Pressing issues farmers want Buhari to address
As President Muhammadu Buhari begins another term of four years, farmers in Africa’s most populous country want him to address a number of problems limiting growth in the agricultural sector.
They say that the country’s agricultural performance in the next four years depends on the commitment in addressing issues that have continued to limit farmers’ productivity and the sector’s contribution to growth and development.
Farmers who spoke with Businessday, stressed the need for irrigation, innovation, single digit interest rate, infrastructure and mechanisation to change the fortunes of Nigeria’s economy through agriculture, with attendant exponential gains by way of earnings, employment, food security and other spin-offs.
“We are hopeful of the next level agenda and we want irrigation and mechanisation on our farms to boost productivity,” Ibrahim Kabiru, national president, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) said.
“We cannot grow our agriculture using hoes and cutlasses anymore. Mechanisation and irrigation are vital if we are going to feed ourselves,” Kabiru said in a phone interview. Agro finance
Nigeria’s expectation from its agricultural sector may not be actualised if banks remain unwilling to lend to the sector. Lack of access to adequate finance by farmers and other actors in the sector has remained a major impediment that prevents investments in basic farm inputs needed to raise productivity and sustain growth of the non-oil sector.
As a result, yields have failed to increase significantly, leading to pervasive hunger and poverty.
Similarly, agro entrepreneurs seeking to build businesses that could boost food production, continue to remain at a subsistent level in the country.
“Funding is the biggest problem we have in Nigeria’s agriculture and we need it to put all the factors of production together to drive growth in the sector,” said Africanfarmer Mogaji, CEO, X-ray Farms Consulting Limited.
“The interest rate on agricultural loans from money deposit banks in the country is unsustainable and no agro business can survive with such interest rate,” noted Mogaji who is the head, agric group, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI).
Nigeria’s agricultural fundamentals are robust and include an estimated 84 million hectares of arable land out of which only 40 percent is cultivated and only 10 percent of the 40 percent is cultivated optimally.
But with adequate financing, the country can put its 84 million hectares of arable land to productive use, experts say.
Inputs
Prices of key inputs such as seeds, herbicides, pesticides, fertilisers and agro machinery will be the determinants of food prices in the second half of 2019.
In addition, access to adequate, secured and timely supply of quality seeds is also a major hurdle on the nation’s quest to return to its heydays in agriculture.
Poor seeds have been identified as the major challenge in crop cultivation for farmers, responsible for recording low yields. Despite efforts of successive government to give farmers access to improved seeds, farmers are still unable to get access to good and quality seedlings.
Nigeria’s failure to invest in the seed industry has created a seed gap estimated at N525 billion, leaving farmers’ to low quality inputs that portend danger to crop production and the country’s food-sufficiency target.
“Most of the seeds in the market today are imported and this is because we do not produce enough seeds. The research institutes that are mandated to produce improved varieties of seeds are not doing anything,” Abiodun Olorundenro, a farmer told Businessday.
“There are lots of adulterated seeds in the country today because demand is much higher than supply. The level of investments in the industry is low. To bridge the gap, a lot of merchants are importing these seeds for farmers,” he said.
Despite the growth recorded in the numbers of seed companies in Nigeria, investments in the subsector is still low as farmers find it difficult to easily access improved seeds and seedlings to cultivate.
The total national seed requirements for eight major crops, including maize and rice, in Africa’s most populous country stood at 388,690.64 metric tons ( MT) in 2015, while the quantity available was 126,173 MT, leaving a gap of 262,518 MT.
Experts in the agricultural sector say that the government needs to prevent the demand-supply gap from widening further to prevent creating a fertile ground for the proliferation of unregistered and incompetent operators who flood the market with fake or poor quality seeds.
They explained that legal backing from the National Assembly would empower the National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC) to carry out its statutory mandate of regulation and supervision of seeds more effectively and seamlessly.
To bridge the gaps, experts have called for collaborations between the government and the private sector to drive investments in seed production in the country. The experts also urged the government to create an enabling environment Poor research funding Agricultural research institutes operating in the country are proving to be a weak link in Nigeria’s drive for rapid agricultural development.
The institutes mandated to develop technologies and practices to improve farmers’ yields and ensure food security, have failed to improve farm output.
Stakeholders attribute the inability of agric research institutes to reach their potentials to poor funding and total neglect of the institutions by the government. They say there is need for the government to address this if it wants agriculture to play a leading role in the diversification process.
“Less than five percent of the yearly budgetary allocation for agric research institutes goes into core research, while 70 percent goes into salaries and emoluments, with the remaining going into procurements, renovation and overheads,” Baba Yusuf Abubakar, professor of Animal Science, Federal University of Abuja told Businessday in a telephone interview.
“We cannot conduct effective research which such stipends. Research plays a pivotal role in transforming the agricultural sector and that is why we must take it very seriously,” Abubakar said.
Data obtained from the budgetary allocation to the agricultural ministry shows that the research institutions got an average of N28 billion ($70 million) yearly in the last four years.
Nigeria’s annual spend on its agric research institutes pales in comparison with India’s $ 2 billion, Brazil’s $1 billion and China’s $700million, Businessday findings shows.
Despite the size of agriculture in Nigeria in relation to other African nations, the country lags its peers in the sector in terms of research funding.
A 2015 Actionaid report shows that Nigeria only invests $0.42 into agric research for every $100 of agric output, as compared to $0.94 and $1.40 in Ghana and Uganda respectively.
However, Nigeria has the largest agricultural research system in Africa, in terms of investments and number of researchers, with over 80 government and higher education institutes and over 2,000 researchers engaged in research. Despite these potentials, official fraud limits funds from reaching their points of critical need.
Climate Change
Extreme weather conditions have continued to impact negatively on Nigeria’s agricultural activities in recent years.
The country’s 2018 agric output declined owing to the high volume of rainfall in many parts of the country, resulting in flooding which destroyed farmlands. This reduced the contribution of agric to the country’s GDP and a setback for the Federal Government’s diversification quest. The flooding affected Nigeria’s 2018 rice and sugar cane production among others.
According to by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET), the rainfall pattern in 2018-posed great risk to farmers in the areas that were affected most by the floods, while urging concerned government ministries to carefully manage the situation. NIMET is yet to give its seasonal weather forecast for 2019.
Experts who spoke with Businessday have predicted that climate change will play a key role in farmers’ 2019 productivity.
The experts says that extreme weather conditions are likely to affect not only the outcome of 2019 farming seasons, but also government’s plans to stop food importation which has been valued at over N1 trillion annually, or at least reduce it to the barest minimum.
The extreme weather condition does not only affect crop production, but also livestock production.
“The sign of climate change has become evidence daily in our lives and the impact has been massive on the agricultural sector. The weather conditions will affect the quality of crops and the pricing,” said Desmond Majekodunmi, an environmentalist.