Former Yobe state governor, Senator Bukar Ibrahim, addressing the anti-GMO protesters led by the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) Director, Dr. Nnimmo Bassey, at the National Assembly, recently.

90% of Nigeria farmers are small holders, according to experts. Yet this set of unrecognized farmers produce the food Nigeria consumes. But stakeholders have raised the alarm that the introduction of Genetically Modified Seeds is currently destroying all that farmers are living for, JOHN OBA reports.

According to a description, smallholders are small-scale farmers, pastoralists, forest keepers, fishers who manage areas varying from less than one hectare to 10 hectares. They have family-focused motives using mainly family labour for production and using part of the produce for family consumption.
These smallholders farmers provide up to 80 percent of the food supply in Asian and sub-Saharan Africa according to Food and Agriculture Organisation statistic.

For experts in the agriculture sector, smallholders farmer’s economic viability and contributions to diversified landscape and culture is threatened by competitive pressure from globalization and integration into common economic areas; their fate is either to disappear and become purely self-subsistence producers, or to grow into larger units that can compete with large industrialized farms.
But in Nigeria, smallholder farmers are not only been threatened by competitive pressure, but by one of the world’s most dangerous technology, the intrigues of technology giants who are bent on marginal profits than the safety or wellbeing of their prey and in total connivance with some policy makers and implementers in Nigeria.
From inception, smallholder farmers in Nigeria focus on producing organic agriculture which according to experts brings multiple benefits to the community including more nutritious diet and health, reduced occupational hazards through decreased exposure to pesticides and job creation.

But a group of stakeholders have raised the alarm loud what most Nigerians has failed to see, especially those responsible for protecting the vulnerable farmers, the antics of the GMO proponents.
These group at a recently at the stakeholders workshop organised by the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) with the theme: “The Right To Know: Food Sovereignty and the Danger of GMOs.

To them most of the predicament befalling Nigeria farmers are direct effect of GMO seeds already smuggled in to the farmers. They pointed point out that GMO is now being labeled as improved seeds which is already being given to ignorant farmers.
Speaking at the workshop, the managing partner, Andrew Bishopton Limited, Mrs Jackie Iketuoye-Offiah, who opened the can of worm said more worrisome is the fact that farmers don’t know the sources of seeds given to them adding that GMO proponent have flooded Nigeria markets with GMO seed, riding on the ignorant of the farmers.

“There is a cartel out to destroy our agriculture, some people are going about uprooting young crops with the pretense that it is being used for the production of noodles. This is a new way to introduce GM food, there is a serious sabotage going on and the security agencies must wake up to fight it,” she said.
They said something urgent must be done to stop this as there are grand design to wipe out organic seeds
Adding that the impact of GMOs has started taking effect on the efforts of the small holders farmers since they have started experiencing crops failures, they also attributed the recent tomato total absoluta problem was a direct effects of GMO.

Also the director, HOMEF, Dr. Nnimmo Bassey, said the false promises about the usefulness of GMOs must be exposed and rejected. “GMOs do not give higher yields and are not more nutritious than normal crops. They do not use less herbicides and pesticides. They thrive in monocultures and their safety is neither proven nor assured as the biotech industry seriously interferes with scientific researches in that area. With the many problems we are contending with as a nation, GMOs should not be allowed to compound our situation.”

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