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General News of Tuesday, 27 July 2021

Source: www.mynigeria.com

'FG ready to tackle inflation, other challenges of food security' - Osinbajo says

Yemi Osinbajo Yemi Osinbajo

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo has stated that the federal government has plans towards tackling current inflation and other challenges of food security in the country.

He made the statement on Tuesday, July 27, at the preparatory meeting of the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021.

According to him, at the same time and as an outcome of 40 different food system dialogues in which up to 5,000 people participated, Nigeria is prioritizing investments in specific innovations and technologies to scale up and transform food systems.

“These actions complement existing development plans and sectoral strategies such as our Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, the National Policy on Food and Nutrition, and the National Policy on Food Safety.

“Our Nutrition Policy addresses the issues of sustainable and nutrition-sensitive food systems – and the country has prioritized key nutrition actions that are impactful, cost-effective, scalable and sustainable.

“An integral part of our food systems’ transformation strategy is to create an enabling and supportive environment to implement these policies in a participatory manner involving farmers, investors and state governments.

“Post-harvest losses in Africa, and particularly in Nigeria, are more than 20% of production for several food groups. And this is due mainly to poor storage, poor rural infrastructure and non-automation of food processing, amongst other things.

“The situation in many African countries is given increased urgency with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to growing levels of acute food insecurity. This is of great concern to all of us, especially if we recall that prior to the pandemic, the prevalence of severe food insecurity was as high as 22%” he said.