Drastic Hunger Require Deployment To The Farms With Incentives

Asian countries including China alleviated drastic hunger during famine in our generation, so can we. Those trying to make it a political issue are hypocrites that never solved it while in Power, especially among Talikawa in the North. They capitalize on it as the Privilege class enjoyed the subservient subjugation of the poor. Ironically, some candidates finally wake up to ride on hunger in the land into the Presidency. Where were they before now?

We have to find ways of attracting people back to the farm. Humongous buildings without tenants or built for show but hardly occupied year-round have replaced farmlands. During our lifetime, many Asian countries were starving. While technology has improved the production of food, people have been lured back into food production. China and other countries are even in the position of exporting food with a generation of famine.

The cry of hunger is getting louder, calling for urgent action that can only be ignored at our own peril. Political parties are using it against one another. There are many people out there unemployed that would be glad to get a good pay working on the farms. But the wages have to be right with good environmental conditions and housing. We provide housing for Youth corpers, soldiers and offenders, why not for farmers at this critical stage of hunger in the land?

If people have the choice of being idle on the street, hungry begging for money and stomach infrastructure or being locked up at a Police station waiting for bail, many will choose to be on a better paying job, organized on farms like Obasanjo Farm, throughout the country. It is not that there are nobody trying like Obasanjo Farms, Danjuma and Dangote tried and failed. If it takes Cooperative societies like the past, so be it.

We have to find a way to lure some of our Youths back to the farm. Politically, it is not attractive and may turn off some voters. But it is better than the nefarious activities the Youths engage in these days. Some of those desperately heading to the sea and desert find themselves engaging in most of the activities they shun at home including farming as their best legal option. Instead of donating organs, sold as slaves or unwilling sex workers.

The problem of scarce labor on the farms is not only in the developed countries. It is creating hunger in Africa. African Youths would rather go overseas for any job, even farming, than stay at home and do the same types of jobs done abroad. Their rationale is they get better pay there. But they also pay dearly for housing and utilities. If the natives are living from one paycheck to another abroad, imagine migrants at the low level of the ladder, how worse off they are with bills.

Farming is a thorny issue worldwide, yet it remains the only means of survival against hunger. Old farmers are resting and their children are leaving the land for better opportunities and a less arduous working environment. As much as the native population are against migrants from poor countries, their working class will keep on complaining about the high cost of food too. Dedicated farmers and migrants are the only ones left to work on the farms for low pay abroad.

Where is the former Osun State Governor Aregbesola's O'Beef which he taunted while in office? He sent Youths and agricultural workers to train in the State of Saxony-Anhalt in Germany. Many of them were reallocated at Oloba Cattle Fattening Hub in Iwo to practice the techniques learned abroad under the Osun Rural Enterprise and Agricultural Program. Unfortunately, we never heard about it again since Aregbesola left office.

O’Beef was supposed to turn Osun State into Beef baskets in order to supply meat to the large market demand in Lagos and the rest of Southwest before capturing the rest of Nigeria market demand for beef. Experts from Zambia and South Africa were brought in to introduce Zambia Boran and crossbreed with local cattle at Oloba 78-hectare ranch with enough capacity for 10,000 cattle. We must keep on trying to resuscitate it, bring back farming before the Oil curse.

There are other factors for the shortage of farm hands in African countries. Civil, ethnic and terrorists are driving the remaining dedicated farmers out of thor land. In this modern age when grazing of herds has been limited to farms, old habits of rearing herds from one place to another have devastated crops, fruits and vegetables. Cow rearers that used to carry long sticks to control their herds are now carrying AK47s.

Security has also become a big factor, because farmers fear marauders grazing on their crops with impunity. We have enough problems with those begging for space to trade peacefully. Now they want grazing land. Some irresponsible elements are even blackmailing states to negotiate and allocate other people’s land for roaming Fulani cowboys looking for free land they can convert into their own settlements.

Some of these agrarian fields are now in competition with nomadic pastoralist cattle rears roaming cow rearers across farmland in search of pasture and water. There are also challenges like drought chasing cattle rearers southward because of shrinking grazing land up North. Climate change has become a big problem worldwide. Each country must find a solution and develop adequate structure for its environment.

Most Nigerians do not realize that many of the food imported into the country come from either slave labor in Western countries and prisoners in Eastern countries. While it is true that most of the grains are from mechanized industrial farming, the people who actually do the manual parts are immigrants that work for so little, owners of the farms have difficulties attracting native born. Yet, many of these countries advocate against slave labor in other countries.

Most Americans, like some Nigerians, do not know where their food comes from. All they patronize are retailers in the markets or on the streets. These food retailers have to make a profit to feed their own families and take care of other responsibilities. Most people shop in the same stores except the higher class that go to special stores to buy their food at premium prices.

One of the legacies of Tai Solari was the introduction of farming as a compulsory subject at Mayflower, the high school he founded. Many students refused to apply to the school because of farming. Many of the schools in Western and probably Eastern Nigeria had farms for their students to cultivate.