Access to agricultural information and millennium development goals

Date09 March 2010
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/07419051011034130
Published date09 March 2010
Pages10-12
AuthorAdebambo Adewale Oduwole,Chichi Nancy Okorie
Subject MatterLibrary & information science
Access to agricultural information and
millennium development goals
Adebambo Adewale Oduwole and Chichi Nancy Okorie
10 LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 1 2010, pp. 10-12, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419051011034130
Introduction
Millennium development goals
(MDGs) are well-defined global tasks,
visions, ambitions, designed and adopted
for meeting the following needs namely:
employment generation, poverty
reduction, education, wealth creation,
general security,etc. MDGs significantly
seek to improve the quality of life of its
citizens. All over the world, MDGs are
set for promoting development through
NGOs.
In 2000 the member states of the
United Nations adopted the Millennium
Declaration as a renewed commitment
to human development. The Declaration
includes eight MDGs, each with
quantified targets, to motivate the
international community and provide an
accountability mechanism for actions
taken to enable millions of poor people
to improve their livelihoods (Sachs,
2004). The MDGs are as follows:
(1) Eradicate extreme poverty and
hunger.
(2) Achieve universal primary
education.
(3) Promote gender equality and
empower women.
(4) Reduce child mortality.
(5) Improve maternal health.
(6) Combat human immunodeficiency
virus/acquired immune deficiency
syndrome (HIV/AIDS), malaria
and other diseases.
(7) Ensure environmental sustainability.
(8) Develop a global partnership for
development.
About 70 percent of the MDGs’ target
group lives in rural areas, particularly in
Asia and Africa, and for most of the
rural poor agriculture it is a critical
component in the successful attainment
of the MDGs. Even though structural
transformations are important in the
longer term, more immediate gains in
poor households’ welfare can be
achieved through agriculture, which can
help the poor overcome some of the
critical constraints they now face in
meeting their basic needs. Thus, a
necessary component in meeting the
MDGs by 2015 in many parts of the
world is a more productive and
profitable agricultural sector. Today, 1.1
billion people in the world are living on
less than 1 dollar per day and depend on
agriculture for their livelihoods (World
Bank, 2004).
Agricultural initiatives in Nigeria
While the linkage with agricultural is
particularly strong for the first MDG, or
MDG 1 – halving by 2015, the
proportion of those suffering from
extreme poverty and hunger – all MDGs
have direct or indirect linkages with
agriculture. Agriculture contributes to
MDG 1 through agriculture-led
economic growth, which enables
increased employment and rising wages,
and is the only means by which the poor
will be able to satisfy their needs
sustainably.
MDG 2, on universal education, has
the most indirect linkage to agriculture.
A more dynamic agricultural sector will
change the assessment of economic
returns to educating children, compared
to the returns from keeping children out
of school to work in household
(agricultural) enterprises. Agriculture
contributes to MDG 3 directly through
the empowerment of women farmers
and indirectly through reduction of the
time burden on women for domestic
tasks. Agriculture contributes to reduced
child mortality (MDG 4) indirectly by
increasing diversity of food production
and making more resources available to
manage childhood illnesses. Agriculture
directly helps improve maternal health
(MDG 5) through more diversified food
production and higher-quality diets, and
through increased incomes and,
indirectly through increased incomes
and, thus, reduced time burdens on
women. Agriculture also directly helps
to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other
diseases (MDG 6) throughhigher-quality
diets, and indirectly by providing
additional income that can be devoted to
health services. Agriculture practices can
be both direct causes of and important
solutions to environmental degradation
(MDG 7). Developing a global
partnership for development (MDG 8)
will help maintain the steady increase in
agricultural trade and significant
increasesin development assistance.
Food security is a major concern of
Nigeria and other African countries.
Various governments in the continent
have implementing strategies to provide
abundant food, including support for,
and the funding of agricultural research.
In Nigeria, research into agriculture,
soil, ecology, vegetation, crops as well
as animal science date back to the
colonial days. In the past the research
initially focused on export-oriented
crops like cocoa, coffee, cotton, etc.
Today research in agriculture is all
embracing in order to have disease
resistant and high yielding varieties of
crops and livestock.
In order to combat the food problem,
the Nigerian government established 18
Agricultural Research Institutes in 1979
with the objective of conducting
research into the different food crops,
animal production, fisheries, stored
products and food processing. Libraries
were also established in the institutes to
support the effort of agricultural
research scientists toward discovering
improved food varieties and livestock
breeds. In this respect, it is also expected
that librarians in the research institutes
would conduct investigations into the

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