The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have promised to strengthen its partnership with the Nigerian government to assist smallholder farmers to build more resilience to shocks arising from agricultural disasters.
The FAO Deputy Director of emergencies and resilience, Shukri Ahmed made this known during a media briefing in Abuja, “These floods would come again, these droughts would come again, how can we prepare ourselves better to prevent the impact that they’re going to have on people”
The partnership is expected to cover the provision of technical support, especially to the vulnerable sections of smallholder farmers and help them build the resilience of agriculture-based livelihoods to multiple shocks.
Ahmed said, “The partnership, in the end, is to make a difference in the life of those that are in the rural areas, mostly neglected smallholders farmers as these are trying times as you know the shocks are increasing, and they are cascading, whether it’s climate relate one time you talk about drought, then suddenly you are we are talking about floods.
“What is happening now in Nigeria is that there are displacements due to conflicts and these are compounding to impact on these poor farmers, and FAO from the very beginning and its main mandate is eliminating hunger and eliminating poverty, but in a way that is sustainable and natural.
“So this mission, in particular, is to work and bring the technical know-how of FAO to support the government, we bringing partners together to actually make a difference in the life of those downtrodden.”
He pointed out that managing disasters has become the lifestyle of many African countries but there is a need to move away from managing disasters to managing risks to build farmers’ resilience to manage shocks bedevilling the sector.
Speaking also, the FAO Assistant Director-General, Abebe Haile-Gabriel, said that Nigeria remains a very important partner for FAO and that the aim of the visit was to come and interact with different stakeholders in the drive toward food security and achieving sustainable development goals agenda of zero hunger.
The FAO representative to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Fred Kafeero on his part, said the organisation is committed to mobilising expertise to support all the areas that we have identified.
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