Eagle Eye Reporters

INDUSTRIAL FARMING AND IGBO SURVIVAL

Can the Igbo feed themselves? This is a simple question that doesn’t require complicated answers. If a national crisis occurs today and the Igbo were required to retreat home, can they sustain themselves with their level of domestic food production? These are the types of daunting questions that our statesmen are supposed to be dealing with.
Today the Igbo import most of the food they consume. Most of the meat and vegetables come from the north. How is it that there is this blind support towards Igbo nationalism, and at the same time you’re depending on the so-called enemy for food supplies? Does it make sense? A nation that cannot feed itself cannot defend itself. Before these Biafra IPOB agitators that are beginning to bring gun violence to the land go to the streets with guns, they should first of all organize industrial farming programs, as a preparation for any future crisis the Igbo race may undergo.
It appears that the priorities need to be reassessed. Why is all the land laying fallow? Why can’t the state governments co-opt the land from the private sector and organize huge industrial farming networks throughout the east, using the peoples’ land as it is?
With just minimal organization, the land can be made to feed the people. Think of the monetary capital leaving Igbo land yearly because their land resources cannot be organized. Food is the foundation. Without the ability to produce food, all other industries will plunge. How can the Igbo allow themselves to be dependent on the north for food, despite all the wealth and education they have acquired over the years, despite the “economic blockade” of the civil war and its brutal lessons?
These are the real issues that nobody is talking about. It is shameful for a people so great to lack socio-political strategy, and have to resort to open braggadocio and violence every time, rather than tact and planning. As it stands today, any national crisis will render the Igbo domestic economy seriously vulnerable to acute starvation and wastage. Given the degree of dependency on imported agriculture, the unwillingness of the local governments to adopt the concept of industrial agriculture and the dearth in the knowledge that comes with practical farming, it is safe to say that the Igbo race are dancing on the edge of a steep cliff.
The time is now for the state governments and private trading agencies to come together in an
organized manner, initiated by the state executive government, to institute grand industrial agricultural programs, using the private lands and the nominal knowledge of its tertiary institutions. The Igbo elders must understand that we are in a state of emergency, and if IPOB or any of these organizations were worth the paper they were written on, they would use strategy to strengthen the land and at least ensure that the people can feed themselves in the event of a crisis, instead resort to predictable violence. We need institutions to repair and rebuild our land.

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