Firms want funding for biofortification over micronutrient deficiency in Nigeria

A global movement to rapidly scale up the production and consumption of biofortified staple crops and foods, Harvest Plus, has called on the government at all levels to fund the effective implementation of various programmes to address micronutrient deficiency in the country.

Addressing journalists on the sidelines of the Biofortification policy roundtable in Abuja, Harvest Plus Country Manager for Nigeria, Yusuf Dollah Fu’ad, said deficiencies in micronutrients account for the majority of the global health burden from hidden hunger affecting more than 2 billion people, mostly in low- and middle-income countries.

Through a crop breeding process called biofortification, micronutrient-enriched, climate-smart varieties of common staples provide essential iron, zinc, and vitamin A to rural households to improve nutritional status, health, and livelihoods.

Lamenting that Nigerians have nutritional challenges, Fu’ad said biofortification has been in Nigeria for 10 years now.

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“What we are doing today is stressing the need for policymakers to see the need for budgetary allocation to seed production,” adding that in the past three years, it was either growing or shrinking.