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Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Boko Haram: UNICEF commends FG on release of over 500 women, children

UNICEF has welcomed the release of nearly six hundred women, children and elderly men from Giwa military barracks in Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria, reports NaijaAgroNet.

“The action of the Nigerian army today is a major step towards the protection of children affected by the ongoing crisis. It provides hope in a conflict that continues to have an enormous impact on people’s lives.’’

“These children were held under administrative custody on alleged association with Boko Haram militants. They are victims of the conflict and it is crucial that they receive medical care, psychosocial support and other basic services that will help them to regain their dignity.”

“Once that process of recovery has started, we can help them to return to their families and to school or learn new skills that will give them some hope for the future.”

UNICEF continues to work with the relevant authorities to access children who are held for screening in order to safeguard their care and protection.


When military screening is needed, children should only be held as a measure of last resort and for the shortest time possible in accordance with national and international standards. These children are – first and foremost – victims of the conflict and require support to recover from their experiences and reintegrate with their families and communities.

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From sea to plate: FAO leads tracking fish to keep illegal catches offshore

A Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)-led is pushing for the establishment of internationally agreed standards that could guide the development of catch documentation schemes aimed at keeping illegally caught fish off store-shelves and consumers' plates has taken an important step forward, reports NaijaAgroNet.

A set of draft Voluntary Guidelines on Catch Documentation Schemes was last week unanimously adopted by a technical consultation that brought a 5-year negotiation effort to a close, and are now poised for adoption by all FAO Members at the UN agency's upcoming bi-annual governing conference (Rome 3-8 July 2017).

Once approved by the Conference, the guidelines will act as an internationally-recognized "gold standard" reference for governments and businesses looking to establish systems that can trace fish from their point of capture through the entire supply chain - from "sea to plate" - in order to stop illegally caught fish from entering the marketplace.

Globally, some 91-93 million tonnes of fish are captured each year, and seafood products are among the world's most widely traded food commodities, with an export value of $142 billion in 2016.
On top of that, Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is estimated to strip as much as 26 million additional tonnes of fish from the oceans annually, damaging marine ecosystems and sabotaging efforts to sustainably manage fisheries.

Catch documentation schemes (CDS) offer a way to cut down on trade in illegal fish. The basic concept: shipments of fish are certified by national authorities as being caught legally and in compliance with best practices; certifying hard-copy documentation then accompanies the fish as they are processed and marketed nationally or internationally. Only fish with valid documentation can be exported or traded to markets where a CDS requirement exists.

Until recently, only a few such schemes had been established, and mostly focusing on high-value species whose overexploitation prompted particular concern, such as Chilean Seabass harvested in Antarctic waters, or Atlantic and Southern Bluefin Tuna.


But with seafood trade at record highs and consumer demand still rising, catch documentation schemes are increasingly seen as a tool that could be more widely applied. Indeed, the EU since 2010 has used a CDS that covers all fish shipments imported into the bloc from overseas; and in 2016, the United States announced its own scheme, the Seafood Import Monitoring Program.

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Tuesday, April 11, 2017

7m people may suffer severe hunger in Lake Chad Basin region

Estimated 7 million people may suffer severe hunger in the Lake Chad Basin region, including northeastern Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Speaking during a visit to Lake Chad Basin, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Mr. José Graziano da Silva, this region requires immediate food and livelihood assistance.

"The situation we have now is largely due to the conflicts and armed groups that have devastated the lives and livelihoods across the whole of Lake Chad region. It is like an opportunistic infection, which is largely taking advantage of an already weak body from underlying problems of environmental degradation, related droughts, low investment in rural development and limited employment and livelihood opportunities for young men and women. We need to work on the symptoms by restoring peace and treat the disease by making the body stronger. This is all about resilience," Graziano da Silva said.

In addition, NaijaAgroNet reports that over 1 million returnees and the majority of internally displaced people in areas which have recently become relatively strife-free, have access to land and may benefit from the forthcoming rainy season starting in May 2017 should sufficient agriculture support be provided.

"Protracted conflict has eroded coping capacities, exhausted livelihoods and left people with no way to feed themselves and their families.  Agriculture cannot be an afterthought. More than 80 percent of people rely on farming, fishing and herding for their livelihoods," the FAO Director-General said.

NaijaAgroNet reports that Graziano da Silva during his visit, met local farmers on several FAO supported farms in Gongolong and Old Maiduguri, northeastern Nigeria's Borno State.

He was accompanied by the Federal Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh.

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Global food prices decline in March

… Sugar, vegetable oils slide
The global food prices monitored by Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) fell in March amid large available supplies and expectations of strong harvests, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The FAO Food Price Index, made available to NaijaAgroNet showed average at nearly 171 points in March, marking a 2.8 percent drop from the previous month while remaining 13.4 percent above its level a year earlier. 

FAO's Food Price Index is a trade-weighted index tracking international market prices of five major food commodity groups.

FAO also released its first world cereal supply and demand outlook for the year ahead, expecting it to be "another season of relative market tranquillity" with grain inventories remaining at near-record levels.

Meanwhile, NaijaAgroNet gathered that meat prices are exception in general downward trend, according to the FAO Cereal Price Index declined 1.8 percent from February, led down by wheat and maize. It is now roughly par with its March 2016 level.

The FAO Vegetable Oil Price Index was 6.2 percent lower on the month. Palm oil and soy oil quotations both fell in March on the back of improving production forecasts, while those of rape and sunflower seed oils also declined due to higher-than-expected availabilities.

The FAO Sugar Price Index declined by 10.9 percent to its lowest level since May 2016 amid weak import demand and expectations of robust Brazilian supplies entering world markets as a result of strong harvests and slower domestic uptake for bio-ethanol production.

Buoyant milk supplies led to a 2.3 percent monthly decline in the FAO Dairy Price Index, which, however, remained well above its year-ago level.


The FAO Meat Price Index rose 0.7 per cent, led upward by firm import demand from Asia for bovine meat and pigmeat.

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Monday, April 10, 2017

FAO boss in northeast Nigeria, calls for increase assistance

The Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) José Graziano da Silva, has visited the hunger-threatened northeastern Nigeria, and called for urgent increase in humanitarian assistance, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Da Silva also said that restoring agriculture-based livelihoods is key to recovery and peace efforts in Lake Chad Basin region.

"If we miss the coming planting season, there will be no substantial harvests until 2018. Failure to restore food production now will lead to the worsening of widespread and severe hunger and prolonged dependency on external assistance further into the future," Graziano da Silva said. 

He insisted that the time for all to act is now, stressing that insecurity in the Lake Chad Basin - which incorporates parts of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and northeastern Nigeria - has resulted in the largest humanitarian crisis in Africa.

NaijaAgroNet gathered that the conflict has forced an estimated 1.9 million people to abandon their homes and their predominantly agricultural livelihoods, in northeastern Nigeria alone.


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Wednesday, April 5, 2017

UTME: JAMB calms 150 angry candidates

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) on Wednesday confirmed the registration of 871,576 candidates so far for the 2017 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), reports ITRealms.

The Registrar and Chief Executive of JAMB, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, said this  in an interview with journalists on Wednesday evening after inspecting some registration centres in Abuja, where he also also ruled out extension of the registration process, despite the challenges faced by candidates nationwide.

He also promised to comply if invited and summoned by the House of Representatives, to clarify what has been responsible for the challenges of registration being experienced by candidates. 

"If I am invited, who am I not to answer them? I will honour their invitation because they are our employers" he said.

Before his intervention, Oloyede had earlier threatened to revoke the license of Digital Bridge Institute, a parastatal under the National Communications Commission (NCC), for not complying with JAMB registration rules.

According to him, the DBI was on wireless system which made registration to be very slow.

He said the centre was supposed to register 100 candidates at a time but could only take 20, while other centres visited were not having any problem registering  candidates.
To appease the over 150 angry candidates clustering the centre gate, Oloyede quickly arranged for them, especially the males, to be moved to other centres where there were less pressure.

However, the management of DBI attributed the delay to poor net work, saying that the router could only take 20 candidates at a time

According to him, the target of the organisation was to register 1.4 million candidates for the UTME in 2017.

Oloyede added that no candidate would be left out of the registration process despite having a week before the end of the exercise.

He said, “About 871, 576 candidates have been registered as at today (Wednesday evening). We are going to 1, 467, 000 candidates. What remains is 595,647 and we still have a whole week.

“No candidate will be left unattended to at the closing of this exercise. You do not want me to extend just for the sake of extension because I monitor on my screen. That is why there is a difference between the closing date for registration and the closing date for sale. By the time we sell, we will know how many that have bought but have not registered.”


The JAMB Registrar also said arrangements would be made for physically challenged candidates to write the examination.

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Sustainable seed businesses to transform cassava production in Nigeria

Stakeholders have said that businesses selling improved varieties and high quality cassava stems for cultivation could help African farmers significantly raise their productivity, especially in Nigeria, reports NaijaAgroNet.

This, NaijaAgroNet gathered will mean more Naira from the same land, inputs and effort.

Stakeholders at the end of a national conference on cassava seed system organized by the project, “Building an Economically Sustainable Integrated Cassava Seed System” (BASICS) that was held at the Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) (www.CassavaMatters.org), Ibadan last week Thursday.

“The benefits of this raised productivity will be enjoyed by all the stakeholders across the value chain in a sustainable way,” part of the resolution stated.

The meeting, which reflected on the experiences of BASICS in 2016 and refined the project plan for 2017 and beyond, brought together national and international researchers, academics, policymakers, the private sector, non-governmental organizations and farmers to a roundtable.

Making the case for urgent need for all the stakeholders to work towards a sustainable seed system in Nigeria, Hemant Nitturkar, Project Director for BASICS, reminded the participants that Nigeria is the largest producer of cassava in the world with a production of about 54 million tons, but its yield per hectare of cassava roots is about 8 tons, less than half of the realizable yields of more than 20 tons per hectare. Researchers say one of the factors responsible for the low yield of cassava is the low adoption of clean and healthy seeds of improved varieties of cassava by farmers.

“We have to start with the right planting material and nurture it with good agronomy and weed management practices. Each of these three components has the potential to raise the productivity of cassava by 30 percent. If we do not improve our practices in seed, weed and agronomy, we are incurring a lost opportunity of about 200 billion Naira annually from each of the three issues,” he explained.

BASICS is commercially piloting two distinct pathways of seed delivery. In one, called Village Seed Entrepreneur (VSE) model, in partnership with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in Benue and with National Roots Crop Research Institute (NRCRI), in Abia, Imo, Cross Rivers and Akwa Ibom states, the project is helping develop a network of 130 community based seed enterprises. These VSEs will source certified stems of improved varieties of cassava from NRCRI and IITA to multiply and sell to the farmers in their vicinity. This way, the farmers will not have to go far to source quality stems for planting. In the second pilot called Processor Led Model (PLM), in partnership with Context Global Development, the project is working with large processors of cassava who will then make available quality stems to their outgrowers with a buy back arrangement for the roots produced.

Slow and low multiplication ratio has been a key constraint in cassava seed system. The project is piloting a new technology called Semi-Autotrophic Hydroponics (SAH) for vastly rapid seed multiplication. Once this technology from Argentina is adapted and perfected in Nigeria by the Project, it is expected to have a significant impact on the ability of early generation seed businesses to quickly bring suitable varieties within reach of farmers. The project is also working with National Agricultural Seed Council (NASC) and Fera of UK to improve the quality certification system in Nigeria.

Lawrence Kent, a senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said the aim of the Project is to build an economically sustainable seed system that is profitable both to the sellers of quality stems and to the farmers who purchase and plant those stems. He encouraged all to create reusable bridges to continuously link technology developers with farmers through business oriented approaches, like the one being implemented under BASICS.

Graham Thiele, Director for the CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas led by the International Potato Center (CIP); Alfred Dixon, IITA Director for Development and Delivery, and Project Leader for the Cassava Weed Management Project; Amin Babandi, Director of Agriculture, FMARD, represented by Segun Ayeni, Deputy Director, Roots and Tuber crops, FMARD; Folusho Olaniyan OON, CEO, Contact Consulting Nigeria and Program Director, AgraInnovate West Africa; Emmanuel Okogbenin, Director of Technical Operations, AATF and Robert Asiedu, Director R4D, IITA-West, all shared perspectives and added their voice for all stakeholders to jointly build a strong and sustainable seed system for cassava in Nigeria and wished all the stakeholders well.


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Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Make rice value chain sustainable – IRRI, FOA

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) have called for making of rice value chains sustainable, reports NaijaAgroNet.

In a joint press statement made available to NaijaAgroNet gathered that in many countries around the world rice is a staple crop for food security and consumption trends are growing.

“At the same time rice production is vulnerable to the increasing impacts of climate change, including extreme weather events such as droughts and floods,” the press statement read.

NaijaAgroNet reports that both FAO and IRRI are actively promoting more sustainable rice practices throughout the value chain - production, marketing and consumption - to optimize its nutritional properties and as a means of improving livelihoods and tackling poverty, particularly in rural areas.  

FAO has developed the Regional Rice Initiative for Asia and Pacific which promotes enhanced crop resilience while increasing efficiency and farmers' income. In Africa and in Latin America the UN agency is engaged in scientific and technical cooperation including the sharing of technologies and best practices to increase production and productivity, including reduction of post-harvest losses and improved grain quality.

IRRI is engaged in strengthening capacities of all rice sector actors through its capacity development activities, including IRRI Education and the Sustainable Rice Platform.

The Sustainable Rice Platform is a global alliance to promote resource efficiency and sustainability in trade flows, production and consumption operations, and supply chains in the global rice sector. The Sustainable Rice Platform recently established the world's first standard for sustainable rice. Through the Sustainable Rice Platform, IRRI aims to use environmental and socio-economic benchmarks to maintain yields for rice smallholders, reduce the environmental footprint of rice cultivation and meet consumer needs for food safety and quality.


NaijaAgroNet noted that at the same time, IRRI Education works to build capacity through-out IRRI's extensive partnership network.

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Pix: Rice varities courtesy IRRI

Monday, April 3, 2017

Merck partners ASPIRE

Leading science and technology company Merck, through its ‘Merck More than a Mother’ initiative is partnering with Asia Pacific Initiative on Reproduction (ASPIRE) to conduct a panel to address challenges and solutions to improve access to regulated fertility care in Africa and Asia, reports NaijaAgroNet.

The high level panel discussion, NaijaAgroNet gathered, would include policy makers and international fertility experts deliberating at the 7th annual Congress of ASPIRE in Malaysia with focus on exploring opportunities to collaborate with Asian Fertility Societies in order to build cost effective and safe fertility care capacity in Africa and developing countries.

Chief Social Officer, Merck Healthcare, Rasha Kelej, said that after the success of the collaboration between ‘Merck More than a Mother’ and Indian and Indonesian fertility experts to provide practical embryology training, Merck will connect Africa with Asia to provide more opportunities for building capacity and interventions to empower infertile women and couples.

“Through ‘Merck More than a Mother’ we empower an under-privileged segment of women. Women who couldn’t bear children and for this they are discriminated and mistreated by their husbands, families and communities. In some cultures, childless women still suffer discrimination, stigma and ostracism. This is unacceptable and has to change through our campaign,” Kelej said.

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Rice institute, FAO join forces to sustain global rice production


The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have agreed to cooperate more closely to support sustainable rice production in developing countries to improve food security and livelihoods while safeguarding natural resources, reports NaijaAgroNet.

An agreement signed recently in Rome, NaijaAgroNet gathered, seeks to better pool the scientific knowledge and technical know-how of the two organizations so that they can expand and intensify their work globally.

The partnership primarily aims to enhance sustainable rice-based farming systems through capacity building activities - including assisting governments draw up and implement national and regional policies and strategies - to the benefit of small-scale farmers, especially women.

"The world faces very significant changes over the next few decades to produce the volume and quality of nutritious food to feed a global population heading for 10 billion people," said IRRI Director-General Matthew K. Morell. 

"Addressing these issues relies on global partnerships, and today, IRRI is delighted to be reaffirming through this Memorandum of Agreement our commitment to work with FAO to enhance sustainable rice-based production and food systems through awareness raising, capacity development, knowledge exchange, and evidence-based analyses for policy support."

For the FAO Deputy Director-General, Climate and Natural Resources, Maria Helena Semedo, with over three billion people across the globe eating rice every day, rice is critical to global food security.


"Ensuring sustainable rice production is a key contribution to the global goal of ending hunger. By teaming up with IRRI, already a long-standing partner, we will be able to scale up, complement and amplify our work towards reaching this goal," Semedo said.

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