Daily Trust - the online edition

Suddenly people woke up to the news that there would be food shortage in the world, where Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme said that the globe’s main food aid might have to start rationing, adding that the food crisis is threatening to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger.

Even though analysts pointed out other factors as contributing to the food crisis such as climate change, pests, lack of fertilizer and trade imbalance among countries, among other reasons, the use of crops as biofuel is the most important issue.

By the way, according to www.energynortheast.net, "biofuel are transport fuels made from plant material and recycled elements of the food chain, and as such are considered renewable and sustainable in contrast to the majority of liquid and gas fuels."

Global warming promotes biofuels, and the main crops or plants used for biofuel are soyabeans, sugar and corn, and their values also rise as oil price rises. This has made some farmers to farm only in order to sell the produce for biofuel, which will be at a higher price.

People are very worried that before long they cannot be able to afford food items, which have already risen beyond imagination, where a bag of rice that recently sold at N6,700.00 is now N12,000.00 and rising, where somebody told me yesterday that it had risen to 14,00.00. As it is, most people are just ‘managing’ to eat without the tragedy of food crisis that affects the whole world.

And no doubt some people will seize this opportunity and hoard food items just to make profits at the expense of ordinary people. Though some that have money may go into panic buying for storage, and not for selling, majority of people buy what to eat everday. Besides, even those that could store what to eat for months, they have to think of their parents, relatives and other people.

Nigeria is a country that depends on food importation, like in almost every other thing, which is a sad fact, especially now that many countries are restricting food exportation from their countries to slow inflation. For example, according to reports, on September 7, 2007,Vietnma, the world’s third-biggest rice exporter restricted export to slow inflation, January 1, 2008 China, the world’s biggest grain producer started to curb overseas sales of wheat, corn and rice by issuing export permits, and Thailand, the world’s largest rice exporter, is under pressure to restrict exports.

Therefore, where has that left us? Eventhough government may have food reserve for emergencies, it is far from abating the food crisis, although it may help a little, like where the Yobe State government released grains to markets to reduce prices of foodstuff.

My fear is what then, when, not if, such reserves become empty? This is more worrisome because agriculture takes back stage in government priority; afterall there is oil to import what we need. Somebody once remarked that any country that couldn’t feed itself was not a serious country.

Farmers are not encouraged, and most don’t have access roads to transport their produce, where the perishables rot, they also lack modern farming techniques. And where they are lucky to get government’s interest, at the end they will be left on their own, like what happened when former President Obasanjo encouraged farmers to farm cassava. At the end they didn’t know what to do with it or how to export it. And of course the politics of fertilizer! You never cease hearing about diversion of fertilizer by government officials, where the real farmers eventually buy it at very high price, and some may get only a bag or two.

That was why the other day when I was watching on television tonnes of fertilizer being distributed to states, my heart went to the poor farmers.

Someone observed that people were always complaining of eating rice anyway, therefore now they could eat other things, but I believe the complain was because it was available and affordable, but all the same, a lot of people believe that it is cheaper and easier to cook it than tuwo (corn or guinea corn meal), even though the corn and guinea corn are cheaper. But with them you have to follow the long process of pounding or thrashing in grinding mill, then remove the husk, grind it into flour, seive it to fine flour and then prepare a soup to go with it. But with rice, you can quickly make jollof rice, where you don’t have money you can cook it and eat with groundnut oil or palm oil with salt and pepper to season it.

Another point to be worried is that some children, especially toddlers will refuse to eat anything but rice, in fact some don’t regard any other food as food, but only rice.

And how are parents going to explain to them about food crisis? There is going to be a lot of crying from tantrums, and not only from the toddlers. Our fingers are crossed.