United States Step Up To Curb Food Price Rises In NIgeria

Against the backdrop of rising food prices in the world, United States ambassador to Nigeria, Robin Sanders yesterday enumerated what the embassy has been doing to solve the problem of food insecurity and alleviate poverty in Nigeria.She said that the US mission through the US agency for International Development is increasing cassava yields and agricultural incomes for 300,000 farm households in 11 South East and South South states and at the same time creating 60,000 new jobs in cassava processing, manufacturing and trading."Our Foreign Agricultural Service is funding community health, microfinance and rural infrastructure projects in Bauchi, Benue, Kaduna and Nassarawa states, the envoy stated at the inaugural Isaac Moghalu Foundation Leadership Lecture in Lagos adding that her country is active in bore hole and school rehabilitation projects through "our office of Defence Cooperation".Sanders said that the embassy has reached an additional 500,000 farm households in the North, Middle Belt and Southern areas to increase productivity and income generation for selected domestic export products such as marine and freshwater aquaculture and dairy production adding that the mission worked on sustainable tree crop development with cocoa and cashew.According to the envoy, the mission has done a remarkable work with the private sector under the umbrella of Public Private Partnership (PPP) leading to the establishment of partial loan guarantee programmes with commercial banks to provide more than $30m in credit to small and medium size enterprises and agribusinesses to bring about increased yield which reaches the markets efficiently-benefiting both farmers and consumers."And in the spirit of PPP's, we have worked with companies like Microsoft with educationally focused NGOs like LEAP Africa and with Nigeria's dynamic banking sector with leading entities like Bank PHP and Skye Bank on an export credit programme" she added.Recently, the World Food Programme (WFP) described the rising food prices as a silent Tsunanmi which knows no borders sweeping the world.The crisis has triggered riots in Haiti, Cameroon, Indonesia and Egypt and is deemed a dangerous threat to stability.According to the WFP, it is not so much famine that is the worry, it is widespread misery and malnutrition.The WFP's biggest concern is for the people living on 50 cents a day who have nothing to fall back on. In Nigeria the cost of grain has gone up and the same could be said of other food commodities.Some analysts say the problem of Nigeria is highly associated with lack of storage.