FIF - Right to Food 2019-2020 Farm and Infrastructure Foundation (FIF) was registered 2001 as an organisation for promoting policy best practises in Agriculture and Rural Development, with a view to contributing the knowledge of its founder as agricultural policy experts and researchers to society generally and for the benefit of mankind specifically. Following his several years of policy research of the agricultural economy, it was found that the successive failures of agricultural policies in Nigeria was as much due to an inadequate technology environment as also to an aberrant policy environment, with particular reference to the perennial communication gap between the actors onthe demand side of policy marketplace on the one hand (e.g. farmers, commodity traders, processors, farminput dealers, etc.) and the actors on the supply side of the policy marketplace on the other hand (e.g. policy authorities; policymakers; policy analysts; policy advocates; policy brokers; etc.). And among the large class of policy actors out there, FIFmaintains a special focus on the millions of small-scale farmers and other rural-poor who are at the receiving end of bad policy actions of the government and other policy service providers. Thus central to the goal of FIF is the need to recreate the institutional framework towards closing this gap and with a view to getting the policy environment right for the sustained growth and development of the sector.
2. PROBLEM ANALYSIS (400 WORDS)

Food security of the people remains the central issue in Nigerian development since independence in 1960 till date. The latest World Hunger Index published by IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute) indicates that as at last year (2017), with an index value of 25.5 Nigeria ranked 84th among 119 countries, in the category of #Serious Hunger Prevalence#. This implies that about three quarters (¾) of our population (of about 180 million at the last count) presently suffers from acute (adult) malnutrition, severe child stunting, extreme child wasting and (under-five) child mortality, all linked to food insecurity of the country.

Agriculture is an important sector for sustained economic growth and sustainable development. The superstructure of agriculture is anchored on two major pillars, which are mutually reinforcing namely food security and agribusiness. T he United Nations# Sustainable Development Goal No.2 (SDG2), otherwise known as Zero Hunger, which prioritizes poverty elimination and hunger reduction as the focus of the first and second targets respectively, i.e. - End hunger by 2030 (in particular among the poor and people in vulnerable situations); End all forms of malnutrition by 2030 (in particular among children under five years of age, adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons).

In the contemporary sense, climate change is the most serious environmental threat to food security in Nigeria as in other parts of the world. facing most Nigerians. The climate change Vulnerability Index 2014 classified Nigeria#s vulnerability as extreme and ranked the country as the fourth (4th)    most vulnerable, in the World, to climate change. According to some reports, by 2020, if no mitigation or effective adaptations measures are implemented, between 2% and 11%, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of  most communities could be lost to any climate change related mishaps (DFID, 2009). In addition, many Nigerians could become food insecure and malnourished. Two factors are the key drivers of climate change in Nigeria, which are gas flaringand depletion of forests.  Gas-flaring (Udok and Akpan, 2017)  . Gas-flaring is as old as the discovery of crude oil in Nigeria and it remains a global environmental malaise with its attendant environmental consequences. Literature asserts that, Nigeria accounts for an estimated two billion standard cubic feet of gas flared annually, and which amounts to about 19 percent of gas flared globally.  The alarming depletion of tropical forests (Ogbodo et al., 2017)    is another key driver of climate change. Consequently, most forest vegetation in Africa is basically declining due to deliberate removal of trees to pave way for mineral exploitation, urban sprawl, agricultural expansion and infrastructural development. Whereas, promoting good nutrition, health and sustainable food systems in the context of population growth, competing claims (as highlighted above) for natural resources; and a changing climate are central challenges in our contemporary African societies.  Thus the combined effect of gas flaring and forest depletion is a negation of the principle of sustainable development, whereby meeting the needs of the present population are met without compromising the ability of future human generations to meet their own needs as well.

Against this background, the need to influence public policies and private activities becomes paramount, which to a large measure border as much on policies of government to provide infrastructure asalso on the activities of private sector in enterprise. In both cases, thelack of transparency and inadequate information flow constitute a major constraint to the attainment of national food security and right to food in Nigeria.

Background of the Problem

The FIF#s definition of right to food (R2F) derives from the concept of #development as freedom# (Amatya Sen), which by logical extension implies that agricultural development is freedom from hunger (Ayoola).  Hence FIF#s definition of right to food as: the irreducible minimum degree of freedom from hunger and malnutrition, required for a person to live a healthy, decent and productive life. In light of this as a philosophy of food security applicable to Nigeria, FIF launched a National Campaign on Right to Food in 2008, premised on a two-phase strategic plan.

In thestrategic plan, Phase I is focused on influencing government policies for the promotion ofA Right to Bill at the National Assembly, with a view to laying the appropriate legal foundation for food as a human right in the country, while Phase II is focusedon the need to demonstrate appropriate strategies for implementing the right to food. From outset FIF enjoys the concurrence of OXFAM as a reliable partner not only for the successful implementation of both phases but also for the successful transitionfrom one phase to the next, in order to effectively entrench right to food firmly as a philosophy of food security in Nigeria.  During Phase I (2008-2018), the efforts were concentrated largely on public sector in terms of policy influencing of the sector toget the Bill passed and to sensitize the people of Nigeria to the need for them to change their mindset, from the traditional notion of food as a mere human need to the contemporary notion of food as a fundamental human right.  Even though the R2F Billisyet to be passed at National Assembly at this time, this proposal seeks to transit from the earlier phase to the next by demonstrating in advance some of the strategies required by public and private sectors to jointly implement right to food Bill upon itspassage into law in due course. These strategies to be demonstrated will include the mechanisms for influencing government and private sectors in their policies and activities respectively to provide rural infrastructure and to mitigate the environmentagainst adverseeffects of climate change on food security. Furthermore, these mechanisms will be strengthened with the introduction of transparency into policy and action processes of public and private sectors, and also with systematic exposure ofthe youthto policy and action information about food security e, thereby breeding a successor farmer generation to sustain the tempo of agricultural development of the country in future.

Description of the Project

During the next two years (2019-2020) FIF and its partners in the right to food group will influence activities of chief executive officers in the government and private sectors for continued policy influencingof the public sector concurrent with practice influencing of the private sector,with special focus on rural infrastructure and climate change, strengthened with introduction of transparence and provision of information to the male and female youth. Rural infrastructure may be categorized into three: Rural physical infrastructures(e.g. ruralroad network, rural  borehole water schemes, rural storage facilities, etc.);  Rural social infrastructures (e.g. educational facilities, rural health centres, maternity, rural transportation, communication, etc.); and Rural institutional infrastructure(farmers  cooperatives, rural credit and savings schemes, rural market and women associations, etc.).   These will be mapped with measures to mitigate the effect of climate change on the agricultural environment.


The Objective of the projectis to;

1.Build on Nigerian governments' already-made commitments to improve food security by making the Right to Food justiciable and enshrined in the constitution thereby boosting Nigerians' ability to hold government and private sectors accountable forthe outcomes of their policies and practices respectively, on strengthening food security in the country, based on proper understanding by Nigerians' about right to food as a critical requirement to ensuring national food security.
2. Take inventory of ruralinfrastructure and undertaking the mapping of such infrastructures according to value chains and to assess the state and effectiveness of the infrastructures required to strengthen food security and right to food in the country, so as to improve theresponsiveness of agricultural budgeting to smallholder farmers# needs.
3. Establish business relationships and dialogue among actors in the private sector rice sector with a view to introducing transparency into this and other activities of government,farmers, their off-takers and service providers, in order to influence such activities of public and private sector for the attainment of food security.
4. Map the existing policies and best practices in the state that address: flooding, drought, desertification,thereby contributing to national intervention in order to influence public budget towards climate change resilience along with infrastructures for the attainment of food security.