A lecturer at the Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics, Michigan State University, United States of America, Prof. Saweda Onipede Liverpool-Tasie has called on the government to take drastic steps to tackle insecurity, logistic challenges and post harvest losses of farm produce to address the skyrocketing food inflation in Nigeria.
Food inflation in Nigeria as at May 2024 was put 40.66 per cent.
Liverpool-Tasie, who is the lead Principal Investigator on a multi-million dollar project, Research Supporting African MSMEs to Provide Safe and Nutritious Food (RSM2SNF) in Nigeria and Tanzania, lamented the high cost of food items.
The scholar, who is currently a visiting scientist with the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, stated this during the presentation of the outcome of the research on food safety across markets to the stakeholders in Ibadan.
The programme took place at the University of Ibadan’s Centre For Sustainable Development (CESDEV), Bodija, Ibadan.
It was a co-creation event around evidence and data use on the safe and nutrition food project RSM2SNF.
RSM2SNF is a Bill and Melinda-Gates funded project to support micro, small and medium scale enterprises to deliver affordable, safe and nutritious foods in Nigeria and Tanzania.
The event was attended by market leaders, traders, government officials, researchers, scholars, and others.
Over the last year, the group has been collecting data from wholesale markets across eight states in Nigeria, including Oyo State.
On the state of the economy and high cost of food, the food professor said: “The drivers of inflation are quite numerous. We know that there’s the issue of fuel price and the removal of the subsidy that led to an increase in fuel cost, which affects everything.
“This is because everything must be moved from one place to another; from the farm to the city or from the city to the farm like farm inputs. We also have movement from the north to the south. So, transportation is key for everything that we’re doing. So that has affected prices.
“We have issues of insecurity. Insecurity affects farms directly in terms of their production. But insecurity on the road also affects traders, the traders that are moving tomatoes from Kaduna or Kano or Plateau State in the north down to Ibadan. When they face insecurity, they have to build that into their costs. It affects the prices of every produce we consumers buy.
“The issue of loss suffered on the road when moving tomatoes from Sokoto or Kaduna or Kano to Ibadan. There are logistics and transportation challenges. So, we need to tackle all these things together. When all these are addressed prices of food would drop.”
Also speaking, Dr. Debo Akande, Director General, Oyo State Agribusiness Development Agency at the programme said Governor Seyi Makinde administration would continue to provide the environment that would make all food items safe for consumption.
Akande, represented by Dr. Dayo Shosina, disclosed that the state government was working towards a public-private partnership model in this regard.
A market leader and one of the members of the Oritamerin Market Committee, Mr. Mukaila Abayomi, expressed delight to learn about how to make vegetables and other food items being sold in the market healthy for consumption.