The yearly growth rate of Nigeria’s agricultural sector is still below three per cent, according to the World Bank and others.To improve the situation, states and organisations have been offering farmers equipment and other resources. DANIEL ESSIET reports.
The last five years have not been rosy for Nigeria’s agriculture. Its yearly expansion is below three per cent.
Last year, the performance of agriculture and industry, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), nose-dived compared to the previous year.
But there are efforts by states and organisations to find new pathways to drive growth. These include input and equipment support for farmers to increase production through land cultivation.
In Badagry, Lagos State, where the former President, Lagos State Apex Fadama Community Association, Alhaji Mufutau Abiodun Oyelekan, operates, there are pools of farmers in various value chains assisted by the state government with input and equipment to galvanise the cultivation of vegetables, poultry, rice, and fisheries.
Oyelekan grows crops such as maize and vegetables profitably. He is a beneficiary of training and resources provided to smallholder farmers across the state to improve livelihoods and nutrition.
The Lagos State Government, he said, has helped many people grow profitable crops and secure farms to generate income.
Oyelekan has become an inspiration for youths who are shying away from agriculture. He has been associating with the Lagos State Government for years and this relationship has made him savvy and a user of new varieties and technologies in the sector.
With the increased support coming to the sector in the past few years, Oyelekan noted that the ambitious reforms carried out by the government would drive the industry growth by promoting agri-business’ competitiveness and increasing agri-food market efficiency.
Also, the Chief Executive, Arike Ofada Rice, Mrs. Oluwatoyin Oluwole, is consolidating her position in agri-business as a rice cultivator and entrepreneur. She is the producer of Arike Ofada Rice, who has enjoyed the support of the Lagos APPEALS project in terms of equipment, among others. Now, her products are available in supermarkets and online platforms.
“APPEALS project has really supported my business. It supported me with a colour sorter machine and dryers. The equipment had taken away stress during processing.The intervention of the project has helped my business. It has made production easier. Initially, we were not able to enter the high-end market, but with the colour sorter from Lagos APPEALS, Arike Ofada Rice is sold in supermarkets and other markets,” she said.
Indeed, smallholder farmers are an important pillar of Lagos economic development and integral to food security. To this end, there are long-running programmes aiming to raise agricultural productivity. These involved scaling up support to post-harvest handling and expanding opportunities for agri-entrepreneurship and employment. So much has been dedicated to creating economic opportunities across the state by providing support to farmers.There is a comprehensive support programme, which seeks to promote more integrated value chain production.
Under its Agricultural Value Chains Enterprise Activation Programme (AVCEAP), the Lagos State Government has supported women, youths and vulnerable people across the local governments with assets and input.The concern is that small farmers have had difficulty accessing input and markets for their produce.
To solve the problem, several interventions have been executed in the distribution of input to help raise agricultural productivity of farmers and fishermen and women.
Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu said the goal of the AVCEAP scheme was to make life easier for farmers in the state.
“We want to make life easier for our farmers and agriculture workers. We want to make it easier for them to clear their land, grow high-quality crops, raise healthy animals, and process their output. There are clear benefits in terms of health, productivity, employment, and so on,” he added.
AVCEAP aims at building sustainable market-oriented smallholder value chains and enabling smallholder farmers competitiveness.
Key ingredients of the scheme include the development of the various value chains, use of high-yielding varieties and mechanisation and provision of input.
Immediate past Commissioner for Agriculture, Ms. Abisola Olusanya, said the Agricultural Value Chains Enterprise Activation and Farmers’ Support Programme was designed to support 20,000 farmers in 120 farming and fishing clusters across the 20 local governments and 37 local council development areas, with input and production assets.
The initiative, according to Ms. Olusanya, is part of the plans of the state government to drive food security by supporting farming and farmers.
She said a needs assessment was conducted by officials of the ministry to get the views of farmers on the required production assets to boost farming, and the input distributed were as a result of their responses.
“In all, over 20,000 fisherfolks and farmers will benefit from the programme while budgetary provision has been made to accommodate a larger number of value chain actors in the 2023 edition of the programme,” she had said.
She said the Lagos State Government was determined to shift the sector from subsistence farming to one that would be focused on productivity, diversification and commercialisation.
Ms. Olusanya also said the state was open to identifying the challenges and working towards developing solutions to take advantage of the many opportunities in agriculture. According to her, there is minimal increase in the use of agricultural machinery. She explained that the government had introduced several innovations to address the technological, productive and commercial gaps in the agriculture sector.
Last month, the AVCEAP team visited various local governments to distribute input and equipment to farmers. The input distributed included fertiliser, seeds, generators, and knapsack sprayers.
Also, there is the Agro-Processing, Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Support (APPEALS), a World Bank-assisted project, implemented through the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in six states – Cross River, Enugu, Kaduna, Kano, Kogi and Lagos. It is a six-year project, which began in 2017 and would end this year.
Lagos APPEALS enhances agricultural productivity of small and medium scale farmers and improves value addition in poultry, aquaculture and rice.
Although APPEALS has made significant strides in recent years, Head of Communications, Lagos Appeals Project, Folake Ogunlana-Lawal, noted that what was outstanding was using a demand-driven model to facilitate the transition of many subsistence farmers to agricultural entrepreneurs.
For her, the critical success factors driving Lagos agric value chain development included youth skill development and training, integration of agricultural mechanisation and development of supportive infrastructure.
She said the Lagos APPEALS projects would provide innovative solutions which could accelerate livelihoods, food and nutrition security.
According to Mrs. Ogunlana-Lawal, the Lagos APPEALS Project had addressed poverty and malnutrition through poultry, rice and aquaculture value chains. She said the programme had connected farmers to profitable businesses as well as ensured the availability of nutritious food.
Though the project is winding up, she is happy that many farmers have been empowered with good agronomic practices, benefits of availing extension services and linkages with the markets.
At its expanded scale, she said the project had ushered in a marked improvement in production and farmer incomes, thus creating prosperity for local communities.
At the national scale, the Embassy of Japan in Nigeria and Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA) (formerly SG2000) have renewed their commitment aimed at tapping Japanese technologies, including information and communication technologies (ICTs) for the improvement of farming systems in Nigeria.
With the large volume of paddy produced in Kano State, SAA-Nigeria is enriching the lives of small-scale processors, by building the capacity of rice value chain actors.
Through the Kano State AgroPastoral Development Project (KSADP), funded by the Islamic Development Bank and the Lives and Livelihood funds, there are 44 local government interventions to enhance cultivation, processing, packaging, and marketing opportunities for the rice value chain.
SAA has established 15 rice processing centres, equipped with rice milling and destoning machines, to ease the difficulties faced by women processors, who had to travel long distances to mill paddy rice.
SAA-Nigeria empowered 2,500 rice processors with improved rice parboiling, supported them with parboiling kits and trained them on production, packaging and branding techniques. With the training acquired, new data indicated the average processing output quadrupled from half a bag of paddy rice to two bags.
SAA-Nigeria Country Director Dr. Godwin Atser said agriculture held a lot of potential, but this was yet to be fully harnessed. He stressed that most improved technologies were yet to get to farmers because of a weak public extension architecture.
Atser explained that SAA as a technical partner to the KSADP project would continue to support the government’s efforts to enhance agricultural productivity and competitiveness through increased access to inputs, extension service delivery, value addition and agribusiness development.
He said the exercise would enable the input to get to the beneficiaries promptly and give them ample time for other essential pre-season activities like land acquisition and preparation, He added that for crops to perform optimally, they must be planted at the right time using the correct regenerative agriculture practices and necessary input.
The Project Coordinator, KSADP/SAA, Comrade Abdulrasheed Hamisu Kofarmata, said SAA was bridging the gap by addressing most of the challenges facing smallholder farmers in the state, by strengthening extension services through the periodic distribution of improved high-yielding, disease and drought-resistant seed varieties, pre-and post-emergence herbicides, fungicides, pesticides and training.
He stressed that for this wet season, SAA/KSADP had planned to establish 690 clusters of demonstration plots to showcase Good Agronomic Practices (GAPs) and 192 Community-Based Seed Multiplication plots across 44 LGAs of the state, to serve as farmer learning platforms in local communities during on- and off-farming seasons, and to promote the adoption of new farming technologies and increase crop productivity.
According to him, farm input worth over N100 million, including improved high-yielding, disease and drought-resistant seed varieties of upland and low land rice, maize, sorghum, millet, soybeans and groundnuts; various pre-and post-emergence herbicides, fungicides and pesticides, organic fertiliser for maize and rice production to improve soil fertility for the optimum performance of target crops are being distributed to beneficiaries through the extension agents.
He reiterated that with KSADP, in its third year of implementation, SAA was improving food, nutrition and income security of smallholder farmers in the state.
SAA-Nigeria and KSADP have deployed multi-pronged approach of Regenerative Agriculture (RA), Market-Oriented Agriculture (MOA), and Nutrition Sensitive Agriculture (NSA) to foster agriculture-centered economic growth.
Along with its RA pillar, SAA-Nigeria commenced the distribution of dry season farm input starter packages for host farmers. Sixty-nine starter packages have been distributed to host farmers in Kano, Nasarawa, Jigawa, and Gombe states. Each starter pack consists of improved seeds, NPK fertiliser, urea super granules, and pre/post-emergence herbicides.
