An environmentalist, Mr Michael David has advocated for agricultural insurance scheme to protect farmers against losses during flood and other natural disasters.
David, who is also the Executive Secretary, Global Initiative for Food Security and Ecosystem Preservation (GIFSEF), made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja.
According to him, one way to mitigate the issue of risk to flooding, especially for farmers is to introduce some forms of insurance cover for them.
He said flooding was posing negative tendencies and exposed farmers to poverty, hunger and threat to food security.
David said that such insurance scheme would cover farmers from losing everything, noting however that they should be encouraged not to plant on risk flood plains.
He said that climate change impacted negatively on food in agriculture in Nigeria and other African countries.
“Farmers depend on rainfall for their crops and also herders depend on rainfall to feed their animals before now the elderly man in the community could predict when the rains will fall.
“But now it is no longer so in places like Benue, the rain started in February and stopped in March or April.
“Even in the Sahel region, they are also waiting for the rain, the dry spell is causing their crops to die.
“When the rains come, it is so heavy that it lead to flooding washing away crops such as tomatoes and rice which eventually making them to be expensive in the market.
“The yam also wilts in the ground, the rains also wash off the top soil thereby causing erosion rendering it more infertile an example is the 2022 flooding, which is now causing inflation in the country.
“Flooding does not select who it affects, it affects everyone, government has a lot of work to do in this regards,” he said.
David urged farmers to embrace the climate smart agriculture to encourage irrigation activities in the country.
“We keep preaching for climate smart agriculture, it is not a rugged science, it is what our farmers were doing before.
“We need to practice irrigation more, the rain that come is a blessing, we have the opportunity to construct dams though as environmentalist, we are against the construction of mega dams that impact the ecosystem.
“Small earth dams could be constructed to enable farmers plant their crops all year round”.
He, therefore, stressed the need for more agricultural studies and tasked researchers not to be negligent about their duties.
The Secretary said that there were fertility issues on the soil due to climatic issues such as the temperature depending on the minimum and maximum temperature soils should have.
“If our temperature has increased as a result of global warming the intense use of chemicals on crops is also destroying the soil,” he said.
According to him, some plants do better with waste, and urged farmers to patronise organic manure from agro waste which are readily available.
He advised Nigerians to avoid bush burning and felling of trees to protect the ecosystem and encourage food security, and called for stiff punishment for those violating urban and town planning laws.
“Flooding is a global phenomenon it is happening all over the world, we need to be proactive, we must build resilience.
“Unfortunately many people have moved back to these flooded areas again, it appears we are not taking precautions probably mop up these areas so that they know that it is inhabitable,” he said.
He further called for more sensitisation to create awareness on mitigation measures in flood prone areas.
