THE Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has promised to strengthen its partnership with the Nigerian government to assist smallholder farmers build more resilience to shocks arising from agricultural disasters.
According to FAO, the disasters such has displacement due to conflict floods, droughts and several other climate related disaster are here to stay but what is important is the country’s preparedness to the menace.
The partnership is expected to cover provision of technical support especially to vulnerable section of smallholder farmers and help them build resilience of agriculture-based livelihoods to multiple shocks.
The FAO Deputy Director of the Office of Emergencies and Resilience Shukri Ahmed during a media briefing in Abuja on their visit to Nigeria said “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”
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 happening now, in Nigeria, then 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 need to move away from managing disasters to managing risks to build farmers resilience to manage shocks bedeviling the sector.
Speaking also, the FAO assistant Director-General, Abebe Haile-Gabriel, as Nigeria remains a very important partner for FAO, the aim of the visit was to come and interact with different stakeholders in drive towards 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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