Food Question! We Must Trek Aregbe’s Road Again

Do you go to social parties?  Do you notice children, struggling with goats and sheep for the left-overs of food?  Do you pass-by the waste-bins in street corners?  Do you see the pigs and the human scavengers slugging it out to have the largest chunk of food wastes?  Do you sulk in blame-game?  There is hunger in the land.  Yet, we pretend as if all is well.  We had the last opportunity to celebrate  Aregbe on 16th October, 2018 on World Food Day but we failed.  The liberation theologists in our State, civil servants, journalists and the human rights community should have joined campaigns together on that day to celebrate.  Our farmers too did not celebrate the day.  Only a news-talk on Osun Broadcasting Corporation on that day was the only symbol of the celebration of the day.  No more!    There must be a change of attitude to reverse this tipping edge.

Do you know that over one billion in the world go to bed hungry every night? Do you know that the population of Africa is estimated to be 8oo million people and that 300 million of these people are victims of hunger?  Do you know that 10 million of them are in Nigeria, translating to 360,000 hungry people in each State?  By our  collective latch, we are re-adopting the use of starvation as capital punishment for our innocent population.   You say ‘how’?  Come, please.

Do you know that starvation was a death sentence from the beginning of civilization to the Middle-Ages, during which time, condemned people were immured, walled in, and abandoned to die of starvation? Do you know that the ancient Greco-Roman civilizations used starvation to dispose of guilty citizens? Are you aware that in the year A.D. 31,Livilla, the daughter-in-law of Tiberius, was discreetly starved to death by her mother for her adulterous relationship with Sejanus and for her complicity in the murder of her own husband, Drusus the Younger?  Are you aware that another daughter-in-law of Tiberius, named Agrippina also died of starvation in A. D. 33?  Do you know that this history repeated itself in later European civilizations as we saw in 1317 in Sweden, when King Birger of Sweden imprisoned his two brothers for staging a coup and sentenced them to die of starvation? Are you aware that in 1671 in Cornwall in the United Kingdom of Great Britain, John Trehenban   was condemned to starve to death in a cage at Castle An Dinas for the murder of twin girls?

Yes!  Starvation has for long been a smart weapon of death. Did you hear that in Nazi Germany, many prisoners died of starvation in the concentration camps? Have you ever read the story of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, a martyred Polish friar who underwent a sentence of starvation in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1941? Sorry! May their souls rest in peace.  We must note that while starvation was a selective weapon to kill the guilty in the old civilizations, , now it is a smart ballistic,  killing the guilty and the innocents in millions with equal strength in our world.  We must quip to ask: Shall we abandon Aregbe’s quick interventions to reverse the trend of food crises in our land? Do you know that, like ‘Bob Marley’ says, we “just have to get on boat”?    You say: how? Come along, please.  Bob Dylan cuts in:

Yes, how many times must a man look up

Before he can really see the sky?

Yes, how many ears must one man have

Before he can hear people cry?

Yes, how many deaths will it take till he knows

That too many people have died?

The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind

The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

Have you found time to check Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierachy of Needs’?  Do you agree with him that food is a basic need?  Can you recall  the food riots in 2007 and 2008 in Haiti and Madagasca,.. the riots that forced their Presidents out of power? Have you forgotten the ‘Arab Springs’ and how food riots in the region altered the civilization and the demography of the region with fratricidal wars?  Do you know that throughout history, portions of the world’s population have often experienced sustained periods of hunger due to food supply disruptions, wars, plagues or adverse weather? The World Food Programme cuts in:

“Some 795 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. That’s about one in nine people on earth. The vast majority of the world’s hungry people live in developing countries, where 12.9 percent of the population is undernourished.”

Let us visit Thomas Malthus, an English cleric.  .  He was born on 13 February 1766  and died on 23 December 1834.   In 1798, Malthus published a book titled: “An Essay on the Principle of Population”.He theorized that an increase in a nation’s food production will at first, improve the well-being of the populace but when not scientifically monitored, it leads to disaster popularly called the “Malthusian trap”.This trap simply means that mankind has a propensity to utilize abundance in growth for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living and that population has a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship and greater susceptibility to famine and disease.  Malthus predicts population growth as being inevitable whenever conditions improve, thereby precluding real progress.  Malthus cries:  “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man…. Population multiplies geometrically and food arithmetically; therefore, whenever the food supply increases, population will rapidly grow to eliminate the abundance.”

Do you know that the Malthusian trap has created over 0ne billion hungry people in the world as at today? Do you know that Social Development Goal is only targeting to halve this ugly statistics by year 2030? Do you know that malnutrition is already a  cause of death for more than 3.1 million children under 5 every year in our world? Are you aware that UNICEF estimates that 300 million children go to bed hungry each night; and that 8000 children under the age of 5 are estimated to die of malnutrition every day?  Do you know that the Global Hunger Index (GHI) in its 2017 report shows that Nigeria is one of the countries at risk of hunger?  Do you know that we all have a shared responsibility to reverse this trend, taking it as a religion and article of faith like Simone Weil,  if we ever want to enter ‘the kingdom of God’? Do you know Simone Weil?

Simone Weil was a French philosopher.  She was born on 3 February 1909 and died on 24 August 1943. Taking a path that was unusual among the 20thcentury left-leaning intellectuals, she became more religious and inclined towards mysticism.   Her mystic studies made her to publish various evidence in Ancient Egypt where many devotees had to show they had helped the hungry in the society in order to justify themselves qualified to enter ‘paradise’ in  after-life. Weil concludes: “Social progress is first of all ….a transition to a state of human society in which people will not suffer from hunger.”

Do you know that Caliph Umar is more noted in the Koran for carrying food to a widow to safe her generation?  Do you know that Jesus of Nazareth became noticeable for feeding nine thousand devotees  on two occasions? Do you know that Joseph became popular in Abrahamic Creationist Story because of his scientific interpretation of Egyptian Pharaoh’s dream which led to the building of silos to stock-pile food to guarantee food security? Do you know that food security is part of national security?  Come along!

Do you know that one of the basic components of world’s strategic security is Food Security? It was made popular in ancient China and Egypt .   Egyptians stock-piled food in silos as food security and invested Joseph, a migrant, but the initiator of the programme, as the Prime Minister. Food security is important to nations as a deterrence  strategy.  The  report of the 1996 World Food Summit cuts in:

“food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”.

The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development is of the opinion that failed agriculture market regulation and the lack of anti-dumping mechanisms cause much of the world’s food insecurity.  These result in chronic hunger amongst infants and child mortality.  Hence, the 1996 World Summit on Food Security warned: “Food should not be used as an instrument for political and economic pressure”.

The issue of mass hunger became a leading topic after the Great Depression in the United States of America and forced Congress to approving the donations to the hungry from the Farm Board as a federal government oversight duty created in 1929 to promote the sale and stabilization of agricultural products. Food riots broke out in various States in Europe and the United States.  The riots aggravated racial tension as most of the disadvantaged people suffering from hunger in the United States were blacks.  There was racial tension by this regime of hunger and human rights violations were rife. Food became big politics.  The human rights movements came to the scene to pacify the hungry and to appeal to the rich to show mercy. “ For God so loved the poor that He created them in millions.    Do you know that like Aregbe,  we all have a duty to show mercy by designing ways to solve the food question of our people? Do you like feeding the hungry or you frown your face at their sight?  We must show humanity.   Luther King advises:  “When I die, do not build a monument to me. Do not bestow me degrees from great universities. Just clothe the naked. Say that I tried to house the homeless. Let people say that I tried to feed the hungry.”

Are you aware that the right to food is a human right? Do you know that the right to food was recognised in England’s Magna Carta of 1215 A. D.?  It states: “No one shall be fined to the extent that they are deprived of their means of living.”  In 1941, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his Four Freedoms speech, included as one of the freedoms: “The freedom from want.” Do you know that this Rooseveltian freedom formed Article 1(3) of the 1945 UN Charter? Do you know that Article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises the right to food?  It reads:

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control”.

Are you aware that Article 11.1 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognises:  “the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food”?  Do you know that Article 11.2 recognises “the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger” Do you know that it was in 1976 that the Covenant became enforceable?  Do you know that it was in 1987 that an international enforcement Committee of the Covenant was put together?  Do you know that it was in 1999 that this international Committee adopted the General Comment No. 12  to put the Right to Food as ‘The Right to Adequate Food’  and got it adopted in 2009 as an  Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, making the right to food justiciable at the international level? Do you know that the 1990 African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and Article 15 of the 2001 African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the 2003 Protocol to the  Charter(“Maputo Protocol”) recognize the right to food? There are 194 countries in the United Nations.

The food situation in various Constitutions of these countries n our world is besmearing.  You care to have a look?  Come along, please.  The following nine countries recognise the right to food as a stand-alone right in their Constitutions.  They are: Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Guyana, Haiti, Kenya, South Africa, in the Interim Constitution of Nepal (as food sovereignty) and Nicaragua (as freedom from hunger).   Do you know that the right to food for a specific segment of the population can be found in the Constitutions of ten countries? Do you know that the provisions regarding the right to food of children are present in the constitutions of: Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, and South Africa?  Do you know that the right to food of indigenous children is protected in the constitution of Costa Rica?  Do you know that the right to food of detainees and prisoners is additionally recognised in the constitution of South Africa?

Comrades! Are you aware that five countries in the world  recognize the right to food  as part of a human right to an adequate standard of living, quality of life and development?  Do you know that this provision is contained in the Constitutions of Belarus, the Congo, Malawi, Moldova and Ukraine?  Do you know that the right to food is recognized  as part of the right to work in the Constitutions of Brazil and Suriname? Are you aware that 31 countries in the world recognize the right to food in broader explicit human rights?  Do you that these countries include:  Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bolivia, Burundi, Cambodia, Czech Rep., Congo, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, Netherlands, Pakistan, Peru, Romania, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Venezuela.

Do you know that the following countries in the world give explicit right to food in their Directive Principle of State Policy within their   constitutions, pursued as goals but  not enforceable? They are: Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Malawi, Nigeria, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Uganda.  Do you know that Governments alone cannot end hunger and undernourishment? That was the feeling of David Lubin.  Do you know him?  You care to get a gist?  Come along.

David Lubin, was a US agriculturalist and activist. The initial  idea of an international organization for food and agriculture emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century.  In May–June 1905, an international conference was held in Rome, Italy.  The Conference recommended the establishment of an international Institute of Agriculture.  This initiative was seized by the King of Italy,  Victor Emmanuel III as he established the first International Institute of Agriculture.  The Second World War broke out in 1939. This war closed this international institute.

The idea blossomed to the United States and in 1943 during the war, the United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt called a UN Conference on Food and  Agriculture.from 18 May to 3 June, 1943 to  resolve to founding a permanent organization for food and agriculture.  This led to the Constitution of the Food and Agriculture Organization in a conference held in Quebec City from 16 October to 1 November 1945 in Canada. The newly established United Nations in 1945 became a leading player in co-ordinating the global fight against hunger. That is the reason we celebrate the World Food Day on 16th October every year.  The UN has three agencies that work to promote food security and agricultural development: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and International Fund for Agric.  Development (IFAD).

It was in 1996.  The Food and Agricultural Organisation organized the World Food Summit and concluded to pursue a goal of halving the number of people who suffer from hunger by the year 2015 and called upon governments to do more to protect the ‘Right to Food’ of the poor. The Organisation came up with many initiatives to promote this  right.  In 1952, it  created the International Plant Protection Convention to prevent the international spread of pests and plant diseases in both cultivated and wild plants. The Organisation, in conjunction with the World Health Organization created the Codex Alimentarius Commission in 1961 to develop food standards and guidelines to protect consumer health, ensuring fair trade and promoting co-ordination of all food standards work undertaken by organisations.  In 1997, FAO launched Tele-Food, a campaign to harness the power of media  to help fight hunger. The FAO Goodwill Ambassadors Programme was initiated in 1999 to mobilise celebrities to make personal and professional commitment to end hunger.

In 2002, following the World Food Summit, the Organisation formed the ‘International Alliance Against Hunger (IAAH)’ to strengthen and coordinate national efforts in the fight against hunger and malnutrition. The Alliance was able to mobilise efforts for the Millennium Development Goals, particularly the goal of reducing the number of people that suffer from hunger to  half by 2015. In December 2007, FAO launched its Initiative on Soaring Food Prices to help small producers raise their output and earn more. FAO has established The Global Partnership Initiative for Plant Breeding Capacity Building (GIPB)  dedicated to increasing plant breeding capacity.

It has established The Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) Partnership Initiative to improve on indigenous agricultural practices.  FAO has a unit focused on Animal Genetic Resources to assist countries to  implement the Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources. One of FAO’s strategic goals is the sustainable management of the world’s forests and provides expert technical assistance and advice to help countries develop and implement effective national forest programmes. The FAO Statistical Division produces FAOSTAT, which offers free and easy access to data for 245 countries and 35 regional areas. Every year, FAO publishes a number of major ‘State of the World’ reports related to food, agriculture, forestry, fisheries and natural resources.

In April 2012, the Food Assistance Convention which was the world’s first legally binding international agreement on food aid was signed.  This was followed in May 2012, by the  Copenhagen Consensus which recommended that efforts to combat hunger and malnutrition should be the first priority for politicians and private sector philanthropists looking to maximize the effectiveness of aid spending.  The words of President Higgins of Ireland in an April 2013 summit held in Dublin concerning Hunger, Nutrition, Climate Justice, and the post 2015 MDGs framwework for Global Justice resonate: “Only 10% of deaths from hunger are due to armed conflict and natural disasters, with ongoing hunger being both the “greatest ethical failure of the current global system” and the “greatest ethical challenge facing the global community.”

That is the reason that Goal 2 of the SDG  targets to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture in 2030. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN created a partnership that acts through the African Union’s CAADP framework aiming to end hunger in Africa by 2025 and includes different interventions like support for improved food production, a strengthening of social protection and integration of the right to food into national legislation. As part of the initiatives of the charitable organisations to promote right to food, food banks have been established.  In some other jurisdictions, soup kitchens have sprung up.  In some jurisdictions, conditional cash transfers have been encouraged to guarantee regular basic income as a social protection for the vulnerable population as part of the flagships of the 1974 Universal Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition.  Can you now see the compliance with international standard  of Aregbe’s ‘Agba Osun’ programme…. a conditional cash transfer to the most vulnerable population in the State?  Do you now see why the programme has been copied by the Federal Government of Nigeria?  The  theme of this year’s  2018 World Food Day is “our actions are our future”.

The world is now facing many challenges that are threats to the right to food.  We have global water crisis affecting grain lands of the world which include Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, China, IndiaAlgeria, Egypt and Mexico. There are water-stressed countries in Africa threatening over 300 million lives out of the 800 million lives living in Africa.  It is estimated that by 2030, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will be living in areas of high water stress, which will likely displace 24 million to 400 million people.  We are all living witnesses to the effects of droughts in the Sahel region which has visited us with Boko Haram insurgency and herdsmen crises in Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

The challenge of land degradation and desertification is real. The issue of climate change is a threat to bio-diversity and a major threat to all of us.  We now witness extreme droughts during the dry season and floods during the wet season, thus making livelihood a lose/lose situation.  New scourge of diseases are affecting our livestock and  crops, thus having  devastating effects on food availability. Yet, the industrial world is turning food items to bio-fuels in their desperate bid to create green energy.  This is already affecting Africans devastatingly.  Yet, the issue of food crises is a major cause of corruption in Africa. How do we now sing the Lord’s songs in a ‘strange land’?  The words of Fred Cuny (1999) cut in:

“The distribution of food within a country is a political issue. Governments in most countries give priority to urban areas, since that is where the most influential and powerful families and enterprises are usually located. The government often neglects subsistence farmers and rural areas in general. The more remote and underdeveloped the area, the less likely the government will be to effectively meet its needs. Many agrarian policies, especially the pricing of agricultural commodities, discriminate against rural areas. Governments often keep prices of basic grains at such artificially low levels that subsistence producers cannot accumulate enough capital to make investments to improve their production. Thus, they are effectively prevented from getting out of their precarious situation.”

We must stretch our national sovereignty too far to include food sovereignty.  We must caution ourselves about the campaigns of the multi-national corporations urging us to specialise only in the cash crop production.  We must design new technologies that are compatible with our environment.    Currently,  UN projections show a continued increase in population in the future  to reach 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100.If this occurs, the global food supplies, and energy resources will deplete and man can go into extinction, a parallelism of ‘Malthusian Trap.”.

We need to reduce fossil fuel dependence to drive agriculture as it compromises the environment.  The Green Revolution techniques is seen to be heavily reliant on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, many of which are petroleum products, making agriculture increasingly reliant on petroleum. This is degenerating the earth’s resources and a good promoter of adverse climate change.  We must condemn with our collective actions the April 30, 2008, Thailand’s initiative that  created Organisation of Rice Exporting Countries with the potential to develop into a price-fixing cartel for rice. It is a project organizing  21 rice exporting countries to create a homonymous organisation to control the price of rice. The group is made up of Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. Today, this cartel like OPEC is making the price of rice to be beyond the breach of the poor people of the world.  We need to support the Aregbe’s initiative to plant our own rice and boycott the cartel.

Do you know that there  is the need to change Land Use Act that has made many families landless… thus increasing mass poverty? Do you know that our scientists in our Universities  should  assist to make safe the genetically modified crops and animals to assist in our quest for reliable food security?  Do you know that we need a new Act of the National Assembly on the issue of Genetically Modified Crops and Animals in our country?  Do you know that we need to popularise agricultural insurance  schemes if truly we want farmers to keep on producing?  Do you know that we must all join the  Food Justice Movement to improve food security. These are the roads we have to take with Aregbe and his Oyetola.

It has been declared that in Nigeria, more than 10 million  people are at the risk of hunger.  Do you know that three local government areas in Adamawa, including Michika and Madagali LGAs, and another three LGAs in Borno are currently experiencing severe food crisis as a result of insurgency and drought? Do you know that four local government areas in Yobe, two in Zamfara, two in Gombe and the central area of Kaduna are already in food crises? Do you know that one local government area in Katsina State is under food pressure and foreign donors are already assisting?  Do you know that the recent murder of the Red Cross Officials in the area will discourage foreign donors from assisting again?  There is hunger in our land. It is against this background that we are saluting Ogbeni Aregbesola for all his initiatives in agriculture.  He assisted farmers with land preparation.  He broke the fertilizer cartels.  He mobilized efforts to make the state to  produce its own food for O Meal Programme, feeding 250,000 pupils per day.  Osun is one of the states in Nigeria that have created food independence. Osun Rural Enterprise and Agriculture Programme  known as O’REAP is a huge success.  He has  resuscitated the moribund Cocoa Processing Company in Ede, ‎The two China-based companies -Skyron Corporation and Golden Monkey Group of Company have  since commenced production at the industry.  The Oloba Farm Settlement initiative is laudable.  The oversea training of 40 graduates in Germany in all aspects of agriculture is visionary.   The training of thousands of Osun  Youth Empowerment Scheme, OYES cadets in agriculture is salutary.  The establishment of  O’REAP Youth Academy, Odua farmers Academy and the reactivation of Leventis foundation Farm for our youths is heroic.  The encouragement of these youths in agriculture to pool together to form Cooperative Societies is an enduring legacy of Aregbe.  The opening of opportunities for these youths to enjoy micro credit facilities are steady tracks to food security.

Do you know that Aregbe has brought the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, (IITA) to our State to establish an international research farm at Orile-Owu Forest Reserves?   Are you aware that  an American company has established a $25  million farm at Ifon Osun, as part of foreign direct investment?  Do you know that he tried his best in poultry, piggery, fishery and all other components of Agriculture?  Can you now see that we have to celebrate the continuity agenda of Aregbe by essentially cooperating with Mr Gboyega Oyetola, the Governor- Elect to gain more mileage in giving us the full right to food?

No doubt, Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola has served well.  At the bar of history, he will never be judged harshly.  Afterall Erasmus says: “In every thing, it is sufficient to have tried.”   While wishing Aregbe the best in life as he exits, the words of Martin Luther King interlude:

“When I die, do not build a monument to me. Do not bestow me degrees from great universities. Just clothe the naked. Say that I tried to house the homeless. Let people say that I tried to feed the hungry.”

Our leader, mentor, teacher and Comrade Governor!

Bye for now!