An appeal has gone to Governor Willie Obiano and the House of Assembly to urgently look into destruction of farm crops and farm lands by herdsmen.
The Director, Technical Services, Anambra Ministry of Agriculture, Mr Emeka Okoli, made the appeal during an Advocacy meeting with farmers on Commercialization of Bio Fortified Food Crops at ADP Conference Hall, Awka.
Mr Okoli who also partners Global Alliance for Improved, Nutrition (Gains) and Harvest Plus, frowned at the rate herdsmen are still engaging in open grazing in many agrarian communities in the State, leading to destruction of farm produce worth Millions of naira.
He cautioned that if drastic action is not taken to end herders menace, hunger will pose a great challenge as farmers would be with no other option than to abandon farming.
Mr Okoli further lamented that some people in some of the communities are now Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, as a result of the activities of the herders.
He also seized the opportunity to encourage participants to embrace bio fortified food like yellow cassavas that has vitamin A and minerals, as well as maize that is orange in colour and has high vitamin and minerals, describing them as healthy maternals.
The Project Manager for Commercialization of Bio Fortified Crops in Nigeria, Mr Ijudai Ijasada, similarly urged government and relevant stakeholders to put a stop to destruction of farmlands by herders and their cattles, and further intimated participants on how best to promote, cultivate and use bio fortified cassavas, and also enumerated four pillars of CBC namely, Supply Chain Pillars, the Demand Pillar, the Policy and Advocacy Pillar and Finance Pillar.
He promised to work with farmers to ensure adoption of Vitamin A cassava stem by farmers for high productivity of the vitamin A cassava.
Mr Ijasada called on participants to be Advocate of good nutrition in the state.
Some of the participants including the former Director of Schools in Anambra state, Dr Ray Offor, and Mr Samuel Uzowulu from Obosi, emphasised the need to embrace the yellow cassavas fortified with Vitamin, and Called on the Agriculture friendly Governor to, as a matter of urgency, address the disturbing herders/farmers conflicts so that it will not adversely affect food production in the State.
