In Nigeria, as in many African countries, agricultural extension and advisory services are not available to smallholder farmers.This has denied them the opportunity to learn and apply efficient agronomic practices to improve productivity and increase food security. But now, there is a private sector response. DANIEL ESSIET reports.
Chief Executive, Brote Urban Vegetable Farm & Processing Limited, Innocent Mokidi is a successful agribusinessman. His farm in Nasarrawa State has maize and soya bean.
He is among the progressive farmers working to increase productivity and enhance market access for smallholder farmers. One of his secrets is analysing after planting crops on a few plots at various intervals during the year.
Mokidi has been cultivating high-yielding varieties of soya bean and maize for years without access to proper extension support. It takes 120 days for these crops to mature, and he can grow them twice yearly.
One component of his success story is the drive to search for high quality seeds and receive training on how to properly grow them.
What he found out from his trial and error strategy is that seeds performance is specifics.
As he reflects on his achievements, Mokidi found examples of lack of extension services. For him, a lot of the failing farmers would have been successful, if they had access to extension officers or rural extensive service to train them on how to cultivate soya bean, maize and bean profitably.
Some of the farmers, he explained, use poor quality seeds, leading to low productivity.
According to him, agriculture extension staff members are expected to provide timely, custom support to farmers such as crop advisory and market information, pest and disease management.
A proactive agric extensive service, he said, would boost the development potential of the agriculture industry, which accounts for 75 per cent of the country’s total output and is also a major contributor to export earnings.
His success is an exception to the mostly subsistence-level of farming across the Middle Belt.
In Africa, there are countries with well-developed public extension systems with high staff members. Ethiopia and Nigeria smallholders face challenges getting information to produce food better and maintain livelihoods.
Nigeria has the lowest ratio of agricultural extension workers to farmers in Africa, according to African Seed Access Index (TASAI) 2020 Report.
Though effective public extension and advisory services have the potential to improve agricultural productivity, net farm income; and food security among resource-poor farmers, several studies have confirmed that farmers have continued to lag behind their peers in terms of yield per hectare.This is attributed to the country’s inefficient and ineffective agricultural extension service delivery system.
According to experts, there is one extension agent to either 2,500 to 10,000 farm families, a very wide ratio.
This was one of the concerns of participants at the Regional Policy Dialogue on Integration of Climate Smart Agricultural (CSA) Cross-Border Trade & Market, and Foresight in Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services (AEAS) Policy in Abuja last year.
The dialogue, which brought together directors of extension from across 11 African countries, among others, was organised by the African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS), in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Nigerian Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (NIFAAS) with financial support from the European Union (EU) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
They canvassed improved agricultural extension service if Nigeria and the other parts of Africa is to see food insecurity, malnutrition, and poverty reduced and farmers’livelihoods improved.
One of them was the Executive Director, AFAAS, Dr Silim Nahdy, who said the need for innovative and resilient extension systems could not be over emphasised.
“With Africa’s rising food insecurity concrete actions are urgently needed, to reverse the trends and work towards meeting the commitments under the Malabo Declaration and the Sustainable Development Goals. Extension and research are engines in changing this narrative. We need to rebrand agricultural extension so as to attract the youth into agriculture,” he said.
Also, the Research, Policy and Investment Cluster Lead, Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), Dr. Kwaku Antwi, observed that the extension and advisory services are important element to the array of market and non-market entities and agents that provide human capital – enhancing input as well as flows of information.
He said: “Recognising that AEAS’ policies are an integral part of national agricultural policies is very important and thus AEAS policies need to be grounded at National level in all African countries.”
Furthermore, he said the major problem of organising agricultural extension and advisory services in developing countries has been the absence of a legal and policy framework extension services.
“African economies are in the process of transformation with changing food patterns. Under these conditions, extension needs to shift its focus towards increasing farm household income and improving rural livelihoods,” he added.
Though the government has made efforts to tackle food insecurity, analysts said the agricultural extension systems had been enlarged to offer maximum services to bolster productivity and food security.
President Nigerian Agribusiness Group (NABG), Dr Emmanuel Ijewere, said public extension services had been less effective. He has on several fora described the nation’s agricultural system as bad and needed to be rejigged.
He also said timely access to essential agricultural information was key to empowering farmers’ needs to implement best practices on agronomic and post-harvest methodologies for crops, livestock and husbandry operations. Regettably, the few agriculture extension staff in the public service are overstretched.
In line with this, private organisations have started taking steps towards providing extension services to farmers. An example is the OCP Fertiliser Nigeria’s work with farmers.
Its agribusiness-based advisory services take various approaches and are built around lots of models. One of them is the Farm & Fortune Hub, a one-stop shop service that enables farmers to find solutions for their challenges. It also connects farmers to information, resources, markets, and financial services.
It is part of the organisation’s specialised strategy to ensure that the practice of integrating scientific research and new knowledge into agricultural practices through farmer education. The hubs are placed in major farming belts in the country, where farmers can obtain input as well as receive technical training and advice, access services such as credit and benefit from help with marketing. To ensure that farmers in underserved markets have access to fertiliser and other quality input, OCP Fertiliser Nigeria has established one-stop-shop Farm & Fortune Hubs across 30 states.
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In addition, the company has intensified its flagship Agribooster Programme to provide extension service. The programme is deploying digital, in person and hybrid extension services to help small scale farmers.
Several thousands of farmers have received training on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP).
The Deputy Managing Director, Project Incubation West Africa, OCP Africa, Mr. Caleb Usoh, explained that the company has built on its existing programmes, including a portal, which provides information on how to adapt farming practices.
Already, the company has strengthened its extension service outreach with television and radio programmes to increase the reach of agricultural information, and improve the adoption of good farming practices.
Agro promoters operating the hubs are equipped with computer tablets to reach more farmers with a bundle of agribusiness services and personalised mentoring.
His words: “We have provided a platform that offers well-managed farmer and farm data and insights into the nature of farmers’ challenges and their solutions. Each shop is licensed to educate farmers and promote better agricultural practices.The hubs retail seeds, fertiliser and pesticides and are well-stocked with/farm implements, and veterinary supplements. He explained that the group was ready to support agricultural producers to make businesses more competitive.
Significant changes are afoot in the space as many tech companies are working to support digitisation of agricultural services in innovative ways. One of them is Extension Africa (EXAF). EXAF is a research-based ag-tech platform. The startup’s target is to increase the farm output through critical solutions in smart agriculture and farmers empowerment, using e-agricultural advisory agents.
Its Chief Executive, Tajudeen Yahaya, indicated that the organisation has developed plans for transmitting modern farming techniques to farmers via extension tools.
He said the organisation identified the huge gap in connecting smallholder farmers with climate-smart agricultural practices. Hence the need to pioneer a sustainable private extension solution for smallholder farmers.
His thinking has been to provide a harmonised system that is integrated ,where farmers can receive climate-smart advisory, through a platform.
So far, the company is working with over 180,000 farmers.
In terms of expansion, the startup is working on many colloborations to boost its reach across the country.
Right now, the private agri-extension service space is picking up with companies such as Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc, throwing their hats into the ring. The landscape is striving, given the introduction of digitalised services, including mobile technology and e-providers. Under the auspices of Flour Milling Association of Nigeria(FMAN) in partnership with Lake Chad Research Institute, farmers are set to receive four wheat varieties to boost local production. The varieties are bread wheat (Borlaug-FMAN) and Neloki-FMAN), which can produce yield of up to seven tonnes per hectare within maturity of 90 days and Durum wheat(Bayoreca-FMAN and Cirno-FMAN) within yield potential of six tonnes per hectare within a maturity period of about 95 days.
In 2020, the United States’ Agency for International Development (USAID) and federal Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development launched a five-year $16.6 million Feed the Future Nigeria Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services Activity to facilitate learning, replication, and scale in agriculture through private sector-embedded extension models.
Through the partnership, USAID provided a template for agribusiness firms to access the latest science-based agricultural products and services, as well as private sector agribusiness firms.
The USAID activity, which focuses on the value chains for maize, rice, soybean, cowpea, and aquaculture, works through existing micro, small, and medium enterprises to meet the information and service needs of smallholder farmers.
Managed by Winrock International and its team of international partners, the activity is implemented in seven states: Benue, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Kaduna, Kebbi, and Niger.
Early this year, the immediate past Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mohammed Abubakar, said the Federal Government had approved a new policy on Agricultural Extension Service, to make agriculture technology-driven and aid food and nutrition security.
Last year, he also said the ministry recruited over 100,000 extension service agents.
The minister said there was no food shortage in the country, assuring that the ministry would, continue to support the small holder farmers, whom he said, produce about 70 per cent of the nation’s food production.
He said: “We presented a memo on agricultural extension service in the country and the purpose is really to have a good working extension service policy.”
