There is currently an upsurge in public-private activities targeted at improving global food security. The rising food intervention efforts have been necessitated by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian-Ukraine war, climate change, and an unabating rise in food inflation across regions.
The number of people going hungry globally has risen by 150 million since the start of the Covid19 pandemic, with the Russian -Ukraine war threatening to push worst-hit countries into famine, the United Nations said in a July 2022 report.
About 828 million people of the world’s population were affected by hunger in 2021, 46 million more than in 2020 and 150 million more than in 2019, agencies including the Food and Agriculture Organisation, World Food Programme, and World Health Organisation said in the 2022 joint edition of the UN food security and nutrition report.
Also, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said about 3.1 billion people could not afford a healthy diet in that year due to the measures put in place to curtail the spread of the deadly virus. And around 45 million children aged between 1 and 5 lacked adequate nutrition.
The gender gap in food insecurity also widened further with over 31.9 percent of women compared to 27.6 percent of men reported to be food insecure. The situation has not seen much improvement.
Despite the progress being made in raising the level of global food security in the past couple of years, the hunger projection for the remaining part of the decade remains gloomy. It is projected that eight percent of the global population, which is an estimated 670 million people, will still be facing hunger by 2030.
Back home, Nigeria’s hunger level was ranked 103 out of 121 countries on the Global Hunger Index published by two leading European organisations, Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide. This was as recent as October. Hence, providing recourse to check the rising hunger level in the country is crucial.
Leading the public-private efforts in enhancing Nigeria’s food security position is Olam Agri, a global agribusiness transforming food, feed, and fiber. Within its three-decade operation in the country, Olam Agri invested around N360 billion in the local agricultural value chain.
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This robust value chain funding includes a deep investment in innovative projects, key growth partnerships, farmers’ training, and expansion of operating infrastructure. These efforts are geared towards improving the country’s food production self-sufficiency level.
Speaking on Olam Agri’s growing national food security investment drive in Nigeria, Ashish Pande, Country Head, Olam Agri Nigeria, said, “We prioritise investment in key value chain development projects. Our target is to accelerate the attainment of the federal government’s food security agenda and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of achieving zero hunger in the world.”
Pande said that the business will maintain its food security investment drive by scaling its value chain engagement, partnership, and collaborative actions.
“If the current trajectory and focus are maintained, Olam Agri’s efforts, in addition to the efforts of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development (FMARD), among other private interventions in the value chain, would successfully scale the level of food production in the country before the end of the decade,” he added.
The Agribusiness over the last ten year or so continues to back its commitment to expanding Nigeria’s agriculture and food systems with investments in rice farming & milling, sesame, wheat milling, cotton, edible oil, and animal feed to mention but a few.
For instance, the business set up a multi-million-dollar integrated rice mill, which had the capacity of producing 36,000 tonnes of rice per annum, in Nasarawa State. Through its out-grower programme, the business has engaged over 35,000 smallholder rice farmers and is still onboarding new farmers to accelerate the supply of rice to the local market.
Precisely, Olam Agri intends to make Nigeria a rich agricultural hub. It invested an estimated $120 million in its poultry and animal feeds business in Kaduna and Ilorin. The poultry and animal farm unit can produce 720,000 tonnes of poultry feed annually for the market.
This impressive production capacity addresses a significant supply gap in the segment. It is giving farmers and distributors access to high-quality feed and DOC at competitive prices. This enhances the production of poultry meat in Nigeria.
Olam Agri is currently working on a bold N300 million 10-year wheat development initiative tagged Seeds for the Future. The initiative addresses the factors that have impeded the achievement of wheat production self-sufficiency in the country.
The programme adopts a community-based seed enterprise that utilizes the expansive capacities of the local agric researchers and the well-networked village-based women smallholder wheat farmer cooperative unions in the wheat farming belts of the North.
The development programme met its target of producing 10 kilograms of pre-multiplication early maturing wheat seed varieties that are suitable for Nigeria’s unique local topography and climate.
In July 2022, Olam Agri underlined its commitment to food security with a $200 million loan from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to help it expand the supply of key production inputs such as wheat, maize, and soy to its global subsidiaries to combat the widening shortage of commodities due to the Russia-Ukraine war and the wider climate change which are taking a toll on the world population.
“The facility further supports us to continue to supply staple crops and ensure food security to some of the most populous countries in Asia and Africa most at risk of global food inflation,” said Neelamani Muthukumar, chief executive officer of operations at Olam Agri.
