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By Chinyere Anyanwu, [email protected]
The Ogun State Commissioner for Agriculture, Dr. Adeola Odedina, has stressed the need for sustainable agriculture investment to meet the increasing demand for food for Nigeria’s growing population through mitigation of consequences of climate change.
Odedina stated this at a one-day workshop on climate change effects on cassava production and processing value chain with the theme, “Climate Change Effects on Cassava Production & Processing”, held at Providence Event Centre, Abeokuta, the state capital.
To ensure food security, the commissioner said “we need to understand the climatic changes around us and how they affect agricultural productivity and rural livelihood,”. He noted that climate change and global warming are among the problemsfacing many countries in the world.
Odedina who observed that emission of green house gases was responsible for global warming and subsequent climate variability, listed emission of greenhouse gases from gas flaring, bush and open burning, vehicle emissions, deforestation and use of solid fossil fuel for cooking among some of the causes of climate change in Nigeria.
“Indeed, the extreme climatic events such as flooding, extreme heat, and drought have led to soil degradation which results in low crop yields, stressing that decline in agricultural productivity further discourages farmers and could lead to changes in livelihood, especially in the rural settings,” He said.
In his contribution, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), representative and head of component, Local Economic and Value Chains development for GIZ-SEDIN, Mrs. Sina Uti-Wasiri, said that the objective of the GIZ intervention was to support implementation partner in improving the employment and income situation of MSMEs. She noted that the programme cooperates with partners at the federal, state and local government levels, saying Ogun State GIZ is supporting the cassava processing and ICT/E Commerce Value Chains in its value chains component.
She said other intervention areas include access to financial services, building financial competencies, enabling business environment, supporting business development and promoting entrepreneurship.
Also speaking, Mrs. Kehinde Jokotoye, Programme Director, Ogun State Cassava Revolution Programme, said that climate change was an altercation of weather condition over a long period of time.
