The looming global food crisis may hit a record 1 billion people, as the latest statistics indicate an addional overwhelming 100 million have been already endangered. This has brought the total number of people who go to bed hungry everyday from 854 million to 954 million.

According to Alhagie Kebbeh, the president of the African Youth Coalition Against Hunger (Aycah), who is also the director of the National Youth Association for Food Security (Nayafs) this trend is alarming and there is an urgent need for proportionate and pragmatic moves to avert the crisis.

“This is unacceptable since the world has enough to feed its inhabitants,” he said, noing that the food crisis is compounded by the introduction of the bio-fuel, which is responsible for 75 per cent of the crisis.

The way forward

In The Gambia, according to Kebbeh, this can be curbed by cultivating the vast arable lands which are left lying fallow.

“We have about 300,000 hectares of arable land in fallow. We have utilised about 200,000 hectares. This is utilised for only three months in a year. Also, we are only using 2 per cent of the available underground water, and half of our river is fresh water. This means that we don’t even need pump irrigation, but spiral irrigation for more cultivation,” he said.

Kebbeh, who is the chairman of the National Youth Council, pressed the need for Gambians to use this opportunity to cultivate more food crops so that the country can rapidly move towards food self-sufficiency.

The Aycah and Nayafs boss also suggested the need for a holistic national food strategy to curb the crisis. The objective of this strategy, he said, would be to attain sustainable food security by 2015, adding that the government also needs to set up a high level food security council that will compose of key stakeholders, including the private sector, to map out strategies that would ensure the attainment of food security.

“When we have the national food strategy, we will look at what comparative economical system we have in our country, especially where we can produce more. We can cultivate a wide range of land with a variety of foodstuff that will go a long way in the attainment of food self-sufficiency,” he added.

Mr Kebbeh also expressed a need for a heavily subsidised agricultural sector and urged the young people to play their role by responding to the president’s call for people to go back to the land.  

“Young people can earn income for themselves by investing in agriculture,” he said, emphasising the need for appropriate measures to entice young people to agriculture.

Eat what you grow

On the eat-what-you-grow concept, Mr Kebbeh raised concern about the attitude of Gambians towards local produce. He urged the people to eat what they grow locally and patronise what is produced locally. He then observed that failure to heed this call undermines efforts for the country to be self-reliant in feeding itself.

He noted that most of the rice sold in the local shops are 50 per cent to 75 per cent broken, which, he said, are by-products grown in foreign countries. He also observed that the country has moved to a stage of consuming imported vegetables, stressing that this should not be promoted since vegetables are grown in abundance in the country.

In conclusion, the Aycah boss highlighted that The Gambia has the possibility of feeding itself if its citizens are ready to work for it and called for collective efforts to end the dependency on imported foodstuffs.