IN order to ensure food sufficiency in the country, Nigerians have been called upon to embrace backyard farming.
The call was made during the 2021 annual retreat of the Nigerian Association of Animal Health And Husbandry Technologists (NAAHHT), Oyo State chapter, held in Ibadan, recently.
Chairman of the association, Mr Kazeem Akingboye, while welcoming participants to the retreat noted that: “the theme for this year’s retreat: “Urban Food System, Urban Food Security and Eating Healthy” was carefully chosen to underscore the urban demography of food security and poverty because we are all conversant with rural to urban migration without proportional increase in food production in our urban centres and cities.”
Akingboye further stated that: “Lots of people have forced themselves to dwell in the cities without being food secure, this has led to have more poor people in urban than rural areas. Our association has been in the advocacy for urban food value system and urban food security in which both the plant and livestock components can be integrated to reduce the alarming trend. City farming, urban farming, pot farming, backyard farming have been advanced globally as avenues to reverse the trend in order to make the society food sufficient.”
An expert, Mr Lamidi Bashiru Kehinde, while presenting a paper during the event stated that NAAHHT as a key player in the animal industry is getting more and more prominent, especially now that food security is becoming a global focus.
“We need to get more involved and participate in both national and international initiatives where food, human and animal health are being designed and implemented. As individuals, we must realise that we have been strategically trained to support national growth and development with our duties spreading beyond management of health and production of animals.
“Private individuals also have roles to play to contribute to more sustainable city region food system. We can tap into this by forming private advocacy groups to get our local goverments to be part of the signatories.”
and then