Food security is a situation whereby the amount of nutritionally adequate food produced in a society is sufficient for all the people in that society and also easily accessible to the people of that society. Meanwhile, food insecurity is a situation whereby food produced in a society is not easily accessible to the people of that society, either due to low production, hike in price of food commodities or other causes. In our world today, we do not need a soothsayer to tell us that the level of food insecurity is on the rise and ravaging different countries of the world, especially developing countries.
To many people the prospect of food security is like a far distant dream. Daily I see people asking questions such as whether food can ever be ubiquitous, easily accessible and cost efficient. I can stand today to say yes and debunk the rumor that dreams of food security are far, distant and impossible. Times without number, today’s government call for conferences on how to combat food security, while the answer is just right under our noses. One might wonder what the answer is. The answer is simply organic farming.
From time immemorial, our fore fathers have used organic materials to promote the productivity of the soil and increase crop yield. They produced enough food with it to sustain their families and still have enough to sell at the market and use part of that yield to celebrate a host if traditional festivals without the use of present day inorganic fertilizers and never complained of food shortage. If to picture this image, it will become clear how organic farming can make food security a reality in the world as a whole.
One of the causes of food insecurity today is poverty. I begin to wonder how food, a gift of God given to humans, could be restrained from the people by a little constraint such as money. Most of the time, when you ask a farmer for the reason behind the hike in the price of food commodities, he would say that the price of fertilizer has gone up, and government rarely gives incentives to promote their work. Organic farming is a solution to this problem. In organic farming, manure is used to enrich the soil. This manure is totally cheap and effective. It could easily be gotten from farm animal wastes, plant matter and so on, that are easily gotten and available in the society. The effect of this is reduction in the price of food and making it easily available to people, thereby securing food for the growing population.
Food security does not only deal with the quantitative production of food, it also has to do with the quality or nutrition content of the food produced. Food produced using the methods and principles of organic farming are more nutritious than those produced using inorganic materials and fertilizers. If we take a look at the foods produced with organic farming, we will see that the yields of such crops are massive, while being nutritionally adequate for the body. You might doubt that food produced organically are larger and at the same time more nutritious than those of inorganic farming. If you take a look at a traditional new yam festival done in the rural parts of south-eastern Nigeria, you would see that those people produced a large amount of highly nutritious yams with no fertilizes only animal dungs from their livestock or dead plant matter fixed into the soil and compare them to the fertilizer grown yams sold in the city, surely even the blind can tell the difference. This shows than organic farming does not only give a high yield to crops, but also increases their nutritional content. And we all know that good nutrition helps in the development of a strong immune system, which is among the paramount things needed in the prevention of the deadly corona virus affecting our world today. Thus, as can be seen, organic farming is essential in securing nutritionally adequate food for the people.
Another important aspect of food security is food safety. By that, I mean whether the foods produced are safe from toxins so as to prevent food poisoning. In organic farming ecologically and biologically safe methods are used. The manure, pesticides, herbicides, are all safe to both the environment and humans, so the possibility of food poisoning is minimal. But if we direct our gaze to the inorganic farming, we could see a lot of dangers involved. The chemicals of the pesticides used in inorganic farming can be absorbed by the plant, the yields of that same plant would then be eaten by other animals or sold to humans, thereby leading to a rise in the cases of food poisoning. Also, the fertilizers used in inorganic farming could be washed away by rain and dumped into water bodies. This affects the aquatic life and indirectly humans when we buy and eat poisoned aquatic life, and more woes would be told if the water body is being used as a drinking source for people. A video once went viral about meat of animals being pumped with chemicals to make them look larger in size, those chemicals used can then affect our body one way or another negatively. To prevent these unfortunate events and secure safe food for the people, organic farming should be practiced as there is little or no chance of poisoning.
Another factor that could affect food security is land productivity. Yes, one may ask how does that affect food security. Imagine if our land was barren or not fit to produce food, that would mean that food cannot be secured for the people. It has been discovered that the continuous use of fertilizers down-grades the quality of the soil. This means that the soil would not be able to easily regenerate after use. But the use of organic manure does not affect the soil negatively, instead it increases its productivity and still allows the land to be farmed while the soil regenerates and receives its original nutrients. The leads to increase in the production of food and increase in the level of food security.
After all that has been said in this essay, it is easy to understand the role organic farming can in improving food security in our world today. Food one day can be ubiquitous, easily accessible and cost efficient. As I said before, the answer is simply organic farming. Since the world as a whole had tried inorganic farming and it came out with little effect in increasing the level of food security, why don’t we think outside the box and put our legs in a new pair of boots. As they say, there is no harm in trying, and I am sure that organic farming is truly the future of food security.