Nigeria joins the rest of the world to mark October 10 as World Food Day with theme ‘Change the future of migration. Invest in food security and rural development.”
World Food Day is celebrated every year globally in honour of the date the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)was founded in 1945. This date is marked to shine a light on food security, including the World Food Programme and the international Fund for Agricultural Development.
This year’s theme is apt considering how more people are being forced to run from their homes due to conflict, war or political instability.
In a statement released by the FAO regarding the choice of theme for this year, they said “Large movements of people today are presenting complex challenges, which call for global action. Many migrants arrive in developing countries, creating tensions where resources are already scarce, but the majority, about 763 million, move within their own countries rather than abroad.
Three-quarters of the extreme poor base their livelihoods on agriculture or other rural activities. Creating conditions that allow rural people, especially youth, to stay at home when they feel it is safe to do so, and to have more resilient livelihoods, is a crucial component of any plan to tackle the migration challenge.
Rural development can address factors that compel people to move by creating business opportunities and jobs for young people that are not only crop-based (such as small dairy or poultry production, food processing or horticulture enterprises). It can also lead to increased food security, more resilient livelihoods, better access to social protection, reduced conflict over natural resources and solutions to environmental degradation and climate change.”
Nigeria on the other hand relentlessly seeks ways to provide agriculture as an alternative measure to tackle food security and wealth creation with initiatives like the Dangote youth rice farming initiative that is set to employ thousands of unemployed graduates in Kogi, and the Agric village soon to be built also in Kogi state.