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By Godwin Chukwumaechi, Port Harcourt
Food Sovereignty and Agro-ecology have been identified as viable solutions to the problems of hunger, food insecurity and climate change in Africa.
This was as non-governmental organization, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), organized a media training in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, on Wednesday, with the theme: ‘My Food is African,’ aimed at building the knowledge base of journalists on issues surrounding food security in the country.
HOMEF’s executive director, Dr. Nnimmo Bassey, in a welcome remark tagged: ‘Food, Culture and Colonialism,’ called for the decolonisation of the food system, describing it as the way towards the preservation of crop and animal varieties, rebuilding our food systems, and thereby, recovering the nation’s culture.
Dr. Bassey described a colonised food and agriculture system as one that enslaves farmers, disconnects people from the soil and exposes citizens to great harm, noting that “It is our duty to demand safe food, support our farmers, reject monoculture, and decolonize our foods and minds.
“When you have lost your food (as a people), and you are now dependent on food from elsewhere, or that is genetically-engineered, you are exposing yourself to great risk, you lose the resilience, the capacity to withstand the challenges of life and health, because for every region of the world, nature has provided the right crops that would help maintain the health of the people.”
He said plantation agriculture encapsulates the core practice of colonialism that entailed land use conversion – often through massive deforestation and land grabbing.
“It also promoted monoculture by growing specific crops to meet specific needs of industry and colonial appetites. Monocultures damage soils as well as labour. In Nigeria, predominant plantations included those of oil palm, cocoa, rubber, and coffee. These crops were termed cash crops, meaning that they were cultivated for cash rather than for food. This approach persists today as our governments see useful agriculture as the one that earns foreign exchange, irrespective of the state of food insecurity in the nations.
“Colonial agriculture thrived not only by producing crops for export, but it also benefited from altering the appetites of the colonized. These changes did not happen only through advertisements, the indigenous foods were denigrated as uncivilized and sometimes simply forgotten due to a chronic absence of the crops or ingredients for preparing the foods. Today, the erosion of varieties is exacerbated by many related factors including the prevalence of junk foods, hybridization of crop varieties, genetic manipulations, and hostile seed laws.
“Farming for cash relegated diverse crop varieties needed to maintain nutritious food systems. The centrality of agriculture and food in our cultures got dramatically eroded through colonial plantation agriculture and the fixation on cash rather than seeing agriculture as a pattern of living,” he said.
Dr. Bassey further explained that the decolonization of agriculture is the way towards the preservation of crop and animal varieties, “rebuilding our food systems, thereby, recovering our culture”.
“A decolonized agriculture invests on support systems for farmers, including providing extension services and providing/upgrading rural infrastructure. It also means preserving local varieties, ensuring that farmers have access to land and, funding research institutions to build a knowledge base on healthy soils and resilient indigenous crops.
“Decolonizing our food system will liberate our tongues and bring back forgotten tastes. It is the way to revive our cultures and bring back vibrancy into the lives of our rural communities.
“So, we want to remind those in authority that they can help Nigerians, help the farmers, the economy as well as the biodiversity by placing a total ban on genetically-engineered crops,” he said.
Delivering a paper on ”Changing Diets and the Threats to Food Sovereignty,’ CEO, BFA Food and Health Group, Dr Jackie Ikeotuonye, made a distinction between foods created by God and those by man.
She noted that “the challenge we are having as far as food is concerned, come from those foods created by man. That is where we have all these GMOs and all. God didn’t create GMO.”
Dr Ikeotuonye, who is in “the fight against GMO,” said the agricultural system “we have in Nigeria now, promotes the consumption of foods that are out of sync with our national body,” and thus causing all sorts of problems such as cancer.
She pointed accusing fingers at “corporations that promote genetically-engineered foods,” arguing that they “steal Nature’s harvest of diverse species, destroy biodiversity, steal global harvest of healthy and nutritious foods,” among others.
Ikenna Donald-Ofoegbu, project coordinator, hbs Nigeria and AAPN, in a paper titled: ‘Transitioning to Agro-ecology- the Opportunities and Challenges,’ sought a return to Agro-ecology, which he described as being in sync with the traditional farming system in Nigeria.
He described Nigeria’s current agricultural system as hostile to the ecosystem, heavily import dependent and doomed to fail, due to its reliance on large scale mono-culture, heavy consumption of harmful pesticides and use of GMOs.
“We are heavily dependent on pesticides and GMOs. Our soil is constantly reducing in terms of nutrients and we are losing biodiversity and food Sovereignty at a very fast rate,” he said.
Pointing out the dangers of pesticides and mono-culture, which he said is “an open system,” Donald-Ofoegbu said that Agro-ecology naturally replenishes the soil, promotes food Sovereignty and protects the ecosystem as well as the economy.
In a paper titled: ‘Assessing Food Policies in Nigeria: Where are the Gaps,’ HOMEF’s Joyce Brown, lamented the inadequate attention paid to proper regulation of the food system in Nigeria, and to putting a Food Safety Act in place.
She said that the problem of food insecurity in the country has more to do with access to food, as well as storage and wastages, than with food production itself.
Activities at the media training included a group session on the ‘Role of media in the transition to Agro-ecology/influencing change in consumption patterns,’ coordinated by by Kome Odhomor.
