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Showing posts with label land. Show all posts
Showing posts with label land. Show all posts

Thursday, August 30, 2018

IFAD supports G20 initiatives to promote nutritious foods - NaijaAgroNet

The Group of Twenty (G20) Ministers of Agriculture Meeting was recently supported by the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), to increase the sustainable production of nutritious foods, reports NaijaAgroNet.

President, IFAD, Gilbert F. Houngbo, said that sustainably feeding a growing population will take collective action and IFAD stands ready to partner with the G20 to achieve this.

Also, Houngbo said “With small family farms supplying up to 80 per cent of the food produced in developing countries, it has never been more critical to invest in these farmers, providing the tools for them to better manage their land and ensure the health and productivity of their soil in the face of a changing climate.”

While the main theme of the meeting is sustainable soil management, the group will also discuss a proposal by Argentina to boost rural youth employment through access to technology and engagement with the private sector through global events.

A study by IFAD and the World Bank for the G20 Agriculture Ministers’ Meeting last year describes how, with youth abandoning rural areas because of lack of decent employment opportunities, the future of agriculture is at stake.

"At IFAD we believe young people today – the largest population the world as ever seen – are central to our work in transforming rural communities and eradicating poverty and hunger,” said Houngbo. “If we are to foster a generation of ‘agripreneurs’ we must answer their call for better access to the resources they need to grow our rural areas into vibrant places that can feed generations to come.”

Since he took office last year, IFAD has prioritized youth-centric development across all of its programmes and projects to provide training and support to create rural employment and enterprise options that are appropriate for young people, in both the farm and the non-farm sector.

Another important focus of the Agriculture Ministers’ Meeting is the G20's contribution to reduce the estimated one third of all food that is lost or wasted.


"Food loss and waste constitute is a luxury humanity cannot afford. I salute the G20's efforts to tackle this problem," Houngbo said. "IFAD supports small-scale farmers to improve their ability to process and store their crops thereby minimizing food loss. IFAD stands ready to offer its expertise to help mitigate this phenomenon.”

Isaac Oyimah/GEE

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Sunday, July 31, 2016

Over 5000 market women protest in Abuja over land grabbing

Estimated 5,000 traders, including market women and widows under the auspices of Association of Wuye Ultra Modern Market Allottees (AWUMMA) on Sunday in Abuja staged a protest over alleged continued harassment, intimidation and suppression by All Purpose Shelters, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The protesters also called on President Muhammad Buhari to intervene in the market crisis despite subsisting judgement by the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court demanding that traders take possession of their shops.

They carried placards with inscriptions such as,"Mr President, defend the poor traders from persecution"; "Disobedience of court order is corruption"; and "Democracy on trial at Wuye market."

NaijaAgroNet gathered that All Purpose Shelters is owned by the Wife of immediate past Governor of Benue State, Mrs Yemisi Suswan.

On July 28 2016, the market reopened for business through the combined efforts of armed mobile policemen from FCT Police Command and Wuye Police Station. However, the next day, the traders were chased away from the market by security men allegedly acting on instructions from 'the above.'

Speaking with newsmen shortly after the protest, the Chairman of AWUMMA, Comrade Nnaemeka Nwobodo called on the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC),World Human Rights, Due Process Office and good spirited individuals to "rise up for justice today for our tomorrow."

Nwobodo decried that over 5000 members of AWUMMA have resolved to lay down their lives for justice today except if President Buhari intervenes in the crisis even as they enjoined the Presidency to call the FCT Commissioner of Police to order who they accused of obstructing justice in Wuye market. 

Equally speaking, the Public Relation Officer, AWUMMA, Barr. Sunny Anyanwu noted that after three and half legal battle at the High Court Apo, that the court on 29th April 2015 delivered a landmark judgement in favour of the traders under AWUMMA.  

"It was on the strength of victory again at the Appeal Court that traders wrote to the then FCT Commissioner of Police, Usman Alkali who directed that the court judgement should be respected after obtaining due legal opinion,” he said.


Uboshe Uboshe/GEE

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Monday, June 27, 2016

ActionAid mobilises West Africans for Kilimanjaro standup on land rights

NaijaAgroNet:
A global movement known as ActionAid International is mobilising West Africans from six countries in the region for the Kilimanjaro Initiative Caravan expected to attract some 30,000 women and youth to stand up for Women’s Land Rights, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Disclosing this at a just concluded media training workshop organized by the Africa Media Initiative (AMI) and World Bank in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, the Africa Advocacy Officer, ActionAid International, Mr. Buba Khan, is working on mobilizing an estimated 30,000 women and land activists to participate in the international programme on land rights for women.

He said that ActionAid, a global movement of people working together to further human rights for all and defeat poverty is partnering other stakeholders, like Oxfam to deliver on this.

Also, he said that the nine-month project will see to a global Key Change Promise (KCP) towards boosting women access and control to land and natural resources.

As said by him, people expected to benefit from this initiative include some 300,000 women, youths, activists, artists, ActionAid, media and other partners, while women and youth in six countries are being targeted for wider community impact in specifically six West African countries.

Khan equally said the multi-country Kilimanjaro Initiative involves Senegal, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and Nigeria.

This, he explained is the part of the decentralized actions and events expected to take place in about 16 countries across the continent of Africa, namely Mozambique, South Africa, Congo DRC, Tanzania, Morocco, Tunisia, Kenya, Seychelles, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Togo, Senegal, Nigeria, Namibia and Cameroon.


He used the opportunity to drum media support and participation for the initiative through adequate publicity, which will encourage African women to stand-up for their rights on various issues of social emancipation including land for the rural women farmers.

+Remmy Nweke just back from Abidjan/ED, Ops.
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Sunday, June 21, 2015

New Zealand loses 100,000 hectares to dairy expansion


Wood Processors and Manufacturers Association, New Zealand has allayed fears that dairying boom expansion is eating into forest blocks and threatens wood security, as it claims to have lost 100,000 hectares of forest land in the last few years to dairy farming, reports NaijaAgroNet.
The Board Chairman of the Association, Brian Stanley, in a forum of over 40 industry experts and community representatives at the Trailways Hotel, lamented that forestry and wood products producers were in a far tougher market than the agricultural sector, stating that it's not a wall of wood any more, but a hedge.
Expressing his dismay, Stanley established that although the nations wood industry offers a solution to the dairying's carbon emission problem but its being hurt by the dairying's expansion and stressed optimism that wood processing and manufacturing - the country’s third largest export sector at $2.5 billion a year, stands to risk its position.
Nationally the industry, as gathered by NaijaAgroNet, produces 70 per cent of its energy needs by burning waste wood, saving $1.1 billion annually, and Landscapers has estimated a $12 billion  "environmental value" of  forests made up of components such erosion control, nutrient recycling and soil formation.
Though the industry sees itself as the answer to dairying's need to offset carbon production and a solution to climate change; the association frowns at the level of government support regional producers get compared to other regional primary industries that didn't provide similar numbers of jobs. 
"Nor do they provide the same level of water quality or climate change control that the forest growing and wood processing industries are renowned for." Stanley stated.
Simultaneously, Association Chief Executive, Jon Tanner, also pointed out that the competition internationally, against governments owning 85 per cent of the world's forests and associated processing and setting their own rules, puts the organization on a tough unbalanced scale in the agricultural market.
Tanner submitted that the industry has a highly productive and efficient workforce, and a great opportunity as a solution to climate change, but faced major supply problems caused by logs being exported to China, and dairy conversions swallowing forest land. 
"We are an incredible industry building economic, social and environmental capital simultaneously. Trees are the pollution solution." He said.
The association NaijaAgroNet learnt was formed through a merger of the Pine Manufacturers' and Wood Processors' Associations and is holding a series of gatherings around New Zealand to tell what it says is a fantastic story of innovative and sustainable production providing thousands of jobs in the regions.
Daniel Nsolibe/GEE
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