Dr Olugbenga AdeOluwa, the National Coordinator, Ecological Organic Agriculture (EOA) Initiative in Nigeria says Nigeria is among the bottom-ranked African countries in organic agriculture.
AdeOluwa said this during the inauguration of the 2021 annual National Organic Agriculture Business Summit (NOABS) Local Organising Committee (LOC) on Thursday in Abuja.
He noted that part of the essence of the summit is to scale up Nigeria’s level of participation in organic farming and improve the development of organic agriculture.
“The summit will create awareness on the benefits of organic farming and improve on the marketing of the produce and products in Nigeria and outside Nigeria.
“It is also one of the ways of addressing the challenges of organic agriculture development in the country’’.
He stressed the need for capacity building of practitioners in the organic agriculture sector in the region to enable them contribute to food security, income generation, employment and systems resilience, among other benefits.
“It will create job opportunities, improve the livelihood of stakeholders, and ensure a wider spread of benefits of organic agriculture to all stakeholders.
“It will also improve local development of the export business in organic agriculture and provide a platform for producers and business people in the value chain to network as well as sustain the drive for sustainable organic agriculture development in the country,’’ AdeOluwa said.
He added that the summit is expected to also mainstream organic agriculture into regular activities of relevant Ministries, Departments and Agencies.
The Executive Director of Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) Olusegun Awolowo who is also Chairman of the LOC, said that global organic product sales may move from 100billion dollars to150 billion dollars within the next five years.
Awolowo who was represented by Mr Salami Akinshola, the Deputy Director, Product Development Department, said it is an opportunity to develop Nigeria’s organic food sector with the high demand of organic product, both locally and internationally.
“Many Nigeria agro products such as ginger, hibiscus, moringa, tigernuts, sesame seed, tumeric, soybeans, with proper certification, are easily organic’’.
He said it took over 15 years for global organic product sales to reach 50 billion dollars in 2008, adding that in 2018, it surpassed the100 billion dollars mark.
“With COVID-19 changing the way we shop and eat, the next leap to 150 billion dollars could be within the next five years”, Awolowo said.
He, therefore, stated that the value of organic food demand has risen significantly due to global awareness on the essence of food safety concern and focus on organically produced crops.
The Organic Agriculture Business Summit scheduled for September this year would focus on improving quality of organic produce and products from Nigeria to address rejection of produce from the country.
