The Nigeria Institute of Soil Science (NISS) has called for an urgent national policy on the soil and signing of the fertiliser quality control bill to address degradation and pollution which could plunge the country into food insecurity.
The chairman, Governing Board and president of the institute, Professor Ayo Ogunkunle, made the call in Abuja while addressing newsmen at the quarterly meeting of the board.
He said: “The wrong use of soil should be controlled. Food security is now much more important even than the normal security you’re talking about because hunger kills, and unless we do something that will bring food self-sufficiency, food security will not be achieved and that will be a problem.
“Let me inform you concerning the soil problems that we have. We called it soil degradation as a body of problems. It is the reduction in the capacity of the soil to produce due to many reasons. You have desertification in the North and we are told that desert encroachment is moving at the rate of two metres per year. Unless we do something about it, before you know it, it will get as far as the southern part.”
The don listed other pollution problems destroying the soil to include indiscriminate application of fertiliser, disposal of plastic materials, use of substandard agrochemicals, deforestation, bush burning, as well as the ravaging effect of oil leaks in the Niger Delta.
Professor Ogunkule said that the country must come up with a strategic soil policy to deal with the problems associated with soil management for sustainable agricultural productivity.
