Exploring Bt cotton opportunities
In an interesting turn of events, Burkina Faso’s recent fiasco over Bt. cotton fibre length - and the decision by cotton companies to slow adoption while the issue is being resolved - is being interpreted differently in the region. Most francophone countries envy the tremendous success Burkina Faso has experienced. Yields and farmers’ incomes have risen, chemical use is down, and cotton and cottonseed oil have become major exports.
Delegations from neighbouring Benin and Togo have visited Burkina to see for themselves how Bt. cotton has transformed the economy. Participants included farmers, government officials, members of parliament, and textile industry representatives. Their mission: to see first-hand the impact of Bt. cotton in Burkina Faso as a first step towards the eventual adoption of policies allowing its cultivation within their own borders.
Anglophone and Francophone countries in West Africa - most notably Ghana and Burkina Faso - are also exploring how best to engage with the technology. Nigeria, whose earnings from the oil sector continue to drop sharply, is seriously considering the adoption of Bt. cotton.
In the corridors of power, the need to wean the country of reliance on petro-dollars is well established. Most decision makers feel the technology challenges Burkina Faso is facing have been exaggerated by anti-GM activists. The country is unequivocal that the Agricultural Transformation Agenda must include the adoption of biotechnology; more specifically, the country sees Bt. cotton as a viable way of engaging with the technology and technology providers.
Alhaji Salman Abdullahi, the Chairman, Cotton Ginners Association (CGA) says adoption of Bt. cotton should be part of the strategy to mitigate the effects of climate change. Another organization, the Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC), an agency under the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology,is concerned with the current dwindling status of cotton production in Nigeria and sees Bt. cotton as a viable answer. The Agency says in the textile sector - 26 out of 52 ginneries are currently operational; 34 out of 184 textile mills are operational and all of which operate at 30 per cent installed capacity and contribute 25 percent of GDP in addition to providing well over 700,000 jobs, next only to government.
While the Director General/CEO, the Nigerian Textile Manufacturers Association (NTMA), Mr. Hamman Kwajaffa, says lack of confidence by participants across the cotton value chain over the years restricted the much-needed investments. The association says cotton farming in Nigeria over the years has suffered because the opportunity cost of planting cotton has remained high. Cotton does not compete favourably against other lower risk crops and this has led to a dwindling of farmers involved in cultivating the crop over time. buildings would not remain the only luxury accommodation known to many of our compatriots. The Federal Housing Authority and the Federal Mortgage Bank among others, were all sensible housing policy formulations with the primary objective of encouraging and assisting individuals and companies to share in the burden of housing the people.
The main fault with the various housing policies over the years has been the exclusion of the most vulnerable group from participating in and benefiting from these policies. Because housing loans, like all loans, are hedged in by difficult conditions, the vulnerable groups are unable to take advantage of these loans. The rich, of course, fill the void. They obtain the loans and their bank accounts fill up at the expense of the poor masses.
Private developers have moved in since 1999. Our towns and cities, especially Abuja, are replete with magnificent, sprawling housing estates. Welcome as they are as part of our human development, these estates are commercial ventures. Their owners want to make quick and good returns on their huge investments. Naturally, therefore, they target the rich and exclude the poor. And the problem remains and festers.
The public sector cannot bear the burden alone. Current political and economic wisdom strongly advocates public/private partnership. It should be possible for the federal government to articulate a new, realistic housing policy that includes the vulnerable group. Such a sensible national policy should balance the commercial interests of the private developers with the need to pull up the poor and the unsheltered. Housing for all need not be an empty slogan. We missed our millennium
The association sees Bt. cotton as a real solution because seed quality remains a problem, affecting yield and by implication farmers’ income and motivation to cultivate. The prevalence of pests which leads to increased expenses in pesticides, unnecessarily high cost of inputs also demotivates farmers.
The cotton sector is a potential key contributor to the economy, especially now that the government is exploring non-oil revenue options to boost public finance.Bt. cotton provides an opportunity to revive the cotton industry, which has a high potential for added value generation from raw material to, finished goods and is a major employer of urban and rural populations.
A major public policy issue in West Africa is not whether, but how to introduce Bt.-cotton in the region. Analysts argue that the implications of non-adoption may be more significant than previously thought. Liborio S. Cabanilla, Tahirou Abdoulaye and John H. Sanders, in a paper on The economic cost of non-adoption of Bt.-cotton in West Africa point out that there are significant farm-level benefits. They say “aggregate benefits depend on adoption rate and yield advantage of Bt.-cotton. These range from a low of US$7 million to a high of US$67 million in Mali; US$4 million to US$41 million in Burkina Faso; US$5 million to US$52 million in Benin; US$4 million to US$38 million in Cote d’Ivoire; and, US$1 million to US$7 million in Senegal.” They say that non-adoption of Bt.-cotton in the region will ultimately result in non-competitiveness development goal in housing, as we did in all sectors, including health and education. Time to set in motion the process for remediation.
The federal ministry of housing is collaborating with private companies to explore ways and means of taking up the challenge in what is billed as the first national summit on affordable housing in the country. It opens in Abuja this week. Summits, such as this, are reputed for being long on academic suggestions but pretty short on pragmatic solutions. I just hope this could prove an exception to the rule.
We can address affordable housing from two important perspectives. The first is to put the cost of building materials within the reach of everyone, including the very vulnerable group. We have not sufficiently exploited local raw materials in this respect. Our dependence on cement as the major building material is unwise. There are building research institutions with the brief to find and exploit such local materials. These institutions are now more or less consigned to the cold winter of long and almost criminal neglect. We could bring them back from the cold and use them for applied search in our quest for affordable housing, using cheap but durable local raw materials.
The other perspective is, of course, money. No one has yet found a formula that makes banks and other lending institutions lend money without collateral. The man who has no collateral for securing his loan has no chance of taking advantage of affordable housing. Catch-22?
The organisers of the summit say that it would produce “a clear, sustainable, realistic and strategic blueprint for affordable housing delivery in Nigeria.”
I have crossed my fingers. in the world market.
Although, the writers focus on Francophone Africa, their argument holds weight across West African countries where cotton is a primary export crop and a major source of cash income among millions of resource-poor farmers. In Nigeria for example, the economic benefits from Bt. cotton are expected to be high. The technology would enable Nigeria and the region minimise the risk of revenue loss from insect damage faced by farmers who are also constantly subjected to harsh environmental conditions. Bt.-cotton was first introduced for commercial adoption in 1996. To date, countries such as China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Burkina Faso, Sudan and South Africa - as well as the USA and Australia - have planted Bt.-cotton on a commercial scale.
Nigeria’s adoption of Bt. cotton would fast track the harmonisation of legislation in ECOWAS, which covers all 15 countries of West Africa. A smaller grouping of francophone countries, WAEMU, is already helping members harmonise national biosafety legislations. An alignment of ECOWAS and WAEMU position on biotechnology would drastically improve the investment climate in the region, leading to an upsurge of investments in the agricultural sector.