Lagos State Agricultural Development Authority

...the Lagos Agric Scholars Programme (L.A.S.P) school competition grand finale. 485 public and private secondary schools registered interest....and were shortlisted based on several criteria till we were down to only 25 schools. After several months of planting, maintaining, harvesting, 12 winners were crowned Each school has been given net houses (more manageable greenhouse) 8mx12m and agricultural inputs for increased crop production. @followlasg @lagosagric1 @lagos_agriclub @followlaisa @lagoscoconut

Part B: Connecting the dots In my previous article, I posited that food security is better understood as a systems challenge than as an agricultural challenge. Production remains essential, but the availability, affordability and safety of food are ultimately determined by a much wider set of factors. The question then becomes: how do these factors interact? To help answer that question, I recently developed what I call a food security dependency map (with the help of AI) - a way of visualizing something that is often overlooked. Food security is not a standalone system but an outcome produced by the interaction of several other systems. Each influences food security directly, but perhaps more importantly, they also influence one another. This interconnectedness explains why progress can sometimes feel slower than expected, even when substantial effort is being invested in agriculture itself. For example, we often describe post-harvest losses as a storage or transportation problem. In reality, they are just as much an energy problem. Cold rooms, refrigerated trucks and processing facilities all depend on reliable electricity. When power supply is inconsistent, businesses compensate by relying on generators and alternative energy sources, significantly increasing operating costs. Those additional costs are eventually reflected in the price consumers pay, while also reducing the incentive for private investment in cold chain infrastructure. What initially appears to be a food preservation challenge quickly reveals itself as an energy challenge. A similar relationship exists between finance and data - Access to finance is frequently identified as one of the greatest constraints facing businesses across the food system. Yet financial institutions do not lend based on optimism alone but on information. Reliable data allows lenders to assess risk, understand business performance and make informed credit decisions. Where economic activity remains largely informal and reliable records are scarce, risk becomes harder to quantify, making access to finance more difficult, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises - this reduces investment in storage facilities, logistics, processing plants, aggregation centres and market infrastructure. What initially appears to be a financing problem is therefore, in many respects, also a data problem. These examples illustrate a broader principle - What we often describe as separate problems are, in reality, symptoms of deeper interactions between multiple systems. Addressing one issue while ignoring the systems surrounding it may deliver incremental improvements, but it rarely produces transformational change. This is why conversations around food security need to become more integrated. Rather than asking only how to increase production, we should equally be focused on our energy systems, our data systems etc. For sustainable food security, the collective defines the whole.