A Letter to my Farmers. Zero hunger: Farmers are in the business of Managing Crises.
Achieving Zero hunger is an ambitious desire by all stakeholders in the agricultural sector, as it is pivotal in the desire to solve major risks that could hamper the vision. Sadly, there is a common belief that the agricultural sector is liable to many risks that could affect its growth, as well as achieving food security. Against this, farmers are constantly or periodically in crisis situations, where such situations are either created by internal or external factors, and the ability in overcoming such situations is good for the food systems. In other words, the more crisis farmers can manage to come out thriving, the better for the development of the food system. Thus, there is a need to develop the capacity of farmers in managing crises.
For instance, over the last few weeks in Nigeria, the cash crunch crippled the economy by adversely reducing the purchasing power and affected every sector in the country. Sadly, the All Farmers Association of Nigeria stated that the crisis resulted in the loss of revenue by farmers to the tune of 30 billion ( about $65M). Largely as a result of loss of food due to low purchasing power as the economy is still largely driven by cash. It is a pathetic situation where these farmers will only seek self help in order to come out of this crisis strong, with little or no support by the government (who had created the mess). Sadly, crises are managed largely using trial by errors, which might or might not work out or the duration of recovery may be longer than expected unlike if the farmers acquire the right knowledge and skills to weather the storm. Therefore, as key stakeholders who are focused on developing farmers' capacity, it is important that providing the appropriate knowledge for crisis management will help many farmers to adjust to bad realities quickly and build more resilient enterprises.
Farmers cannot be left alone to figure out everything on their own as the current system doesn't favour them in any way, thus, there is a need to build framework that focuses on crisis management at the farmers' level. Asides capacity for crisis management, there is also a need to develop a support system that helps the farmers to better manage crises. Farmers must not be caught unaware or without support during a crisis, and it is important for other stakeholders to acknowledge that we are all prone to it, especially the climate crisis. Therefore, no matter the crises, achieving food security must never be jeopardized, and this starts from accepting the reality that our farmers are in the business of crisis management to make the food system work! So, let us manage it efficiently.
Yours-in-Service
Babatunde
