Agriculture is key for any country that intends to lift its population out of poverty. The Country Manager, HarvestPlus Nigeria, Dr Paul Ilona, says if Nigeria plans to alleviate poverty, hunger, improve working conditions and boost economic growth, it must support agriculture by way of better integration; sustainable value chain development and markets without boundaries. He speaks with DANIEL ESSIET.
Give an appraisal of the agricultural sector?
I am tempted to say that the sector is making some improvements on the flow side. But if we look at the situation with what obtains in advanced economies, then its still a far cry. One primary reason for this is that our agriculture is not recording significant improvements because it is not structured towards building markets. This is why the sector is not making progress. Today we know agriculture is positioned as a business. Everybody is growing crops for food and income. The issue is to what extent is it a business that can create sustainable means of livelihood? Why we have not achieved this is because agriculture is not yet properly organised. Unless agriculture is organised around market, we will still record low investors’ interests. The producer must have a guarantee that his investment will generate returns. Producers must be given guarantee that their produce will be uptake; otherwise, there will not be any motivation for them. We should produce for the market. In the past, the government had tried to do some work around the need to let the market drive agriculture. The problem of agriculture is intermittent policy summersault occasioned by regime change. After four years, one government will come and change the policy. Another one will come and reverse some things in the policy. This is not helping the continuity of development in the sector.
The other issue is regional value chain development. For instance, the reason cassava production is successful in the Southwest part of the country is that there is a linkage between farmers and industry. There is market created by industrial up takers. There are industries producing ethanol, starch, garri and other products. They source cassava from farmers. We then have those incentives that encourage them to produce without fear of market. As the farmers benefit, so does the processor. The industries are able to source high-quality cassava roots for processing. There are also cassava growers in the North, but there is poor access to markets, depriving them of higher incomes. They don’t have a commensurate established cassava processing industry. Same situation is with the Southeast. The experience in the Southwest gives us a model to deploy to promote market driven agriculture. There are many industries in the Southwest to uptake cassava.
How about land access?
This is another factor helping farmers in the Southwest; it is easier to access land here than in the Southsouth or Southeast. But the best access to land in this country is in the North. If the government is to stimulate growth in agriculture, we need a better analysis of opportunities and gaps. There is attraction for agriculture with many people going into the sector to grow food for security and income. It should not be a case where somebody will use his father’s land for agriculture because not every land can be used for agriculture.
How can farmers benefit from economies of scale in agriculture?
You must apply the principles of economies to operate, and build businesses around gaps identified within the system. For instance, while travelling to Ibadan recently, I saw 22 trailers on the road loaded with tomatoes. All the tomatoes must have come from Kaduna and Kano. Now imagine the quantity of tomatoes transported under the sun from such distances and also the level of wastage of the product by the time they get to the market; I estimate that it would be almost 30 per cent. In this circumstance, how much do you think the farmers will get for the produce? Sadly, the buyers will offer peanuts, which will not lift them out of penury. That is why youths are not encouraged to come into agriculture. Tomato farmers lose a significant portion of their income to wastage. We should have a system that takes cognisance of the challenges of production .There is no reason why farmers in the Southwest should transport raw cassava to Kano. Why not process cassava in Ibadan and move as starch to Kano?
Are you canvassing regional specialisation?
There is a need for us to have regional specialisation. The era where farmers cultivate every crop has passed. To grow maize and inter crop with others is good for the household. But at commercial level there is the need for specialisation. We need to do national mapping of state by state crop advantage. Through mapping we can find out what the best commercial opportunities are for farmers across the states. Benue has one of the largest cassava production volumes nationwide. Benue and many other states in the Northcentral produce cassava. But tell me where we have a single industry to uptake cassava in this region as production raw material? So everything the farmers produce goes into garri and fufu. As a result, the garri sector gets over bloated, prices go down, farmers are discouraged. What I expect the government to do is to make a better analysis of the agriculture terrains with a view to identifying catalysts of sustainable agriculture. If there was a proper analysis on ground it would make no sense for the government to give cassava planting materials to Benue State or maize seeds to farmers in Kaduna. They should be given what they actually need.
What role should the government play in further diversifying the economy from oil?
Creating an enabling environment for farm and agribusinesses to thrive and develop should be one of the key pre-occupations of government. The agriculture sector is ripe for government but the sector is not enjoying the enabling environment to do business which the government and research should provide. People are just doing things the way they like without proper business analysis of the opportunities and gaps to determine whether it is sustainable or not. Generally for me, Nigerian agriculture has a great potential for growth. For one reason or the other we are not there. The reason we are not there is known. I am a strong critic of overwhelming influence of the public sector on the agriculture sector that should be driven by the private sector. When we say private sector, I am not looking at the multinationals. I am not looking at multimil-lion investments. I am looking at small scale investors, small scale farmers who have the best varieties to plant and get the best of yields, who are incapacitated in terms of knowledge to know what to do and who have access to markets? Small scale farmers who in the next five years, know they must go from one acre to two acres to three acres.
Would you say frankly that Nigeria’s agriculture is growing?
If I say the Nigerian agriculture sector is not growing I can defend it without politics. If I say the sector is growing I will be playing around figures. We need to really define what growth is. How come in the past 20 years we are still discussing visions? If the Nigerian agricultural sector is not working, I believe it is the system that is hindering the people. If you ask me what is needed to make agriculture work, I will say the environment for farming business must improve. If we say improve, we mean address the needs and challenges of the agricultural sector while simultaneously leveraging real business opportunities, catalysing private sector investment, and addressing food demand. We must take a look at the value chain that controls every crop. We look what can enhance or negatively influence each value chain, how to get each value chain effectively to real, viable markets. We link all the players in the value chain effectively. There is no reason why the value chain must not function very well. What did we do in the 50s and 60s that Nigeria was the largest producer of groundnuts, sorghum, millets oil palm cocoa and the rest of them? What did we do then that we are not doing now? If you can analyse what we did then that we are not doing now, it will become clearer to use what we need to do next.
Let us talk about agric policies?
For me on the face value, we have had too many agriculture policies. Every regime, every government that comes in thinks that coming up with a new policy means impact. The goal of each policy is to achieve sustainable food production so that the nation is food secured so that agriculture becomes a channel for the country to earn income. If you are not achieving that you say you need a new policy? In the 60s, we were not talking about policies. We just knew that food was produced and we were making so much money. We were told that some universities were built with money generated from cocoa. Some big structures in the South-west were built with earning from agriculture and exports. Look at the volumes we produced then and the volumes produced now. It means we should have built more universities, many more roads, and many more skyscrapers’ and so on. Things have gone wrong. For me it is a total system failure. The focus of agricultural policy should be to increase productivity, provide employment and reduce poverty.
What are the critical gaps in the food system and how can they be addressed?
Today’s agriculture is the result of what we put into the system. Do you expect to plant maize and harvest pineapple? The poor state of agriculture is the result of years of truncation of our policies. Years of truncation of our development paths in agriculture, from Operations Feed the Nation to all other policies that came along the line. If you look at the contents of all the policies you will see wonderful ideas. I don’t think anybody in Nigeria should be talking about polices. If you ask me, we should stop coming up with policies. Let us implement what we have in the present policy. While implementing it we will identify the gaps and address them in the follow up policies to sustain the achievements we have made from the previous polices.
Are you suggesting the strengthening of the value chain?
There are extensive opportunities for value chain interventions, through upgrading, deepening and expansion. We have to look at the value chain that controls every crop and link them effectively. If we link all the players effectively, there is no way the sector will not prosper. Market in agriculture is not about an open area which you bring your goods to sell. That is not what we mean by markets in modern terms. Today we see markets as represented by supply and demand. A market analysis should start from what that the consumers need. Thus will now work back to what the farmers should produce. Food security is not about eating what is available. It is about eating what your body requires.
Do we need to reinvent the wheel?
I don’t think so. What is the fastest approach in marketing produce in the world today? It is to collect and connect approach? That is why the online sector is growing. In the 60s to 70s, we had very strong marketing boards. Because we were still very rural then and you needed one person to keep you out because we didn’t need to transport them and the knowledge of markets was on the low side. So a few did the job of collecting from all farmers and getting them out. Today if you have a buyer in China, who can buy your goods, you can even collect from many farmers if possible. You become a marketer on your own with or without a marketing board. We have gone from marketing boards to cooperatives in Nigeria because marketing boards were centralised, so government encouraged the establishment of such groups of market women that can come together and seek for their own markets and so on. There are smaller marketing entities. You look at Kaduna and Bauchi, you will see the activities of aggregators such as Babban Gona group, seeking to reach as many smallholder farmers as rapidly as possible.
What can be done to benefit maximally from the exportation of raw materials?
The government has to negotiate with multinationals that are willing to come into the country in the interests of our economic development. That is a growth structure. We produce your raw materials here but your industry must be established here. I was in Benue State not too long ago; you need to see the wastage we have in the orange sector. How come till date, Benue and neighbouring states where we have the largest producers of orange that we don’t have a single processing industry? What will it cost to put a fruit processing industry in Benue and stop unnecessary movement of fruits elsewhere? We can get fruits from Benue but not allow such level of wastage. Until we begin to put together markets, we will still have a system failure.
Nigeria still has a record of malnourishment, especially with children. Is the solution to have greater food security growing more food grains?
I will argue that the reason our food systems is failing is because they have neglected the most fundamental purpose of agricultural systems – to nourish people. A lot of our people are suffering from hidden hunger – most will get enough calories, which have been the metric for food systems thus far, but not enough vitamins and minerals. We know too well the global costs of this hidden hunger. Through our programmes we are supporting farmers as we see agriculture as the primary source of sound nutrition through the food people eat.
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