Why Nigeria must guard against food wastage

With food prices remaining high, stakeholders are calling for efficient post-harvest handling techniques to reduce food wastages and losses.

Speaking at the just-concluded 3-day workshop on post-harvest handling techniques organised by Farms Flowers & Allied Products Initiative, a presidential aide, Alhaji Ibrahim Hassan, expressed concern over the current food situation in the country, noting that there was the need to tackle post-harvest losses.

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He stressed that “the combined negative effects of COVID-19 and security challenges are coming together to create a very frightening proposition of food insecurity in this country.”

The presidential aide, who spoke through one Alhaji Ahmed Sajoh said, “This is the first time in the history of this country that more than 70 per cent of farmers have received buyers at their farms to buy produce even before harvest, meaning that this is a year that if we are not careful people would end up going to the streets to beg for food to feed their families. So we can’t afford one great waste,” he said.

He said farmers face difficult security challenges, adding that “they have to beg for permission from bandits to go to their farms. They have to pay ransom to harvest their farms. They have to promise a portion of their harvest so that bandits would allow them to harvest their farms.”

Mrs Christy Dani Yakubu, president of the initiative, said one of the challenges confronting smallholder farmers in Nigeria was post-harvest handling wastages leading to huge losses.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimated that one-third of the food produced globally for human consumption is lost or wasted along the supply chain.