Expanding Nigeria’s interest in organic farming will have beneficial effects on the nation’s nutritional needs, the environment, farmers’ incomes, markets and employment, the 2018 National Organic Agriculture Business Summit communiqué has said.
The summit, which held in Lagos, had its participants stressing that organic agriculture can offer an impressive array of food security, economic, environmental, and health benefits for Nigerians.
The summit underscored the call for further strengthening of a comprehensive, integrated and coordinated approach to promotion of sustainable organic agriculture and inclusive development.
It resolved on the need for adoption of organic living, which comprised consumption of organic food and products, concern for the environment for overall wellbeing and holistic engagement of youths and women in organic agriculture for job creation.
The summit also stressed the importance of quality assurance of organic produce and products through appropriate certification; Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) for domestic market and third-party certification for the export markets.
It urged the government to strengthen the quality assurance processes of organic agriculture produce and products in Nigeria and to encourage the school feeding programme and care givers to adopt organic produce and products.
It recognized contribution of Ecological Organic Agriculture (EOA) Initiative toward the development of organic agriculture systems in Nigeria, as well as the support of Swiss Agency for Cooperation and Development (SDC) of Switzerland.
Twenty-one Asian economies have fully implemented national standards and regulations, while five are in the drafting process.
The summit highlighted that because of its major impact on the environment and ecology Nigeria has to take policy initiatives to incentivize and promote it.