As parts of effort to boost food production and safety, the Health Of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) has trained over 100 small Scale rural farmers in Nasarawa on how to use agroecology system of farming to improve food production and preserve the ecosystem to ameliorate cause of climate change.
Mr Cadmus Enade, Programme Manager, HOMEF made this known to newsmen on the sidelines of the one day Agro-ecology practical training held in Keffi local government area of Nasarawa state on Thursday.
Enade said agroecology is a farming system in line with nature to promotes food sovereignty and sufficiency. He added that it is safer than Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) system of farming which involves harmful chemicals in production of crops.
“We have overtime discovered that GMO is harmful to the health and well-being of people, the environment, animals and the biodiversity around.
“So this training is aimed at training community farmers in Nasarawa on how best they can use agroecology practices to enhance their food production and their livelihoods because agroecology is not just a practice but also a scientific way of producing safe food and making it sufficient for farmers.
“It involves using organic produce, organic items that you can find around your environment. It also means producing crops without any form of chemical involvement, usage. So we are encouraging local farming systems that boost food security and safety.”
The group noted that the practice of agroecology farming system can also curtail the causes of climate by replenishment of the ecosystem which has been destroyed massively with the application of chemicals that fast destroy the ecosystem today.
The group however raises the alarm over gradual influxes of GM seeds, saying “if we do not create a seed bank where local seeds varieties are preserved, in no time some seeds varieties may be faced out because of the prevalence of GM seeds importation.
He however called on governments at all levels and regulatory bodies to focus the search light on some big stores who are currently sell GM foods but unknown to many customers who do not have the culture of reading labels before consumption and therefore not knowing exactly what they are consuming.
Enade hinted research carried showed that some of the GM seeds resulted in massive death of birds in farms, death of some kinds of grasses where these seeds are planted, which means those seeds are harmful even to humans over times.
Some participants from Kano, Oyo and Nasarawa who spoke to our reporter after the training said they learnt a lot on how to prepare organic manure which cost less than chemical fertilisers and insecticide which repel insects attack on crops.
They all called on the governments at all level to discourage uses of GMO which are dangerous to humans and the environment, especially with the rising danger posed by climate change.
