Embrace consumption of healthy foods, expert tells Nigerians
A Nutritionist, Regina Sodu, has urged Nigerians to embrace healthy food consumption, saying that it doesn’t require much to eat a balanced diet.
Sodu made this observation while delivering a paper on the importance of nutrition, at the 2022 World food day organised by the Small-Scale Women Farmers Organisation of Nigeria, Gombe chapter in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, Actionaid Nigeria, and Hope Foundation for the Lonely.
It was reported that the event was used to showcase food items both processed and freshly harvested by SWOFON members from the 11 Local Government Areas of Gombe State.
According to her, healthy eating required knowing what to eat, how, and when to eat stressing that the government should aid agriculture to make room for food sufficiency.
Sodu said, “Eating the right amounts and kinds of food positively affects health, energy, appearance, and the way a person feels. Thus nutrition is how the body makes use of the food eaten for good health.”
Expressing the desires of women farmers, the State leader Airudia Mamman, called on the government to create budget lines to fund the implementation of the National Gender Policy in Agriculture, adding that it would boost food supply.
The Organisation also stressed the need for the Gombe State Government to ensure the implementation as budgeted in the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry budgetary allocation for smallholder women farmers.
Mamman said, “Smallholder women farmers should be included in agriculture budget and policy-making processes in Gombe State.
“Funds allocated to SWOFON in the Gombe State Agriculture Budget should be released to support SWOFON as stated in the Budget.
“Massive investments should focus on tackling post-harvest losses (through processing facilities, storage facilities, training, market access, etc.), climate change, insecurity, and farmers- herders’ clashes in Gombe State.
“Gombe State Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry should constitute a Gender Steering Committee which will include SWOFON for the Implementation of the Gender Policy in the Agricultural sector, in a bid to offer equal access and gender-sensitive approaches towards food production.”
Receiving copies of the Organisation’s demand, Deputy Governor of Gombe State, Dr. Manassah Jatau, who was represented by the Commissioner for Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Mohammed Gettado, noted that the Muhammadu Yahaya’s administration would do all within its power to support women farmers to achieve food sufficiency.
He assured that in the next two years the government would ensure the gradual transfer from hoe to mechanised farming, adding that there are deliberate attempts by the current administration to boost accruable earnings in Agriculture.
“Today is a great day as far as farmers are concerned. Today, is World Food Day. I have just received your requests, we will go through them with the directors in the ministry before sending them to higher authorities. We will keep this hoe down in the next two or three years but it has to be a gradual process,” the Deputy Governor said.
