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Some attribute agricultural development in Nigeria with the policies of Dr Akinwumi Adesina, the spectacle-wearing stand-out minister of Agriculture. Indeed Dr. Adesina with his a decade at the Rockefeller Foundation history, on a superficial look transformed Nigeria’s agriculture landscape, but is this the whole truth about his legacy?
I believe our outgoing minister of agriculture’s legacy can best be summarized thus: Adesina converted Agriculture into a business. This is as he puts it, in his own words.
Dr. Adesina looked at the agric sector and decided that rather than keep it a sort of ‘charitable’ operation, he could turn it around into a business; and oh yes he did. Within a few years, in spite of increasing desertification and Boko Haram devastation, Nigeria met Millennium Development Goal #1: reducing the population of hungry people by half. Jobs were also created in the agric sector.
It all looks good and everyday Bill Gates was seen in Nigeria walking hand-in-hand with Dr Adesina. But at what cost did Nigeria experience Adesina’s ATA transformations? To whose gain?
Simply ask the common man: what the cost of food is? Food prices have continued to rise in Nigeria in spite of this great expansion. From the fundamental principles of economics we immediately see pertinent questions.
Why has the Consumer Food Price Index continued to rise at about and above 10% each year?
Why has Food price inflation remained about 10.90%, and stayed higher than the core inflation rate?
Economics defines that with increased supply there is decreased price but rather the cost of staples is increasing in Nigeria, defying the basic economics principle; to whose gain?
Importantly, how is it possible for food production to increase in spite of much of the nation’s food basket; from Benue to Borno, devastated by Boko Haram terror and marauding villagers, herdsmen and undefined agents? [I have written earlier on the broader contradictions and failures of our agriculture ministry touting increased food production with millions of northern farmers rather out of business via terror of the Jonathan years. That article: Agriculture Transformation: Invest In Protecting Farmers’ Lives, Not GMO’s- ENDS.ng; May 2014]
Dr. Adesina worked on increasing bank lending to farmers to buy fertilizer and seeds. His target: to increase lending from 2% to 10%. With fertilizer distribution totally privatized and seed sellers a private business controlled by the Bill Gates foundation, Monsanto’s and other world producers, farmers cannot simply re-plant seeds from the last harvest but take these bank loan facilities to buy seed from Big corp. under the Adesina legacy. Visit agriculturally crippled Ghana and Haiti to see the impact of New World Order, NWO and Genetically Modified Organisms, GMO control of food production.
In the process, with loan-dependent farming, farmers are dependent on the banks; the Big corp. makes big gains and the cost of food must rise and be gambled away in futures and stock markets.
Food in Nigeria is no longer priced by the simple dynamics of rain fall and harvest but is controlled by banks, seed marketers and the stock market. What Adesina has introduced to Nigeria is artificial food and artificial pricing of food, food becoming a business and business only as he fantasizes.
Of course as we eat our more expensive and less nutritious, possibly toxic food, we cannot simply dismiss the entire ‘transformation’ of Adesina. But we must be ready to face several certain realities as Big corp. takes over our farming industry.
- As Nnimmo Bassey can most thoroughly explain, expect more cancer, more sterility, more ecological devastation and less nutritious food in general. [Refer: Do Not Force-Feed Nigerians With GMOs By Nnimmo Bassey-SaharaReporters]
- Expect the price of food to continue to rise indefinitely.
- Expect to see the cabal and Big corp. grow more content and satiated as you get hungry.
Dr. Peregrino Brimah; http://ENDS.ng [Every Nigerian Do Something] Email: drbrimah@ends.ng Twitter: @EveryNigerian