Abia and Imo residents have expressed deep concern over the rising cost of food items in different parts of the country.

In Abia, the acting chairman of the Maize Farmers Association of Nigeria, Bonny Umeh, attributed the region’s high cost of foodstuffs to the expensive nature of farming.

Mr Umeh said, “Farming is very expensive. Before you can farm to feed other people or contribute to food security, it has to be on a large scale. In the South-East, our vegetation is very thick, compared to the North or Middle Belt.

Mr Umeh also lamented over the problem of the land tenure system, saying that many families do not release their land for agricultural practices.

He, therefore, urged government agencies, such as the Ministry of Agriculture, to exercise their expertise in agribusiness by deploying their agricultural equipment and modern methods to enhance large-scale farming in the region.

Mr Umeh also appealed to the government to make rural roads motorable for farmers so they could easily evacuate their produce.

“If there is an access road, other people will be interested in farming, which will help reduce the high cost of foodstuffs,” he said.

Another farmer, Candy Ndubuisi, said farmers must be properly trained in contemporary farming methods. Mr Ndubuisi advised the government to encourage graduates of Agriculture to go into professional farming, where they would have a sense of self-accomplishment.

He said apart from making funds available to farmers, they need to be given farm inputs that could improve their outputs during harvest. He also urged the government to prepare silos and other storage mechanisms that could help to preserve seasonal foods, such as grains, to cut losses.

Also, the South-East coordinator of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria, Dunlop Okoro, advised Nigerians to embark on subsistence farming to reduce the high cost of food items.

Mr Okoro said the measure would engender mass food production with more available food.

He said, “Every Nigerian should go back to the land and do subsistence farming and forget about mechanised farming. If you have a farm where you grow cassava, you can go there at intervals to harvest cassava and produce garri. It means that everyone can produce food, thereby increasing the food supply in the country.”

Mr Okoro said promoting sustainable agriculture remains crucial to ensuring food security and environmental conservation.

Also, in Imo, the national secretary of the rice farmers association, Livy Ngwangwa, called on farmers to repay government agricultural loans to ensure the facility’s sustainability.

Mr Ngwangwa said that he was worried that a lot of Federal Government’s agricultural interventions failed because of the failure by farmers to repay government’s facilities.

Mr Ngwangwa further said that the government had also stopped providing farm inputs, such as fertilisers and improved seedlings, resulting in delayed cultivation.

Also commenting on the issue, a stockfish dealer in Owerri, Theresa Iwuji, said that the high exchange rate also contributed greatly to the high cost of food items.

Ms Iwuji argued that unless the value of the naira improved, the problem would only get worse. She also said that a lot of Nigerians prefer imported goods over locally manufactured goods, resulting in soaring food prices due to the high importation cost.

Another trader in Owerri, Ashiru Suleiman, said that the security problems faced by farmers in the North also led to a shortage of farm produce and consequential food inflation.

According to Mr Suleiman, farmers in border communities prefer to sell their goods across the borders where they face less trouble. He also said that the cost of transporting goods from production to sales is also considered when fixing the prices of foodstuffs to ensure that both the farmers and traders make a profit.

An economics teacher, Emmanuel Eze, said that the problem could only be controlled “if the government takes the proper steps to curb inflation.”

Mr Eze also said there was a need to encourage farmers to enhance their output, adding, “This will not only boost revenue generation but also lead to food price cuts.”

He also called for revitalising the nation’s refineries to end fuel importation, saying that the measure would help stabilise the economy.

(NAN)