Stakeholders canvass food fortification to stem hunger

They made the call during the maiden international conference on food security and hidden hunger organised by the Faculty of Agriculture, Federal University Ndufu-Alike Ikwo (FUNAI), Ebonyi State.

Declaring the conference titled, “Hidden hunger dynamics: Opportunities and challenges for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals,” the vice chancellor, Prof. Chinedum Nwajiuba noted that the era of oil boom was over and advised governments at all levels to invest massively in agriculture in order to mitigate the incidence of poverty and hunger in the country.

He maintained that agriculture has a strategic role to play in the nation’s quest for economic stability, food security and employment generation for the youths.

He further stated that the university established a Faculty of Agriculture in order to help its host community in particular and Ebonyi State in general achieve their agricultural prospects.

“Our Faculty of Agriculture was established to give practical skills to the students in order to make them employers of labour and contributors to the growth of our nation’s economy on graduation”, stressing that the Faculty would be different in many ways as students would be exposed to the rudiments and dynamics of modern farming.

In his lead paper, the vice chancellor of the University of Port Harcourt, Prof. Ndowa Ekoate Lale noted that no nation has achieved food security despite the notable increase in food production in different parts of the world, stressing that 60 percent of the world’s hungry were women while in every 10 seconds a child dies from hunger-related diseases.

He therefore canvassed for increased intake of nutritional and fresh food and the shunning of processed ones in order to mitigate the negative effect of hidden hunger on people.