SUSTAINABLE FOOD SECURITY AND POVERTY REDUCTION
THROUGH AGRICULTURAL PROCESSING
BY
ENGR. DR. ADESOLA SATIMEHIN
Ag. Head of Department
Dept of Agricultural and Bioresources Engineering Federal University Oye-Ekit
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE OF HUNGER AND FOOD INSECURITY
• The 2007 food price crisis, which was
repeated in 2010, led to food riots in many countries across the world such as Greece, India and Mexico etc.
• The crisis was compounded by worldwide financial crisis
1999 – 2007
800 million
1999 – 2007
Over 1 billion
50% - Smallholder farmers
22% - Rural landless squatters 20% - Urban poor
8% - Fishermen,
animal herdsmen, forest dwellers
> 44 million more since June 2010
H u n gr y p e o p le
• Scrimshaw (1986) described hunger as an unnecessary disgrace to our global society having serious politcal,
economic, and social consequences.
• The UN Resources for Speakers on Global Issues, calls it “the greatest scandal of
our age”. Hunger is unnecessary because
we produce more than enough to feed
every single person in the world
CHALLENGES TO WORLD FOOD SECURITY
• Rising food prices
• Populaton growth
• Rapid diet changes
• Threats to agricultural producton
• Inefficient producton practces and supply chains
• Declining investment in food system research.
• In additon to causing widespread human
suffering, food insecurity contributes to migraton to urban areas and across borders, and politcal and economic instability.
CHALLENGES TO WORLD FOOD SECURITY
Populaton growth
o As at 7.00 am today 29th January 2013, the
world populaton was estmated at 7,062,714,776 (US Census Bureau).
o Africa alone accounts for > 1 billion
o World populaton to hit 9 billion by 2050 o Africa to host 1.9 – 2.2 inhabitants by 2050
o By 2050 demand for food in Africa is expected to triple (Thoraya Obeid – ED, UN Populaton Fund:
speaking on the BBC in 2009 )
THE AFRICAN SCENERIO
• In 1950, the populaton rato for developing countries to developed countries is projected to shift from 2:1.
• By 2050 the rato is expected to change to 6:1.
• As the world populaton has grown
o The land available per capita in 1950 was 13.5 ha/person
o By 2050 it is going to shrink to 1.5 ha/person
• 4% of GDP is invested into agriculture
• <6% of total spending agriculture R&D comes from private companies: many of them on agricultural products for industrial raw materials
Africa’s populaton figures by sub- region (millions)
Source: UNPF (2009) State of the World Report
Sub-Region Population (millions)
Central Africa 125.7
East Africa 318.8
North Africa 209.4
West Africa 298.6
Total 952.5
A cross-section of Africa’s teaming population
HUMAN RIGHTS DIMENSION OF FOOD SECURITY
• Access to food is not a privilege: it a fundamental human right
• Hunger, is a violaton of the right of man to food.
Hunger and food insecurity, therefore have grave human rights implicatons
• According to Oliver De Schutter, the United Natons Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, the right to food is a human right recognized under internatonal law which protects the right of all human beings to feed themselves in dignity, either by producing their food or by purchasing it.
HUMAN RIGHTS DIMENSION OF FOOD SECURITY
• The Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Committee of the United Natons Commission for Human Rights authoritatvely stated in its General Comment 12 that “The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all tmes to adequate food or means for its procurement.”
HUMAN RIGHTS DIMENSION OF FOOD SECURITY
• The Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Committee of the UN Commission for Human Rights authoritatvely stated in its General Comment 12 that “The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all tmes to adequate food or means for its procurement.”
HUMAN RIGHTS DIMENSION OF FOOD SECURITY
The right to food is recognized in the 1948 Universal Declaraton of Human Rights (Art. 25) as part of the right to an adequate standard of living, and is enshrined in the 1966 Internatonal Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Art. 11).
HUMAN RIGHTS DIMENSION OF FOOD SECURITY
It is also recognized in specific internatonal instruments such as the Conventon on the Rights of the Child (Art. 24(2)(c) and 27(3)), the Conventon on the Eliminaton of All Forms of Discriminaton against Women (Art. 12(2)), or the Conventon on the Rights of Persons with Disabilites (Art. 25(f) and 28(1)).
WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES OF HUNGER AND FOOD INSECRUTITY
• Hunger reduces the energy people need for an actve life.
• Undernourishment caused by hunger makes it hard to study, work or perform other physical actvites.
• Undernourishment is partcularly harmful for women and children.
• Constant hunger weakens the immune system and makes people more vulnerable to diseases.
• Mothers living with constant hunger often give birth to underweight and weak babies, and face increased risk of death in childbirth.
WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES OF
HUNGER AND FOOD INSECRUTITY
Health consequences
• Poorer overall health status and compromises the ability to resist illness
• Elevated occurrence of health problems such as stomach aches, headaches, colds, ear
infectons, and fatgue
• Greater incidence of hospitalizatons
ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES OF HUNGER
AND FOOD INSECURITY FOR CHILDREN
Psycho-social and Behavioural consequences
• Higher levels of aggression, hyperactvity, and anxiety as well as passivity
• Difficulty getting along with other children (and self withdrawal)
• Increased need for mental health services
ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES OF HUNGER
AND FOOD INSECURITY FOR CHILDREN
Learning and Academic consequences
• Impaired cognitve functoning and diminished capacity to learn
• Lower test scores and poorer overall performance at school
• Repeatng a grade in school
• Increased school absenteeism, tardiness, and suspension from school
ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES OF HUNGER
AND FOOD INSECURITY FOR CHILDREN
School Food Programme
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF HUNGER IN AFRICA?
• Poverty is the principal cause of hunger in Africa and elsewhere.
• Poverty may be defined as the state of a person not having enough money to meet his/her basic needs including food,
clothing, shelter and health benefits.
• Simply put, people who do not have
sufficient income to purchase enough food
may be considered to be poor.
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF HUNGER IN AFRICA?
• Yes, conflict and drought, for example, are certainly important causes of
hunger, but the most typical situaton is that people just do not have enough
income to purchase the food that they
need.
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF HUNGER IN AFRICA?
• Africa is stll faced with mass poverty and remains the poorest contnent.
• Sub-Saharan Africa in partcular has the
majority of its populaton living in absolute poverty, subsistng on less than US $ 1 a day, and suffering from chronic hunger,
malnutriton and pandemic diseases (Nyange et al., 2011).
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF HUNGER IN AFRICA?
• 75% of the rural populaton comprises of peasant farmers who earn a living from small plots of poor soils, in
tropical environments that are
increasingly prone to drought, floods,
bushfires, and hurricanes.
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF HUNGER IN AFRICA?
• Crop yields in the rural areas are low and stagnant; and epidemics of pests and
diseases often ruin crops.
• Livestock suffers from endemic diseases, some of which are zoonotc.
• In all these causes of hunger enumerated,
poverty is at the root of them all.
WHY IS THERE SO MUCH POVERTY IN AFRICA?
• Despite all the wealthy resources in its possession, Africa is the world's poorest contnent.
• Today, over 300 million African people (i.e.
about 30% of the people) live on less than $1 US per day. The incidence of extreme poverty never seems to abate
WHY IS THERE SO MUCH POVERTY IN AFRICA?
• What causes this entrenched poverty, on a contnent rich with natural resources?
• The queston of what causes poverty in Africa is the subject of intense academic debate.
Unfortunately, poverty in Africa doesn't result
from just one or two causes. There are a number of different intricately interwoven factors, all
interactng with one another, that make the problem of entrenched poverty extremely complex and difficult to solve.
WHY IS THERE SO MUCH POVERTY IN AFRICA?
• Some of the major causes of poverty in Africa are:
• harmful economic systems,
• Wars and armed conflicts,
• poor farm policy,
• lack of access to credit,
• rampant unemployment,
• lack of access to educaton,
• Pandemic of disease
WHY IS THERE SO MUCH POVERTY IN AFRICA?
• Lack of infrastructure
– Lack of access to clean water is worst in Cairo, Lagos and Kinshasa
• corrupt government,
• poor leadership
• high crime rate.
CURRENT EFFORTS AT MITIGATING FOOD INSECURITY AND POVERTY?
• In their efforts at addressing the problem of hunger and food insecurity most natonal governments in Africa tend to act along the line of enhancing crop and land
productvity, through the use of improved seeds,
applicaton of chemical fertlizers, provision of irrigaton water and review of land ownership policies.
• As a result of the interventons at boostng agricultural producton, we find that year in year out, farmers,
especially in Nigeria, produce a wide range agricultural products but a substantal proporton of what is grown is lost at the post-harvest stage.
CURRENT EFFORTS AT MITIGATING FOOD INSECURITY AND POVERTY?
• It is estmated that as much as 25% of fruits, 40% vegetables and 15-20% grains are wasted after harvest. These losses are of grave
economic consequences as they represent
wastage in the farmers’ effort, farm inputs and investments. More so, those crops that are lost are no longer available to man. It is crucially
important, therefore, that post-harvest losses must be eliminated in order to enhance food security.
CURRENT EFFORTS AT MITIGATING FOOD INSECURITY AND POVERTY?
Olayemi et al.(2012) carried out an assessment of postharvest losses of some crops in eight local
government areas of Rivers State. They found out that all the 450 farmers studied in the three zones used traditonal methods of storage for their
produce and experienced heavy postharvest losses.
According to the researchers, the mean postharvest losses were 35% for fish, 37.33% for yam, 27.67%
for cassava, 20.33% for maize, 27% for plantain and 33% for vegetable.
CURRENT EFFORTS AT MITIGATING FOOD INSECURITY AND POVERTY?
These levels of postharvest losses are unacceptable.
High postharvest losses are clearly a disincentve to farmers as they do not obtain rewards that are commensurate with their labour.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF AGRICULTURAL PROCESSING IN MITIGATING FOOD
INSECURITY AND POVERTY?
• It can be seen, therefore, that improving crop productvity is generally not enough to lift
smallholder farmers out of poverty. Farmers must also add value to their primary producton and
diversify their range of income-earning actvites, both on and off the farm. Surpluses must
therefore be stored temporarily, but processed into more stable products
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF AGRICULTURAL PROCESSING IN MITIGATING FOOD
INSECURITY AND POVERTY?
• Processing of agricultural produce has tremendous benefits. It helps to improve postharvest handling.
reduce postharvest losses, increase income and
improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers as well as those of the agro-processors. Agricultural
processing also helps to prevent products’ spoilage and improve its shelf life. It helps to retain nutritve value of products and ensure availability of products all the year round.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF AGRICULTURAL PROCESSING IN MITIGATING FOOD
INSECURITY AND POVERTY?
• Processing helps to transform an agricultural commodity into a more palatable form and improve the flavour of edible products. Agro-
processing helps to preserve products’ integrity so as to ensure their availability even at distant and remote places.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF AGRICULTURAL PROCESSING IN MITIGATING FOOD
INSECURITY AND POVERTY?
• Agricultural processing refers to the series of operatons performed on a commodity (be it from agriculture, forestry or fisheries) so as to transform it from its raw state into food and non-food consumer products.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF AGRICULTURAL PROCESSING IN MITIGATING FOOD
INSECURITY AND POVERTY?
• Agricultural processing therefore include
primary processing operatons such as seed and grain cleaning, sortng, grading and
separaton, threshing and shelling.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF AGRICULTURAL PROCESSING IN MITIGATING FOOD
INSECURITY AND POVERTY?
• All of these primary processes are geared toward preparing the produce for secondary processing such as chipping, dicing,
dehydraton, deep frying, size reducton by milling, and for tertary processing such as in extrusion, pasteurisaton and canning.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF AGRICULTURAL PROCESSING IN MITIGATING FOOD
INSECURITY AND POVERTY?
• Agricultural processing therefore include primary processing
operatons such as seed and grain cleaning, sortng, grading and separaton, threshing and shelling. All of these primary
processes are geared toward preparing the produce for
secondary processing such as chipping, dicing, dehydraton,
deep frying, size reducton by milling, and for tertary processing such as in extrusion, pasteurisaton and canning.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF AGRICULTURAL PROCESSING IN MITIGATING FOOD
INSECURITY AND POVERTY?
• In all of these agricultural processing
operatons, people are required for the
design of the processing techniques, and
fabricaton of machines for the operatons.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF AGRICULTURAL PROCESSING IN MITIGATING FOOD
INSECURITY AND POVERTY?
• People are also required for the design and
constructon of diverse crop storage structures including silos, bunkers, cold storage facilites and for environmental control in storage.
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF AGRICULTURAL PROCESSING IN MITIGATING FOOD
INSECURITY AND POVERTY?
• The processed food must be appropriately packaged and properly stored so as to
enhance its effectve distributon over tme and space. Every one of these
processing operatons is an avenue for job creaton, income generaton, poverty
reducton and enhance food security.
Examples of value-additon achievable through agro-processing
• Threshing
• Drying
• Rice milling
• Quality control and Inspecton of grain
• Grain storage
• By-product utlizaton
• Rice processing
Examples of value-additon achievable through agro-processing
• Soybean and cowpea flour producton
• Fruit processing including fruit juice extracton, vegetable oil extracton, seeds decortcatons
• Cassava processing to produce: chip, gari, cassava flour, cassava starch
• Yam flour and yam starch producton
• Rice and Maize can be dry-milled into flour
• Oil seeds can be fermented
• Plantain chips and flour
• Plantain processing has the capacity to create 150,000 jobs in two years. Matured plantain can be processed into many products such as chips and flour.
• Unripe plantain is spiced and deep-fried to produce crispy chips which can be packaged and sold as snacks at schools and to travelers.
(The Nation Newspaper: Monday January 21, 2013).
Plantain processing for wealth creation
• The unit operatons in plantain
processing include peeling, chipping
drying, milling and packaging. People
are required in these areas as drivers,
marketers and machine operators in
processing factories
Case Study of Small-scale agricultural processing in parts of Africa
Agroprocessing women group in Ethiopia
Farmers in Kaduna State practce making yam flour
Source: Winrock Internatonal, 2011, www.winrock.org
CONCLUSION
• A significant amount of the food produced in African countries is lost after harvest thereby aggravatng hunger. Most food crops of Africa
such as cassava, banana and sweet potatoes are perishable crops with a lot of storage and post- harvest problems. Productvity is limited by
their rapid rate of deterioraton soon after
harvestng, if processing into more shelf-stable products is delayed.
CONCLUSION
• Estmates of post-harvest losses in Africa are hard to determine, but some authorites put losses to as high as 50 percent of what is
produced. It is therefore, important to develop and deploy crop varietes with improved shelf life.
• All of this can be arrested if surpluses are converted into more shelf-stable products.
• This enhances food security. Processing actvites create employment, wealth and reduces poverty
CONCLUSION
• Agro-processing techniques can also be used to convert agricultural waste into useful
products such as industrial fibres, bio-ethanol, animal feeds, fertlizers, cosmetcs and
pharmaceutcals. African countries should use agro-processing technology to bring about
value additon, thereby reducing and/or eliminatng post-harvest losses.
CONCLUSION
• Technologies for processing and/or value additon are available in many parts of
Nigeria: all of which are capable of wealth creaton and, thus, poverty reducton.
• Many small and medium scale processing machines are locally manufactured in
Lagos, Ibadan, Kaduna, Ilorin and many
other cites across the country.
SOME PROCESSING EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURED IN NIGERIA
Cassava flash dryer Hammer mill
Cassava grater
Locally manufactured cassava flash dryer
Source: Engr (Dr) B.A. Adelekan and Engr V.O. Olomo
Rotary garri fryer
Source: Engr (Dr) B.A. Adelekan and Engr V.O.
Olomo
Locally manufactured cassava chipping machines Source: Engr (Dr) B.A. Adelekan and Engr V.O. Olomo
A 3-tonne rotary paddy rice dryer
Fabricated in NCRI Pateggi
Paddy rice parboiling vessels equipped with steam boilers
Fabricated in NCRI Pateggi
Medium scale complete rice processing plants
• The multplier effects of agricultural
processing are unquantfiable. A vibrant, compettve agro-processing sector has the capacity to increase producton and sales of agricultural products. This in turn will lead to greater demand for agricultural inputs, create more diversified and stable markets, and
improve income opportunites for farmers.
CONCLUSION
• Need for strategies to improve food security in Africa
• To attain improved nutritonal well-being and sustainable food security in Africa, emphasis should be put on strategies that will reduce the problems of poverty and
underdevelopment because these are the underlying impediments to adequate access to food by all individuals.
RECOMMENDATIONS
• Since agriculture is the mainstay of the economies in many African countries, emphasis should therefore be put in developing strategies that will improve
agricultural and farming systems, reduce post harvest food losses, improve food processing and marketng systems.
RECOMMENDATIONS
• The private sector should play increased roles agriculture research and efforts.
RECOMMENDATIONS
• More public enlightenment is required to help the general
public and especially the farming populaton to know the
enormous but untapped benefits that abound in adding values to their harvest.
RECOMMENDATIONS
• The Department of Agricultural and Bioresources Engineering of FUOYE plans to lead in this
enlightenment campaign by organising a Natonal Training Course on Post-harvest Technology and Processing of Agricultural Crops in conjuncton with Department of Food Science and Tech, and FIIRO. The training programme is being planned to hold here and hosted by the management of FUOYE. Sponsorship to be sought from SMEDAN, RMRDC, Food Reserve Agency.
RECOMMENDATIONS
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