Stakeholders in the food sector have blamed food insecurity on post-harvest losses, saying that everyone needs to collectively work towards ensuring the production of indigenous food and reducing post-harvest losses in the country.
The vice chancellor of Benue State University, Professor Tor Iorapuu was among the stakeholders who made this known while speaking at the just concluded 2nd West and Central Africa Post-harvest Congress and Exhibition (WCAPHCE), organised by the Centre for Food Technology and Research, Benue State University.
Iorapuu said the essence of the congress was to rally stakeholders to collectively work towards ensuring the production of indigenous food and reducing post-harvest losses.
“What we are trying to do is to collectively show solidarity and collectively act towards ensuring indigenous food production and ensuring that post-harvest losses are curtailed maximally. This is going to be processed through research and practical strategies that will help even the local farmers and large-scale farmers.
“We are happy that even the federal government has taken steps to provide silos across the country to ensure that the private sector enhances the capacity of local farmers to ensure food storage and post-harvest losses are minimised,” Iorapuu said.
The director and leader of the Centre for Food Technology and Research, Benue State University, Dr. Barnabas Ikyo, while speaking on the theme, “Upscaling and Promotion of African Indigenous Food”, said it aimed to refocus Nigeria’s attention on indigenous food to enhance local production and reduce the food import bill.
“We know that Nigerians who are dependent on imported food can decide to go back and look inwards, and we think that while most of our people who produce these indigenous foods are not getting the market for it, if we refocus our attention on indigenous foods we will have the market for them.
“We will empower their economic viability, they will be able to produce more, we will reduce the export-import deficit and we will have our children feed on better and fresh food from our farms,” he added.
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