Food loss and waste in Africa’s most populous country have become a leading cause of food insecurity, thus investing in tackling wastages across the agricultural value chain is critical to Nigeria’s future.
One of the critical challenges that smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa face is feeding its growing population amidst other perennial issues.
Nigeria’s population is growing rapidly, but food production is not moving at the same pace, sparking fears of food insecurity in Africa’s biggest economy.
Despite this, more than half of what is grown currently is being lost due to food loss and wastage, as a result of complications and inefficiencies in the food production system.
According to the 2021 United Nations Food Waste Index, each Nigerian trashes at least 189 kilogrammes of food annually, amounting to a total of 37.8 million tons of food yearly.
Food loss and food waste happen at different stages of the food production and supply chain, from agriculture production, harvesting, post-harvest handling, processing, packaging, distribution, retail, and consumption.
Losses at post-harvest are referred to as food losses while those that happen at later stages of the food supply chain are called food waste.
These losses and waste cause ripple effects on the environment, society, and economy making it an increasing global concern.
With every ounce of food wasted, there are associated wastages in water, energy, capital, nutrition, and other related resources, according to the Food and Agricultural Organisation.
Post-harvest losses in Africa’s most populous nation have been estimated to range between 5 and 20 percent for grains; 20 percent for fish and as high as between 50 and 60 percent for tubers, fruits, and vegetables, according to experts.
Post-harvest losses in Nigeria amount to an estimated loss of $9billion (N3.7 trillion based on the current official rate exchange rate of N413) by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture.
Additionally, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria, the country has experienced a severe spike in food loss and wastage, threatening food security and precipitating massive increase in food importation, experts say.
This has led to a food import bill of about N2.1 trillion within the first nine months of 2021, showing that the country is largely dependent on external food sources to augment local production, as shown from data put out by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) trade report.
To tackle the country’s food loss and waste concerns and to ensure that the country becomes food secure, Flour Mills of Nigeria- the nation’s leading agro-allied company, has through its ‘Prize for Innovation’ initiative, begun to address this challenge through an ingenious competition.
With FMN’s Prize for Innovation, the agro allied company is supporting micro, small and medium businesses (MSMEs) operators, who are pioneering innovative approaches tackling food loss and waste in the food production value chain to scale up execution of their ideas.
FMN is also supporting students at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels, who have innovative ideas reducing loss and wastage of food, to kick-start their businesses.
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“Our goal is to continue to seek innovative ways to provide quality value to our stakeholders; we will continue to prioritize this as we invest in creating a future in which our mission of “Feeding the Nation, Everyday” is always met,” says Sadiq Usman, director group strategy, FMN.
“We will always strive to improve the quality of our food production, ensuring that we are constantly breaking new ground and at the forefront of advancement in all of our operations,” he says.
According to Usman, the ‘Prize for Innovation’ campaign is a pilot initiative that will take place yearly and serve as one of the numerous ways FMN is constantly striving to improve the lives of Nigerians.
The maiden edition was launched last year and finalists were selected from two categories in January 2022, by a prestigious team of experts in the agricultural and entrepreneurship ecosystem in Nigeria.
In the first category, five entrepreneurs were announced as finalists who were chosen from hundreds of entries submitted by MSMEs across the country.
Chuks Ogbonna (Urban Awku agro-allied ltd.), an entrepreneur based in Rivers state, that transforms food waste into high-quality protein ingredients for livestock feed through an optimization system, won the grand prize of N3million.
Samson Ogbole (Eupepsia Place Limited), a vegetable farmer in Ogun state with an innovative solution that enables farmers to cultivate vegetables without the use of soil, emerged as the first runner-up and won N1million.
In addition to the prizes, FMN is providing learning opportunities and mentorship for the top five finalists in the first category.
In category two, students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, with innovative ideas also tackling food loss and waste, were shortlisted and competed in a viewer’s choice style format. The top ten video pitch entries with the most scalable ideas were open to the general public, online to pick their favorite idea and the top three voted entries were rewarded.
Making impact
With support from Flour Mills of Nigeria, winner of the maiden edition of Prize for Innovation, Chuks Ogbonna, will expand his production to reach more livestock farmers whose businesses are on the brink of collapse.
Nigeria’s poultry industry is currently under considerable strain owing to escalating prices of feeds which is negatively impacting production output.
The situation is taking a heavy toll on poultry farmers as many have shut down their farms while others are slaughtering less weighty chickens to deal with the surging price of maize and soybeans – key inputs accounting for most feed costs.
Similarly, the situation resulted in a massive loss of jobs in the poultry industry, which had previously created the most jobs in the country in 2019, according to data from the Manufacturer Association of Nigeria (MAN).
With Ogbonna’s innovative solution, food waste will be converted to high protein livestock feeds that can serve as a substitute for soybeans. This helps to reduce farmers’ costs on feeds while also addressing the issue of food waste.
According to Ogbonna, the prize money and training will help his organisation set up another waste treatment facility that will process 13 tons of food waste daily from its current 2ton per week.
“Currently, we manufacture 2.8tons of insect protein monthly, but we can now increase our capacity to produce 32 tons monthly. This means poultry farmers will have more high-protein feeds to buy from us. The demand for our product is there already, so the increase means more for the farmers,” he notes.
