, decades after the country’s independence.
    Another contributory factor in the general failure of modern man in
 this modern world is that almost every facet of our life is being
 guided on sheer speculative tendencies and human clever antics, (which is
 limited and often selfish).  For instance, the issue of speculative
 business of hoarding and large scale smuggling of food stuff at the period
 of abundance say harvest season, with the intention to hike prices of
 food at subsequent times, (for the benefit of few opportunistic people),
 ironically contributes to food scarcity and high cost of food items,
 beyond the purchasing power of the common man. Hence in Nigeria, the
 idea behind creating and running of so-called commodity markets, such as
 the Abuja Commodity Market, with branches in some parts of the country,
 is one instance of modern and cunning way of hoarding of food items, at
 the detriment of the poor buyers and against the open system of free
 market of our economy.
    Although the Commodity Market was said to have been introduced in
 order to protect the small farmers from suffering loss form low prices
 of farm produce at the harvesting period, this could be an unacceptable
 reason, if we pose a question that - what do the Commodity Market
 operators stand to gain? By serving as middlemen and raking a commission
 charge for themselves, they tend to further escalate prices of food items,
 in addition to causing its scarcity and encouraging its hoarding. We
 ought not to forget the simple economics law of supply and demand, at
 which, the lower the supply (it can be artificially created scarcity),
 the higher the demand would become, hence the higher the price of such
 items in question (in this case, food items).
   Apart from such speculative and middleman trade in food mentioned
 above, another major threat to food supply world wide, is the modern idea
 to convert staple food items, (more particularly those that are used
 daily by majority of the masses such as corn, maize and the likes), as
 sources for “alternative energyâ€� to replace fuels such as petrol and
 gas used in cars and other machineries. Although this device is
 thought to give some relief to the ever rising price of fuel in the world,
 unless special provisions are made to produce separate and additional
 staple food for that purpose, it would otherwise seriously affect food
 supply, distribution and prices the world over. Recently, the United
 Nations Secretary Mr, Ban Ki-Moon and the World Bank President have
 cautioned against the idea of using food as “alternative energyâ€�.
   Indeed, the current situation of food scarcity and high cost of food
 items calls for emergency effort to arrest it and  for both world
 leaders and individual heads of nations and countries to hasten and find
 ways of relieving and emancipating their people from the quagmire.
 Another alarming thing is that some major countries suppliers of food to
 other countries, like India and Thailand and China have banned exportation
 of food to outside world. Also with the move by the United Nations of
 setting up a committee to address food crisis currently being
 experienced the world over, the idea is a welcome one and added to that, it is
 pertinent if the third world, particularly the impoverished African
 nations would be the top most priority in this mission against hunger.
   For some time now, Nigeria’s Federal Government has responded to
 calls and advises to resort to food importation, in order to supplement
 the strained internal food supply; thereby making it in abundance,
 hence its consequent decrease in price. A further advise here is that in
 view of  understanding wisdom in food importation,  even as a temporary
 solution and after which indigenous food production should follow, the
 Federal Government should also device a very just and workable
 distribution mechanism, for the imported rice to reach down to the common
 people. Those to be entrusted with the distribution job should be very
 careful, conscious as well as very tactful as to break the circle of shylock
 opportunistic middlemen and fortune seekers, who may tend to make the
 commodity unaffordable and unavailable for the weak, poor common
 Nigerian.

   ISA MUHAMMAD INUWA, Radio DW Correspondent, is a journalist in Kano,
 Nigeria. E-Mail: ismi2000ng@yahoo.com, Phone: +234 8035899555.