The Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) has held a consultation forum for stakeholders in the agriculture sector to ensure that Nigeria contributes to the United Nations’ Global Compact initiative on sustainable agriculture business principles.
The event which held at the NESG Summit House in Lagos had participants drawn from the academia, production, finance, processing and distribution in attendance to brainstorm on how global decisions affect their practice in the agriculture sector and make contributions towards the finalization of the UN’s Global Compact white paper on sustainable agriculture business principles
The Director General of the NESG, Mr Frank Nweke Junior, said that the contributions of industry players from within Nigeria would form part of the content of the white paper and help sustain the policy initiatives of Government and engage the private sector in ensuring the implementation of policies in the agriculture sector.
The 16 factors identified by the participants include amongst others; workers’ rights, land use and rights, climate change, biodiversity, protecting children, health and nutrition, supply chains and trade, value chain financing, yield and productivity, small-scale farmers and co-operatives, as well as institutions and infrastructure all of which if properly harnessed will bring desired outcomes.
It would be recalled that, for the first time, the recently held 19th Economic Summit entirely focused on agriculture, against the backdrop that it contributes over 40% to Nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and employs majority of Nigerians, but the country still spends huge sums in foreign exchange, importing food annually, hence the need to improve the lot of the sector.