By Chidi Ulelu
Storing food to stave off and save the teeming poor Nigerians from the looming famine may be a good temporary measure. Question is why the ad hoc and temporary go when it costs far less in terms of already available human and material resources to grow enough food to last all the 200 million Nigerians for next five years in only 90 days?
In 2019 about N22.7 trillion was spent on food by Nigerians. Out of this about N2 trillion was spent on rice and about N1.7 trillion on fruits and vegetables. About N5 trillion was spent on same basic staples more or less by those who ate outside their homes. Funny enough, 360,000 tons of the so-called cow meat that is causing so much trouble and disruption did not take up to N360 billion at 1000 Naira per kilogram. The rest were fish, beans, maize, other grains root tubers…
What am I saying here? The grains, rice, beans, vegetables, even fish, poultry, pork and other items that Nigerians mostly eat are 90 day crops and livestock. We can grow them anytime, anywhere and in any place in Nigeria and harvest them within 90 days. After harvest, with the energy, yes the solar energy from the sun, we can store them as long as we desire and distribute and eat them as and when we want to.
Dwelling on problem mentality has been the bane of the black man. Accepted, some areas and food producing communities have become unsafe in Nigeria due to insecurity. So what is happening in the safe areas? There is no state that cannot boast of a perennial source of water. Even at that, River Niger is the 12th largest river in the world and billions of litres of usable fresh water go from it daily and waste into the salt of the Atlantic Ocean. If a small fraction of that daily waste is harvested and harnessed, thousands of hectares of permanent oasis can be created everywhere with capacity to produce crops 24/7 throughout the year. The above mentioned three challenges of security, storage and seasonality (floods and dryness) are the major reasons every one of our leaders and people adduce to as the causes of the impending famine. Meanwhile as usual in our schemes and ways of life this is a lie. Some say and repeat this lie knowingly while others simply repeat and highlight it ignorantly. The truth however is that a lie remains a lie and building a frame or plan on a lie has its known consequences as a crash. The impact is worsened by the fact that the more you repeat a lie to yourself the more it begins to look like the truth. It progresses to bad results when others now believe your lie but becomes a terminal cancer of ultimate destruction to a people when you now believe your own lies. Believing one’s own lies is a cancer and when it is applied to the most important necessity of man, FOOD, then everyone has to fear.
It is important to note that the past three months has seen an average increase of about 60% in prices of basic staples in Nigeria. The range is between 25% and above 200% in some cases. With incomes being static and dwindling in majority of households, where else in the world except here in Nigeria have you seen such a thing?
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The truth is that Nigeria has refused to embrace smart agro as a way of life. That is the major problem caused by the government and the people for ourselves. Smart agro is not smart agriculture or high tech production of agricultural products. Smart agro is the wise utilization of already available human and material resources to produce the needed staples in Nigeria within 90 days and to replicate the process four times every year. There are over 30 agricultural products and value chain processes from farm to fork that control food production for the people and all of them begin and end in 90 days. They cut across crop production, livestock and micro livestock, processing and packing, preserving and marketing and they all lead to provision of affordable high quality food at all times. There is an extra that results when they are done well and consistently; they provide jobs, lift people from poverty, improve security, banish seasonality from farming and makes agriculture a profession of prestige instead one of poverty.
Action needed to stop the impending famine and produce excess food.
Begin to accept responsibility and believe the truth above which clearly confirms that our food problem is self-inflicted and can also be self-resolved.
Select, clear, stump and irrigate 100,000 hectares average per state from the confirmed safe areas. Some states with more land will have more and those with less will have less. Use gradient and table irrigation to minimize costs and use the existing master plans to select areas closest to sustainable perennial water basins. All these plans are gathering dust in ministry of agriculture and ministry of water resources. Simply implement them. Please do not tell me about scarce funds when five richest Nigerians in the same country commands over $30 billion and now what should rank high in scale of priority as Nigeria has just been ranked second from bottom of the list as the second poorest country in food affordability. We are borrowing daily to build trains and railways that poor and dead hungry people will enter. This should be treated as a critical national infrastructure and given the priority it demands.
Apportion the resulting almost four million hectares of delivered and productive farmlands to eight million unemployed youths for all-season modern production of rice, cereals, beans, vegetables, fish, poultry, livestock etc. The result will be dramatic. Using rice as example, we in Nigeria produce about two tons per hectare or about 30 bags processed of rice per hectare presently and sell at N22,000 per bag where minimum wage is N30,000. With water and modern agronomy, you produce easily five tons per hectare or 75 bags. In two, not even three seasons, we can have 150 bags of rice from the same one hectare in the same one year period and if you sell the rice N5000 a bag you will still realise more money that the person that sold for N22,000. Think this is wishful surmising? Well ask yourself why rice that is N24,000 per 50kg bag in Lagos is still less than N7000 Naira in Cotonou border less than 100 kilometres away.
Many other dramatic sounding but real case presentations exist all over our dear fatherland.
Enough of this hand-wringing and complaining; enough of this audio agricultural successes that has not translated into available or affordable quality food; enough of also prayer and faith without appropriate work or wisdom. It is time to go SMART AGRO until it becomes a way of life in Nigeria. Only then will a sustainable solution instead of temporary palliative to food insecurity will be attained.
- Ulelu, writes from Lagos.
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