Lack of quality rice planting materials is responsible for poor yields. Stakeholders are canvassing supply of high quality crop planting materials to small-scale farmers for maximum yields, DANIEL ESSIET reports.
For a rice farmer in Lagos State, Abdul Ghaniyu Alabi Ojolowo, accessibility to high quality rice is the key to achieving better food security and escaping poverty.
This, however, depends on several factors, including good seeds. For most of the farmers, birds eat some of the crops, leading to losses sometimes. Others lack proper drying facilities, which force them to dry the rice on bare ground, which contaminate it with stones. This lowers the quality of the rice.
The cost of pesticides they use to spray the rice to control diseases, such as wilt is expensive. The other reason farmers are not making headway in yields is that they don’t have access to high yielding varieties for planting.
A trained accountant, Ojolowo, who went into rice farming after quitting his job with a private firm, maintained that although the business is well-paying; there are a number of challenges. When he decided to take on the venture, he got some basic lessons in rice growing and relied on the advice of elders in the business. Later on, he got in touch with Lagos State Rice for Job project and was exposed to modern rice cultivation practices.
As far as rice is concerned, Ojolowo noted that no one could expect domestically grown rice to be competitive. He has confirmed this from his experience. A certain portion of the population prefers imported rice than buying domestically grown rice.
But for the Deputy Managing Director, Kewalram Chanrai Group and Director, Spring Field Agro Limited, Mr Victor Eburajolo, farmers can only boost their livelihoods by exploiting agronomical practices that improve their yields using improved seeds, pesticides and fungicides. He believes rice production can pull a lot of Nigerians out of hunger because 60 per cent of the nation’s arable land is good for farming.
While local production has been on the decline, Eburajolo wouldn’t want rice importation to continue under any guise and so canvasses national efforts to equip and empower local farmers.
To this end, he is in support of the government boosting local rice production and reducing imports of the commodity.
This attitude, he noted, is motivating the private sector to embark on aggressive and sustained interventions to make Nigeria a food basket, thereby reducing rice importation. For him, governments and private investors’ partnership should enrich rice farmers to deliver good produce.
However, Eburajolo contended that farmers can only boost their yields by planting high-quality hybrid seeds, and using the recommended amount of fertiliser.
Currently, the average rice yield nationwide stands at about three tonnes per hectare, which is far lower than the international average of six tonnes per hectare. This is attributed to low hybrid seed uptake amongst the smallholder farmers.
Part of the blame goes to poor access to quality certified hybrid seed by small-holder farmers. To bridge this gap, Eburajolo said his organisation is partnering with RiceCo, a subsidiary of United Phosphorus Limited of the United States to produce rice dedicated fertiliser and rice hybrid seed as a way of boosting food productivity in the country.
He said RiceCo was founded to meet the specific technology needs of rice farmers, stating that his company is encouraged to go into rice production by the government’s pledge to create an enabling environment for agriculture to be transformed into a viable business.
International Operations Director, RiceCo, Pinky Ghosh, expressed concern that farmers are not making enough money from rice cultivation. This is as a result of not using quality seeds and farm inputs.
As part of the benefits of the partnership, Ghosh said her organisation will work with Spring Field Agro Limited to enable smallholder farmers’plant hybrid rice seeds and good management practices to boost yields per hectare. According to her, an improved quality of rice is the key to bigger farm incomes and taking the crop to new and more profitable markets.
For years now, she said her organisation has been producing hybrid rice seed and dedicated fertilisers for use by local communities.
Experience, she added, has shown that a little capacity building can change the situation within a very short period.
In addition, she said farmers need advice on modern farm technologies that will help to expand the production cycle and increase their rice production and profit.
She said improving on milling is the way forward for the industry. More efficient mills, she noted, will trigger higher productivity and usher in quality improvements at the farm level.
Ghosh said her organisation has done a lot combining field experience, scientific research and innovative thinking to solve the most challenging crop protection problems domestically and around the world. From small rice mill with traditional rice production machine to state-of-the-art rice production machines and modern rice reprocessing system, she reiterated that her organisation is determined to transform rice production to reduce importation.
According to her, the organisation’s innovative portfolio of products helps produce cleaner fields, healthier crops and more abundant yields. With more than 330 million acres of rice grown around the world, she said the company is dedicated to helping growers satisfy the growing demand for the world’s most essential food. While accelerating food production has brought more farmland into play, this however without a matching increase in crop yields.
The Head Africa, United Phosphorus Limited, Mr Nishant Pahuja said his organisation is using seeds as conduit for moving new varieties, giving farmers access to more productive, yield-enhancing traits.
Pahuja said his organisation uses rice seeds to boost nutrition, with bio-fortified varieties that elevate micro-nutrient levels.
Typically, he observed that the severe droughts have decimated crop yields. Since climate change-induced droughts have also had a major impact on food production, Pahuja added that his company has produce drought resistant species that can survive for a long time without water. Director of International Regulatory Affairs, RiceCo, Martin Poveda said the organisation is committed to making an impact on the world shortage of food by improving the quality and quantity of rice and help make it available when and where food is needed. He said the company develops, markets, and supplies rice-specific herbicides to maximise grain production and operational efficiencies. RiceCo, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee,United States, is a wholly owned subsidiary of United Phosphorus Limited (UPL).
UPL is a global crop protection, chemicals and seeds company, headquartered in Mumbai, India. UPL and its companies have a combined market capitalisation of approximately $2.5 billion. This provides RiceCo with a wide variety of resources to continue our goal of being the premier provider of products and services to the rice industry. So far, the Nigeria has released more than $1 billion to boost local rice production and to reduce imports of the commodity. The money, to be spent through the Presidential Rice Initiative, is to be availed to rice farmers at a single-digit interest rate of nine per cent per annum.
Some of the money will go to building 200 artificial seed multiplication centres for production of rice seeds.
Under the Presidential Rice Initiative, the money is meant to strengthen the capacity of banks in agricultural lending to farmers and entrepreneurs in the value chain as well as reduce rice importation.
The Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, said in Abuja that large-scale rice farmers would empowered to ensure the successful implementation of the Presidential Rice Initiative. Nigeria, which is Africa’s largest rice producer, plans to raise production to 300,000 metric tonnes a year. This will reduce its imports by 15 per cent and cut costs by $342 million a year. Estimates are that the demand will be 35 million tonnes by 2050.
Meanwhile, several ministers of agriculture from Africa will meet in Kampala early next month to discuss rice research and development, production and policy.
The meeting, known as “the 30th Extra-Ordinary Session of the AfricaRice Council of Ministers”, will appoint a new Director General for AfricaRice Centre.
The meeting will be held from February 6-8 and more than 50 dignitaries are expected to attend. Of these, 25 will be ministers of Agriculture or their representatives.
“Africa consumes a total of 11.6 million tonnes of milled rice per year, of which 3.3 million tonnes are imported. As many as 21 of the 39 rice-producing countries in Africa import between 50 and 99 per cent of their rice requirements,” states the International Rice Commission (IRC).
In a related development, a group of Thai Investors have disclosed plans to build $4 million rice city in Calabar.
Managing Director, Thai-African Corporation Limited, Mrs. Pantipa Dhanagon said the rice city will be completed in six months. Mrs. Pantipa Dhanagom, said the scheme will be a rice seedling center with the best rice seeds to be grown in the area.
According to her, the project will provide a training center and a one-stop service for out-growers in Nigeria and other African countries.
