AfriPulse
A director at the Institute of Agricultural Research, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Professor Rabiu Adamu, has said that the conventional means of crop production cannot meet food demand in Nigeria; and therefore, not sustainable, especially owing to population growth and shrinking agricultural lands.
He said that Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, produced 12.4 million metric tonnes of maize, which falls short of 18 million metric tonnes, which is the national requirement.
To address the growing gap, the professor said the government approved the introduction of high-yielding maize that is drought-tolerant and insect- resistant.
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“Nigeria still needs to improve its production per unit area. Per hectare production is less than 3 tonnes, so we need improvement there because urbanisation, road construction and many other things like desertification have been taking agricultural lands. To improve your production you need high-yielding crops, which do not require herbicides and pesticides, or even fertiliser,” Adamu said.
Dangote guarantees Nigeria’s daily PMS supply Farmers incur losses as pests attack sugarcane plantations in Kano On concerns over safety of genetically modified foods (GMOs), the professor said that to ensure food safety and human health, any crop coming into the country has to pass through regulatory mechanisms that ensure they are wholesome and safe, noting that the regulation for GMOs is even stricter than that of conventional crops because of genetic materials added.
“Before any crop is released for commercial use, it must go through a lot of physiological and nutritional analysis. Available data have so far shown the safety of the GMOs based on more than 200 researches conducted in Europe, USA, Latin America and some African countries. That is why they were allowed to be consumed, having met safety requirements. There is no report from either the World Health Organisation or Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (UN) that said genetically modified crops or food products were harmful to humans or animals. Presently, there are genetically modified crops, such as maize, tomato, rice, soybeans and pawpaw in the market. There are no proven safety issues in that regard.
“The use of GMOs is the reason that motivates and allows Nigeria to adopt the framework and signed the Geneva protocol on biodiversity based on the understanding of the framework to allow for the implementation and commercialisation of transgenic crops,” he explained.
Adamu said Nigeria did not produce enough organic food but conventional crops like other developing countries, where farmers use external inputs like organic fertilisers, non-synthetic pesticides. He argued that for genetically modified crops, some of them have been bred to resist some of production constraints farmers encounter during crop production like the insects, such as stem borers and fall army worms.
According to him, the federal government has officially approved the cultivation of three genetically modified crops. The first one that was approved, he said, was Bt cotton against the boll worms in the year 2020, followed by cowpea, SAMPEA 20T in 2021, then in 2024, the Tela maize, that is the genetically modified maize with resistance to army worms and stem borers. The maize hybrid was released with high resistance to army worms and stem borers and some tolerance to drought. There are some 72T, 73T, 74T and 75T.
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Source: DailyTrust | Read the Full Story…
