Agro-waste

Editorial

Last week, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo undertook two important tasks in the beleaguered Zaki Biam community of Benue State: he kicked off the reconstruction of the yam market as well as inaugurated the 200,000-capacity yam storage facility.

The two tasks are not only timely but also very important. First, they signal the efforts to rebuild the communities destroyed by armed herdsmen, in the wake of the skirmishes between the itinerant herders and the indigenous people.

This is a community, which in the words of the vice president, accounts for over 70 per cent of cultivated yams in the country, with over 200,000 trucks of yams going out of the market daily.

Secondly, it also seeks to address the embarrassing situation in which the country produces so much and yet is unable to feed its diverse population as a result of wastage.

One research puts post-harvest losses in the country as ranging between five and 20 per cent for grains; 20 per cent for fish and as high as between 50 and 60 per cent for tubers, fruits and vegetables.

And the third, going by the assurances of Osinbajo, is that the facility will serve as a meeting point for all regulatory bodies, including the Bank of Industry (BoI), with the shared facilities meant to expand production by Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).

To begin with, the country can do with more of such interventions, especially at this time. Seen in another light, however, the Zaki Biam story is merely a window into the larger reality facing the nation’s agricultural sector.

It exposes one major bane of our agricultural practice: our inability to store and process agricultural products. It is the same with citrus, grains and tomato as it is with virtually every agricultural products.

The case of tomato is particularly interesting. Whereas the country is said to consume approximately 2.3 million metric tonnes of the product annually, current production is put at 1.8 million metric tonnes, with the rest, some 500,000 metric tonnes augmented by importation.

Meanwhile, about 45 percent of locally produced tomatoes are said to be destroyed before they reach the market.

For a country that has no less than 16 agricultural research institutes working on different aspects of agriculture, it is a shame that she has neither been able to optimise her potential in agriculture not to talk of assisting to harness the boundless opportunities in the value chain.

The result is that many of our states, despite their vast endowments in agriculture, do little else than go, bowl in hand, to Abuja for the monthly handouts from the federation account.

No doubt, the Buhari administration has done a lot to rekindle interest in agriculture through massive interventions in extension services and more crucially in the area of finance, notably through the Central Bank of Nigeria Anchor Borrowers’ Scheme.

Yet, it is clear that all of these would come to naught without deliberate policies crafted to bring post-harvest losses to the barest minimum. In fact, it is the surest way to encourage our farmers while also reducing poverty in their ranks.

Access roads, no doubt, is a sine qua non of this quest. More roads will need to be opened into our vast rural areas to ensure that farm produce, particularly the perishable ones, can be evacuated to the market or the storage points, whichever is applicable.

We understand that some state governments are already doing a lot through the World Bank-assisted Rural Access Mobility Project (RAMP). Those that are yet to sign on to the programme should do so without further delay.

Moreover, it is certainly not late in the day for the federal and state governments to take stock of all agricultural produce currently being wasted with a view to addressing their storage needs.

The bottom line, however, is for the Federal Government to come up with a package of incentives tailored to encourage small, micro and medium scale ago-processing businesses across the country.