What is food safety? Well, trying to answer this question, there are two keywords that stand out here - food and safety.
Food, according to the dictionary, is any substance that people or animals eat or drink to stay alive.
Rice, beans, millet, fish, meat, water, dairy products, vegetables, fruits, alcohol, wine and soft drinks are some of the foods and drinks we know.
On the other hand, security is protection and freedom from threats, violence, danger, worries, bloody battle, or even death. So in my own words, food security is basically what you eat with your family.
Let us dwell on Nigeria and look at some statistical data on the transformation of agriculture. Nigeria, as you know, has about 150 million people from 774 local governments and 36 states and Abuja. Good market if you ask me.
But about 80% of Nigerians live in rural areas. These citizens are mostly old, uneducated peasants with coarse, outdated tools, trying to keep their souls and body together.
On the other hand, in the same coin there are large farmers in large cities across the country who are engaged in modern, mechanized large-scale agriculture.
These farmers in most cases export their agricultural products to developed countries, such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom, among other countries, in order to receive foreign currency. Few of these products are left for local consumption.
Thus, with approximately 98.3 million hectares of land mass in Nigeria, only 73.7 million people, accounting for less than 50%, are under cultivation, even if 80% of the funds provided by the Nigerian government are not available to poor, old uneducated farmers on in the countryside.
However, we preach the gospel of food security. These are rich and well-connected farmers who access funds.
Not surprisingly, with N18,000, some workers cannot feed themselves for two weeks.
Studies have shown that over the past ten years, our beloved country has spent more than $ 2 billion importing all kinds of food and beverages, raging from rice, beans, meat, fish, dairy products, and wheat from other countries in Nigeria.
So what I'm leading here is simply that the government should create favorable conditions for farmers, big times and peasants to work to feed the citizens.
The truth is that all over the world the government does not have the ability to run a business and succeed.
Serious business to ensure that food and beverages are available to citizens of any country should be left entirely in the hands of private investors, and the government provides the means, energy, water, fertilizer, tools and seeds, among other items.
