7th/01_2026
Mudarrifu Jnr,
Public Health Nutritionist.
What many people celebrate today as “cheap food” is often the result of subsidized imports and food dumping….a practice where governments rely on externally sourced, subsidized food to stabilize prices and achieve short-term political comfort.
While this may temporarily ease hunger and reduce public pressure, it comes at a high hidden cost.
By flooding local markets with cheap imported food, subsistence and smallholder farmers are pushed out of production. They cannot compete with prices that do not reflect real production costs. Over time, local farming systems weaken, rural livelihoods collapse, and communities lose the capacity to feed themselves.
This is not food security. It is the food dependency trap.
Food becomes politicized- used as a tool to gain legitimacy or maintain calm, rather than treated as a system that must be resilient, locally rooted, and sustainable. Once domestic production is destroyed, countries become dangerously exposed to global price shocks, currency fluctuations, and supply disruptions.
True food security is not about how cheap food is today, but whether people can still produce food tomorrow.
If policies do not protect and invest in local farmers, what looks like relief today becomes a crisis tomorrow.
Sustainable food systems must support local production, protect smallholder farmers, and balance short-term needs with long-term resilience. Anything else is political convenience and not a development.
#foodsystems
#foodsustainability
#subsistencefarming
#highlighteveryone
