The President, Igangan Agro Park Investors Association, (IAPIA), Oluwafemi Abioye, has said that the high cost of food currently experienced in the country was due to a lot of factors ranging from insecurity, poor logistics, inadequate finance and other related challenges.
He noted that one of the reasons companies and individual farmers applied for land at the agro park was to feel secure, but unfortunately they are having huge security problems since 2018 they moved to the area despite being owned by the government.
Igangan Agro Park is a commercial farm of about 39,000 hectares located in Oyo State, it is different from the farm settlement which the state government is trying to turn into farm estates. It is one of the forest lands in the state that were converted into agricultural use by the Oyo State House of Assembly.
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Other converted forests are Opara, Lanlate, Oso and Gambari forests. They are referred to as deforested zones because the forests were no longer there before they were converted to arable land under the administration of the late Governor Abiola Ajimobi and were made public for people to apply.
According to Abioye, agricultural practice goes beyond production; it is a value chain because some are in packaging, warehousing, storage and logistics value chain among others, adding that access roads to farms and general logistics challenges in moving farm produce should be addressed to reduce cost of moving food, which would in turn force down the price of food.
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For Tarnongo Viralis, a commercial maize farmer in Benue State on his own said insecurity is fueling high cost of food because most farmers in the north cannot access their farms due to banditry, kidnapping and terrorism, adding that majority of farmers are now living in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps.
