EDITORIAL: Tackling The Root Cause Of Food Price Inflation

OSUN is in the news again. The state of the virtuous/living spring is negatively leading other South-West states in food price inflation.

A report by StatiSense, a data company, shows that Osun State is number one in terms of food price inflation in the South-West with 33.32 percent and sixth nationwide with 39.72 percent. 

The reason for this abysmal performance is not farfetched. For a very long term, agricultural development has not been in the front burner in Osun State. In the opinion of a stakeholder resident in Osun State, “The last time Osun had anything close to an agricultural policy was during the Aregbesola era….I at least remember Aregbesola’s broiler out grower/off-taker programme wherein government gave inputs to farmers to raise broilers and bought the mature birds from them.”

The Oyetola government did not have a fierce agricultural development policy. My apologies if that sounded a bit harsh, but the handlers of the state’s agricultural policies then (if there was any) did not exactly have any business being in charge of the state’s Agricultural Development Policies. They didn’t seem to know anything about the sector.

Today under Adeleke, Osun does not seem to have any interest in agricultural development. We want to build bridges, tar dual carriage roads and even construct underpasses that we have no need for. 

But, how do we plan to feed the close to 5 million human beings present in our State? With asphalt?

This is a sad reflection of the misinterpretation of the process of development, not just in Osun State but nationwide. Too much emphasis is placed on vanity and white elephant project such as flyovers and underpass.

On the contrary, what is needed is to go back to the structural defect which has led to mass poverty and high food price inflation. 

All of the above was foretold well over half of a century ago in seminal works such as Renee Dumont’s 1962 classic “False starts in Africa”. 

Unfortunately, nothing has changed. Indeed, we have become a classic study in the “Development of Underdevelopment”. This phrase itself was coined in the 1960s.

Governor Adeleke has an historic task to mount a fightback. The main emphasis must be placed on the transformation of agriculture from subsistence farming to a commercial framework. 

This will follow in his step of the regional government of western Nigeria in the early 1950s when the cooperative bank was established as well as farm settlement and agricultural processing zones were established. 

Governor Adeleke must now focus in his fightback on the construction of rural roads as well as the establishment of a state commodities exchange. The two initiatives are interwoven.

A commodity exchange will ensure minimum farm-gate prices for the farmers, this will lead to an increase in production leading to achieving the economies of scale needed to bring down food prices. 

In addition, a commodity exchange will ensure the availability of storage facilities across the value chain. It will also ensure that cold storage facilities solar powered are install in the urban markets.  This will cut waste of perishable food commodities to near zero. 

What’s needed is an overall plan for the modernisation of agriculture in Osun State which will include the provision of long-term credit to the farming communities. An enabling environment must be provided to attract foreign and local investment into agriculture in Osun State leading to even export. 

Agriculture today is a huge international business and not a past time. Modernisation of the process matters. For example, The Netherlands which is size of Ekiti is the second largest exporter of food after the United States of America in the world. 

It can be done but the effort must start from the base such as issuing Certificate of Occupancy to farmers so they can have access to credit. The small things matter. 

We urge Governor Ademola Adeleke to see the disturbing figure quoted as a spur to putting the revival and the modernization of agriculture on the front burner.